I uncovered a bit of a find whilst exploring the virtual test-tube racks (or should that be Rax?) of Google Labs last night.

Launched back in June, Google’s City Tours enables (in theory) you to create your own itineraries for city breaks and plots out a schedule on a map together with a proposed route.

According to the official description:

“Making holiday planning as easy as searching the web. City Tours helps you identify points of interest and plan multi-day trips to most major cities. You just specify the location of your hotel and the length of your trip and City Tours will map out an itinerary for you.”

London City Tour

Google proposes a time allocation to each landmark - the exact number of minutes makes the tour less relaxing and slighty more stressful but hey-ho!

It would be useful to show more details about sights from Wikipedia and from image hosting sites like Flickr or Panoramio. Google works on landmark recognition, a project that associates images from the web with landmarks, and City Tours is an obvious application.

You are able to select how many days you wish to spread the tour across

I agree with the Google Operating System blog which points out that for now, City Tours doesn’t offer too many interesting features: it only lists popular sights and it suggests when you should visit them. You can edit the information about a place and you can add new sights, but the options are very limited.

If/when this feature is made available in mobile format will be the true indicator of the success of City Tours. In the meantime, have a play around for yourself here.