Pin Your Map: Downtime Travel + Planning Tip
While everyone is sheltering in place, scrolling through their Instagram and reading articles, it's a good time to organize your travel wishlist.
How do you do that? In Instagram, when you bookmark a post (or see one in real-time), you can click on the location if it's tagged and it will open to a map. Look to the top right upward arrow (forward button). It will ask if you want to open the location in Google Maps. When it does bring you to your desired location whether it be an island, restaurant or museum as some examples, click the save bookmark and select the green flag "want to go" to save it. You can also include a reminder, keyword or make any note to reference in the future. You can create lists and nerd out even more on organizing if you're into that kind of thing.
When I read articles online and see a list of places I'd like to go (most recently when planning a trip to Mexico City - currently postponed), I went over to Google Maps, mobile or desktop, and immediately flagged the places. I almost always forget or can't conjure up the places on the spot, so this is an easy travel planning tip and a great reference - of the whole world!
Now you can end up in the place your favorite travel influencer tagged or find that little known restaurant mentioned in an article wayback.
When I'm in a destination, I just pull up my map and find out what's nearby. We are all guilty of procrastinating or wait to get to the destination before booking an activity or finding a place to eat for our current mood.
It's one of those simple things, that if you keep up with and put into practice, your map starts to look like mine and you expand your travel options.
Even Google agrees and found it in their research. Enjoy and travel well!
"Almost half of experiences bookings — 48% — are happening once travelers arrive at their destination. And the majority of those in-destination searches happen on mobile. Greenberg analyzed over a thousand travelers’ online behavior and found that searches for activities are happening across devices in the three months prior to a trip, but shift significantly to 54% mobile when travelers are in-destination."