Digital maps to avoid getting lost on vacation

Digital maps, whether on a computer before leaving or on a mobile phone as we arrive at our destination or once we're there, have replaced not only paper maps but also travel guides. Google Maps It's the most popular option: more than 2 billion people use it every month. Below, we'll review the app's basic and more advanced features, as well as some alternatives that might be useful during your vacation, if you're traveling.

Basic Google Maps

The Google Maps website and apps offer advanced trip planning features. You can search for specific locations by name, address, or establishment category, even using your voice. You can also calculate the optimal route between two or more points.by different modes of transport: car, public transport, bicycle, or on foot.

While traveling, Google Maps displays step-by-step navigation instructions with voice guidance in Catalan and a real-time view. When traveling by car, Maps displays real-time traffic conditions.with a color code (green for fluidity, yellow for moderate traffic, red for traffic jams) and suggests alternative routes when it detects traffic jams.

The estimated arrival timeIt combines historical data and current conditions to estimate travel times with amazing accuracy. The information is dynamically updated based on traffic conditions. If you're already searching for a location—a gas station, a restaurant, a monument—while you're traveling, you can add it as a stop along the way.

Lesser-known features of Google Maps

In more than 150 cities around the world you can activate the immersive view, whichuses Street View and aerial imagery to create 3D visualizations that allow you to virtually explore destinations. The feature includes information on weather conditions, traffic, and retail interiors.

Tapping the camera icon in the search bar while walking activates augmented reality (AR) navigation, which overlays the camera image with turn-by-turn directions.job titles, ratings, and employment levels. Very useful for finding your way around unfamiliar cities or finding your way out of subway stations.

Returning to the car, you can choose different vehicles and colors for the navigation icon, making it easier to identify your location when carpooling with other users.

Street View has a "time travel" feature, so you can see how a location has changed over time.years. On your computer, you need to look for the clock icon in Street View; on your mobile phone, open Street View, tap the photo, and choose "See more dates."

Offline maps are useful for planning trips to places where you don't know if you'll have mobile internet coverage. Recently,They suggest automatic map downloads from trip confirmations in Gmail. These downloads take up little space on your phone's memory, usually less than 1 GB per geographic area.

Two very useful features for planning trips are personalized maps and saved place lists. Users can create lists with specific locations they plan to visit: airport, train station, hotel, restaurants, museums, monuments, and other tourist attractions. These lists make it considerably easier to locate planned places once you're already at your destination, eliminating the need to remember names or addresses.

Reviews and Reservations

Google Maps has become the go-to source for information on all types of establishments, whether in the hospitality industry or other sectors, because users perceive it as more reliable than TripAdvisor and it's well-integrated with other Google services. It's also more respectful of Catalan-speaking users: not only does it accept reviews written in Catalan, it also translates reviews written in other languages into Catalan. Google processed nearly 1 billion reviews last year. The most reliable reviews tend to be those provided by so-called "Local Guides."

The Book with Google option shows real-time availability of restaurants, classes, activities, and hotels and allows direct booking and integration with Calendar, Gmail, and the Google Assistant.

Alternatives to Google Maps

Many iPhone users use Google maps, but Apple Maps It offers advantages in privacy and integration with Apple devices. iOS 18 features include hiking trails in American national parks with detailed topographic maps. The app processes data locally and consumes less battery life but has more limited coverage outside of Western markets.

Open mappingOpenStreetMap It's accessible on its website and through apps like Organic Maps. It offers offline functionality without tracking personal data. It's useful for international travel to places with poor connectivity or for hiking where commercial maps may have poorer coverage. Data quality varies by region, and it doesn't include integrated commercial information.

Privacy is generally a consideration: some Google Maps users have disabled the history of the places they've visited in their Google profiles, but keep in mind that this will prevent us from viewing them later.

Waze It's owned by Google and shares the same maps and real-time traffic data, but it's specifically geared toward car journeys. It's notable for its crowdsourced information on traffic incidents provided by drivers themselves.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from Waze is Citymapper, available for more than 450 metropolitan areas in Europe, North America, and Asia. It's probably the most comprehensive app for pedestrians and public transport travel: it even recommends which metro car to sit in so you have to walk less when you reach your destination.

Although it doesn't calculate routes between two points, many readers in the Barcelona metropolitan area who are mistreated by the Cercanías service will appreciate the information it provides. Ferroviaria.cat, a Catalan-language web application that uses open data from TMB, Renfe, FGC, and Tram to show you in real time exactly where the train you're waiting for is.

Google Maps for Business

The use of Google Maps, as we've explained—and those of other services—as a source of commercial and institutional information has a consequence for those responsible for these sites: it's necessary to ensure that the data appearing on the maps is accurate and up-to-date. This is achieved through a complementary service: Company Profile (formerly known as Google My Business). If you own a business, this is where you should provide the correct name, opening hours, and contact information, from phone number to website. This information will eventually appear on Google Maps and in web searches when someone searches for you, and it's important to keep in mind that a significant proportion of local mobile searches result in physical visits.

It's important to note that the information on your business profile can be modified by anyone, whether in good faith or with malicious intent. It's common to find cases where someone has Spanish-ized the name of an establishment that is actually in Catalan, or He has even added descriptions with political intentThe key is to claim ownership of your business so that Google asks for your confirmation every time someone suggests a change to your information. It's best not to take this task lightly: if you don't explicitly reject a third-party change, Google will consider you agree and implement it after a few days.