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Lonely Planet, the world’s largest travel guide book publisher, has just launched an Instagram-like mobile app called Trips that allows anyone to share their travel photos and create their own travel guides. The app, which is only available for iOS at the moment, serves as a platform for users to catalog trips they’ve taken and publish guides for the places they’ve visited. The guides include text, photos and captions, though the app’s main focus is ultimately on sharing photos.
Lonely Planet describes its new app as “a beautiful, simple and intuitive way to share travel experiences.” Each user has their own timeline, and their content can be shared with both other travelers using the app as well as family and friends.
Speaking to Engadget, Lonely Planet CEO Daniel Houghton explained, “We don’t expect people to abandon other photo-sharing apps.” Underscoring that there is an option in Trips for users to link to their Instagram account and show off the photos they have shared on that platform.
For travelers, though, Trips offers a way to share content that is more trip-focused than what’s possible on photo sharing services like Instagram. In addition to being able to arrange photos chronologically in trip reports, users can also add a map to their report, better enabling viewers to see exactly where the adventure took place. Plus, Trips can be used in conjunction with Lonely Planet’s popular Guides app, which offers travel guides from experts for regions around the world.
Trips is currently only available on iOS. An Android version of the app will arrive later this fall.
