Traveling is fun. Planning your travels can be a real pain.
Here in the U.S., your main pain point in terms of options and scheduling is the airlines. In Europe, you can easily add trains and buses as equally viable and likely more cost-effective options. But, while they can save you money, they can also add an exponentially larger number of option and scheduling decisions for you.
Luckily, there’s an app that is attempting to streamline your transportation search through and across European countries: GoEuro. It’s a single-minded travel app, which you can download from the Play Store for free. If you’ve ever used Google Maps or another current navigation app, you will be very comfortable using GoEuro.
Upon downloading, you are presented with fields to input your source and destination locations, departure and return dates, and number of passengers. Upon filling these fields you hit the ‘search’ button, where you’re presented with the imminently available bus, train, and plane itineraries, with accompanying prices (in your choice of currency).
I can hear you asking: “What about Google Maps? Doesn’t it do the exact same thing?”
For the navigation, yes it does. I did a couple of test routes in both apps, and there wasn’t anything GoEuro does that good ol’ Google couldn’t do.
That’s where GoEuro goes one step beyond: booking your trip. Within the GoEuro app you can pre-load your country-centric discount cards and, using these (or not), physically book your trip right from the app. (OK, that’s not technically correct: upon booking the app will forward you to Raileasy, which is where your booking actually takes place). So, in a single app, you can research, select, and book your trip. Pretty cool.
As far as real-time (on-the-bus) navigation and tracking, well, the AndroidGuys editorial department repeatedly declined my travel advance to thoroughly test this out; so, I’m tabling this portion of the review until my corporate standing rises a few more notches. ?
What we like
- Modern, clean interface.
- Simple app navigation.
Could use improvement
- Smoother transition to the actual booking interface.
- A press kit, complete with complimentary trial European travel package.
Download and install GoEuro from the Google Play Store.