This Is a Genius Hack for Planning Your Next Vacay
The one and only trend in today’s travel apps — Yelp, et al. — are that they all want to help you live like a local, wherever in the world you may be. Today, there’s no excuse to travel like an uninformed tourist; if you didn’t bother learning how to pack your bag properly, you’re disinvited from this trip, friend-o. Pick the rest of us up from the airport in a week.
But apps aren’t keepers of the almighty travel know-how-why-and-where anymore — now, a cab company in Stockholm is hoping to help you travel even smarter. Taxi Trails cabs have heat maps installed in the back of their cars that show you where riders are getting dropped off. The hotter the area, the hotter the scene… in theory.
FastCo points out that hot areas may just be where cute, little Swedish grandmas are getting dropped off for doc appointments, or, more likely, where tourists are flocking because they heard there was a mall. (Locals tend to not take cabs in Stockholm, where they have an amazing public transit system and lots of bike lanes. Just sayin’.)
Still though, the idea behind the heat map is cool, especially if, say, you don’t speak Swedish and thus can’t read the Yelp reviews written by real locals. With all things considered (especially the potential in cities where locals take cars in place of driving or biking, liiiike NYC or SF?), we give this project four out of five stars.
Would you trust a Taxi Trails heat map? What’s your best tip for traveling like a local?