Touring Bird by Google Area 120 helps travelers find and customize tickets, tours, & activities

Abner Li | Sep 7 2018 - 10:21 am PT

The latest project out of Google’s Area 120 incubator is called Touring Bird and it’s a simple website that helps travelers find things to do. Curated by city, it brings together various activities and provides a comparison to help users get the cheapest deals from multiple tour providers.

At launch, Touring Bird features guides for 20 cities across the United States and Europe: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Miami, New Delhi, New York, Orlando, Paris, Prague, Rome, San Diego, San Francisco, Toronto, Washington, D.C.

Each card on its homepage quickly notes the top tourist attractions, with each city page using carousels to highlight the “Top sights” and “Tours & activities.”

Each activity features interesting and useful facts, as well as “Available options.” For example, the San Francisco Bay has a “Sightseeing cruises on the bay” attraction. Selecting lets you “build-your-own package” with options like what sights you want to see, the time of day, a private cruise, and whether you want a guide.

Once customized, Touring Bird displays all the tours that match your criteria from providers like Viator, GetYourGuide, and Expedia . The cheapest is displayed first, but you can also browse other similar or more expensive options, with each featuring a star ranking.

Meanwhile, each city page also features “Local Tips” by travel experts and those that live in the city, as well as a list of free tours and activities by interests, like “Off the beaten path” and “Local tastes.” This latter section allows travelers to take a self-guided tour and makes for a great itinerary.

9to5Google’s Take

Touring Bird is entirely web-based for both desktop and mobile with a snappy experience that leverages the Google Material Theme for various elements. It is very similar to Google Trips, but as a longtime user of the latter I find Touring Bird much more curated and offering an easier-to-use experience.

Like all Area 120 projects, Touring Bird could eventually be integrated into Google Trips or even Google Maps for a wider audience. However, this small little tool by itself is already very neat and promising.