Fans of Anthony Bourdain‘s no-holds-barred style of travel can rejoice because the next best thing to taking a trip with the famed Travel Channel host is finally here. Today, the Travel Channel launched a “Layover Guide with Anthony Bourdain,” which offers tools to help travelers create their own Bourdain-inspired experiences.
Geared towards armchair travelers, or those with more of a “get up and go” mentality, the app ($1.99) repurposes content from “The Layover” and “No Reservations” to allow travelers to customize trips in ten featured cities, including: Amsterdam, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, New York, Rome, San Francisco and Singapore.
The app allows travelers to plan an afternoon excursion or a weeklong journey, all focused on Bourdain’s signature love of food.
What do we like about the app? It offers curated content from a certified travel professional – if you like watching Bourdain’s show, chances are you’ll love his suggestions in app form, adding the ability to “mix and match” as well as customize a trip to fit within a dedicated time frame.
The integrated “timeline” feature allows users to plan their own itinerary using Bourdain’s POIs, automatically estimating the amount of time needed to do each activity to build a custom itinerary. The app uses Google Maps to estimate the time between distances, to make sure that you won’t cross from one side of town to the other and back.
We also like the app’s customized video intros and notes about each city from Bourdain himself as well as the personal list of travel “Do’s and Don’ts” anchored by the host.
Of course, half the fun of travel is getting excited about the trip. The app offers “inspiration lists” created by Bourdain to help set the mood. His recommendations vary from watching the Steve McQueen classic, “Bullitt,” before heading to San Francisco to studying the “Au Pied de Cochon” cookbook by Martin Picard while planning a trip to Montreal.
As would be expected, there’s social integration as well, including checking-in at locations, earning badges and sharing to Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.
Have you downloaded the app? What do you think?