A TRAVEL expert has revealed a simple hack that lets tourists find their way around the world’s cities on Google Maps without any Wi-Fi.
Waqas Hassn, the founder of the Digital Nomad Academy, revealed the handy tip to his Instagram followers as a way to solve a common problem.
It’s always frustrating to be trying to find your way through an unfamiliar city, especially when a lack of public Wi-Fi and patchy phone signal are holding you back.
However, with Waqas’ advice, travelers can get all the best features of Google Maps without having to worry about internet access or mobile data costs.
He explained that, while at your hotel or anywhere with a stable internet connection, you can download the map of any city you want to help you get to your destination.
Once it’s downloaded, the map will be available without an internet connection.
It will even still show you your location, find travel routes and display nearby tourist attractions and restaurants.
This is because the GPS in your phone, which is what tracks your location, is all based on satellite link and not any phone or internet signal.
The only thing Google Maps need the internet for is to generate maps based on GPS data.
However, if this is done in advance and downloaded, the app no longer needs the internet to function.
Unless the geography of your destination city radically changes by the time you step out of the hotel lobby, it should provide just as good a guide to your surroundings as any other time you’ve used Google Maps.
Waqas explained: “One of the big problems travelers find is that, when they land in a new city, they don’t have Wi-Fi or they don’t have SIM and they’re like ‘oh I’m lost in the streets’.
“This is a hack that you can use to find your place in any city, any country without any internet.”
It comes after a TikTok user called Jessica shared a similar Google Maps trick to help people plan their holidays.
She revealed that you can make personalised maps with all the things you want to do in your holiday destination and download them in the same way as Waqas suggested.
This lets holidaymakers check off their to do list in real-time as they walk around foreign cities.
