By: Hannah Judge
Trips — the latest mobile app from Lonely Planet — is a new way to share stories about the places you travel. The app also makes it easier to discover things to do; you can search trips created by people you follow and then add those experiences to your own itinerary. Its Instagram-like design lets users populate each Trip with collections of photos, notes, and maps, telling a rich visual story tied together by the location.
The app combines maps, search, and photography with a book-like feel; the map style and markers add to the overall aesthetic. Lonely Planet built the app using our iOS SDK and designed the custom maps embedded in each trip using Mapbox Studio.
When the app first came out in late August, I was deep in trip-planning mode, plotting my upcoming time off in Norway. I found a post on Trips about the best hikes in Norway and bookmarked one of the routes. After coming back this week, I used the app to recap the experience and share with friends. Here are the highlights I saved in Trips with a few of my favorite photos and a map showing the places we went.
Trips is Lonely Planet’s second mobile app built using our tools. They launched their Guides app last year, which provides city-specific travel guides that are accessible offline. Our iOS SDK ships with offline maps, allowing users to access the map’s features and data without a network connection – helpful if your users are planning trips to remote areas or trying to avoid roaming charges.
If you’re planning a trip, or just have a little wanderlust, download Trips for iOS. Building a travel app? We’d love to help. Come meet us and talk maps & location data for travel apps at Skift Sep 26–27 and Phocuswright Nov 7–9.
Share and discover travel stories with the Trips app was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.