Thursday, March 28, 2024

Facebook ‘City Guides’ help you plan your travels using tips from friends and locals

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Facebook is giving select users a way to source travel recommendations and reviews in one convenient place on its app. Here’s how you can find out if you have access to the new City Guides tab.

Facebook is testing a “City Guides” feature on its mobile apps that offers travel recommendations in the vein of TripAdvisor.

As is the norm for the company’s experiments, the update is tucked away in the “more” navigation tab on the Facebook app. It’s actually a neat little feature that curates local sights and places (such as bars, restaurants, and attractions) using city Pages data and tagged locations your friends have visited. You can bookmark the listings you’re interested in, which will then appear in their own “saved” tab — the bookmark function wasn’t working for us when we tried it out on iOS, so hopefully Facebook will get around to fixing it.

More: Give your friends a Glympse of you location with this helpful GPS app

facebook city guides img

facebook city guides img

facebook city guides img

The recommendations are split into several sections: at the top are places your friends have been, which can be accessed by tapping on the circular tiles that correspond to each person’s profile. Below that are places locals go, and at the bottom of the display are popular attractions. Tapping on a suggestion will bring up its Facebook Page, allowing you to then access its location on a map, find contact details, see photos, read reviews, and more. If you don’t see the city you’d like to explore on the tab’s home page, you can find it via the search bar at the top.

facebook city guides img

facebook city guides img

facebook city guides img

An earlier version of the feature was first spotted in December by The Next Web’s Matt Navarra. It is unclear at present if City Guides is being tested out in select regions. Facebook did not give us any details on the range of the experiment, but a spokesperson for the company did say the following: “We’re testing a redesigned surface on city Pages that showcases information about your city. This content already exists on Facebook, and during this test we’ll be centralizing it in a way that is more personalized and relevant…So, this new feature can help people get a better sense of their city, or a city they’re visiting through their friends’ eyes.”

The best way to check if you have the feature is to log in to the app, head into the “more navigation” tab, and select “see more” from the “Explore” section. City Guides is located at the bottom of the list.

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