Google Trips is your personalized travel planner and guide

Google has launched a new travel app named Google Trips that works as a trip planner and travel guide for anyone exploring a new place. The free app, which is available on Android and iOS, will organize your plane tickets and hotel reservations, offer editorial guides to more than 200 cities, and make personalized recommendations based on your Google history.

The most notable feature of the new app is that it works even offline. That means you can download everything to your phone before you leave, including maps and walking directions and save yourself those extra bucks on data plans.

Google has been working on Trips for more than a couple of years. Google recently introduced Destinations, a travel-planning feature inside mobile search, and revamped its hotel and flight search features.

Coming to the app: it starts with a prompt “where do you want to go?” Each city you plan to visit during one of your holiday trips can each have its own tab within the larger “Trip” section, and with a simple toggle switch, you can download all the information about that destination for offline access.

On each city’s page you’ll find a colorful grid of options to explore like “Saved places,” “Day Plans,” “Food & Drink,” “Getting around,” “Things to do,” “Reservations,” and more.

The icing on the cake is that the app isn’t just informative, it also suggest what you could do at a particular place. It can build custom itineraries based on how long you’ll be in town, popular destinations, and anything that you’ve previously starred or saved on a Google service. This information is actually based on historic visit data from other travelers, which Google has then assembled into lists that include the most popular sights and attractions.

Also interesting is how this crowdsourced data is combined with other information pulled from Google Maps to help you find things to do near one of your planned sightseeing destinations.

The app will compete with offerings like TripIt, the travel-planning app from business-expense company Concur and also with forthcoming Airbnb Trips app, which will focus on travel services.