Getting Around Shanghai With MTrip
A few months ago I wrote a post about How Travel Blogs will Take Over Guide Books. We are travelling now without a guide book and I will admit, I am eating my words. A guide book is very helpful for those times when you first arrive at a location.
We have gotten off the bus and been completely lost without have our trusty Lonely Planet in Hand to tell us where to catch a public bus, how much a taxi should cost and what part of town we should stay in.
We have been doing a lot of legwork online and things like google maps on our iPhone has helped a lot. While I am taking back my words that guide books will be replaced in the future by blogs, I do feel that guidebooks will instead evolve with technology.
Apps for tablets and smartphones will become more the norm and we will download sections of guidebooks as we go rather than carrying around our cumbersome and heavy South East Asia on a shoestring.
With technology evolving, that leaves room for more companies to break into the market and offer travellers a choice to get around during their travels. We were given an app to try out while we were in Shanghai by MTrip and we found it to be a big help when deciding what to do with ourselves.
Carrying around information about the city in the palm of our hand we could make our way to a restaurant or bar, tourist attraction or hotel with a simple touch of the screen. All we had to do was click a destination and our mTrip app would tell us the location, address and subway stop.
One thing I liked was the attractions menu. We could touch attractions and see what there was to do around the city. Once I clicked on the attraction, it woud give a little synopsis as to what it was, tell me what time it was open, give us a rating and review and how to get there.
I found the application very easy to use and follow.
It breaks everything down in different menus to suit your needs. If you are looking for Asian Cuisine you can click on the menu and it will break down the restaurants listed by price and area. If you are in the mood to see museums only, click on that. It will break everything into tidy menus for you to sort through only what you are interested in.
We didn’t take advantage of the automated trip planning but it looks like an interesting feature. You can punch in your date of travel, where you are staying and you can either manually build your itinerary or let mTrip’s genius plan it for you. All you have to do is specify the types of attractions you are interested in and the pace that you want to see them in.
Once you know the attractions you want to see all you have to do is use the map like a gps to find your way. The map finds you automatically and tells you the best route by food or subway and how long it will take to get there. The best news, there are no roaming fees or cellular charges.
You then decide where you want to go by choosing attractions nearby, by popularity or location. It is so easy.
At 5.99 it is also a great deal.
There aren’t a lot of destinations available yet with the majority of them being in Europe, a few cities in Asia and a few in The United States but more are coming.
I am looking forward to more cities coming and will use them regularly. I can search for a hotel in a new city that I arrive in by price – economy, moderate or all the way to superior. All I have to do is find an economy hotel in the menu,(That’s my budget I’m afraid) click on it and press locate and navigate and it will give me all the information I need to get there.
With the mTrip travel guide in conjunction with a little legwork on the Internet before your holiday, this could be all you need when visiting a new city around the world.
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18 Responses to Getting Around Shanghai With MTrip
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Yes, travel books, regular books, cook books, any books will just become another APP you can download for a nominal fee…but can you imagine the devastating sffect technology is having on the economy,,,entire idustries, institutions,etc…are slowly but surely dissapearing. Books replaced by APPS…jobs in printing, jobs in maintenance, jobs in packing, jobs in shipping, etc…all dissappear…but that’s the price we have to pay in order to evolve.
I will try that APP I think it should be marvelous…Did you go to the public swiming pool in Shanghai? it is huge.
Baron you are so right. Jobs are disappearing, ways of life are going out the window. Technology is moving so quickly nobody can keep up. there isn’t a lot of time anymore to just be. But the apps are making things much easier in this hectic world that is for sure.
I never ever travel without a guidebook. BUT…sometimes I wish I remembered to print out a map. I don’t care about where some guidebook thinks I should stay but an app telling me how to get somewhere is fantastic.
I really do love having a map on the iphone. We have been using GPS and google maps a lot, and having an app that directs us to all the popular tourist sites is a great complement.
It seems this app is really useful. I’ve been to Shanghai and it’s pretty tough without a guide!
Wow, that must be a great app. Is it compatible with any Android?
It seems like a great app. How much is it?
Is this app only for the Iphone or do they make if for the Android system as well? Sounds like a neat little app to have and the price isnt too bad.
Thanks for sharing this pp. It is very useful.
It’s really nice spending time on your blog.
You are the best blogger I’ve found today.
Just wanted to let you know that I love your blog a lot.
My wife told me to read your blog as it is really interesting, and I must admit she was not wrong at all.
Your point of view on this subject is really original.
This is so interesting, that I kept reading all of your other posts too.
Thanks Dave and Deb for the article on mTrip. We really appreciate the kind feedback on the app. Since you were saying there is some legwork to do on the Internet prior, I wanted you to know we released an online trip planner with all the destinations we feature in the mobile guides. You can also publish your trip to the web now, with all your pictures, notes, trip itinerary, maps etc. If you haven’t updated the app in the App Store, I would suggest that you do! I think you will really like the new changes
If you like Chinese culture and authentic travel, you should check this hotel out. http://www.linden-centre.com. Go ahead and search it and you will see great reviews.