Facebook has organised some of the travel-related content on the network into a single service known as City Guides.

It is not some kind of jaw-dropping, killer app or piece of functionality but, in fact, a simple way of collating all the likely elements that a traveller would want when they are in a destination.

City Guides is available as one of the many tools that reside in the Facebook mobile app, alongside Weather, Groups, Sports, Jobs, etc.

When a user clicks on the app they are directed to a list of cities around the world, with a list of “friends” that have visited them.

Once into an actual city, there are lists of suggested things to do (again with a note on visits of them by friends), “Places The Locals Go” and “Popular Attractions”.

Much will be made of the “Book Now” functionality that appears on some of the attractions, hotels and other services that are included in the City Guides tool – but this already existed for the pages of those brands, City Guides just acts as a doorway to those pages within the mobile device.

Attractions:

Hotels:

Restaurants:

The obvious analysis to Facebook’s development of City Guides is that it comes on the tail of efforts by Google to bring the in-destination need for information into a single mobile app.

Google Trips came online during 2016 and works in a similar way (acting as a front to its existing services, such as maps, content and services), except it has the itinerary element bolted on from a user’s reservations in hotels or air tickets.