Travel Apps

Most seasoned travellers develop their own techniques for planning and orchestrating trips that go smoothly. But even for people who travel frequently, parts of taking a trip can still be complicated. 

Useful Travel Apps

The staff at Alistair Cole Consulting are certainly no strangers to travel tasks like booking flights and hotels; renting cars for road trips; or navigating public transportation and language barriers in unfamiliar cities. Whether you’re trying to stay calm during a turbulent flight or need assistance converting currency rates, these are essential travel apps that may help.

 

PackPoint

PackPoint does a great job at simplifying the art of how to pack a suitcase. This app personalises your packing list depending on where you’re going and the activities you have planned. All you have to do is download the app, plug in the destination, and input information about your upcoming travels such as duration and time of year. Then, PackPoint provides you with trip-specific packing recommendations based on the weather in your destination and the activities you have planned. The app even takes more nuanced details into account, such as whether you’ll have access to laundry facilities where you’re going and have the ability to wash and re-wear your clothes.

 

TripIt

TripIt automatically tracks your confirmation emails for flight itineraries, hotel or Airbnb bookings, car rentals, restaurant reservations, and even any event tickets you might buy, then populates those travel plans into a little itinerary that you can view in one place. The easy-to-use organisational app makes it simple to share the consolidated information with family or friends, so you can send them your itinerary directly and avoid having to answer repeated texts like, “When are you landing again?” TripIt even features a personalised Travel Stats page for data-hungry travellers who want to know how many trips they’ve taken or countries they’ve visited. The pro version costs $49 per year and includes extras like real-time flight alerts, TSA wait times, and loyalty reward programme updates.

 

Drops

This is a language learning app. Drops gamifies the educational experience, using flashcard-like mnemonic matching exercises, or memory devices, to teach vocabulary words. Drops offers more than 50 languages.

 

Rome2Rio

Rome2Rio is a handy tool for getting from Point A to Point B. If you put in your starting point and destination, it will show you all the ways you could feasibly get there (plane, car, bus, and train), how long each option would take, and how much it would cost. If it’s a public transportation route, it’ll share the specific buses and trains you need to get on (as well as alternatives, should you miss them) and bring you to the appropriate booking websites. Having all the options laid out makes it easy to make an informed decision.

 

Priority Pass

Several premium credit cards such as the American Express Platinum Card offer Priority Pass memberships to card holders, which grant access to more than 1,500 airport lounges around the world. It also lets you search eligible lounges and discounts by airport, clueing you in to what amenities you can expect when you arrive.

 

Rain Rain

If you’ve ever been 30,000 feet in the air, stuck ahead of a seat-kicker, and need to find your chill, then Rain Rain is for you. This free app on both iOS and Android has dozens of sounds. You can zen out to gentle wind chimes or an alarm clock ticking, and even create your own sound combinations.

 

Google Maps

The navigational app helps find handy spots like banks or petrol stations; understand public transportation options, including buses, trains, and ride-sharing services; map out walking and cycling routes; and keeps track of restaurant reservations. It also allows you to share your location with travel buddies and create customised maps with flagged locations.

 

Citymapper

This app suggests routes and alternative routes in destinations from Copenhagen to Tokyo; it shows maps, fares, and trip length with a breakdown of how much time will be spent on each mode of transportation per option. Notably, the travel app also maps out city routes for wheelchair accessibility.


National Park Trail Guide

This outdoor adventure app offers guides to 63 national parks, monuments, and recreation areas with need-to-know information on food, accommodation, and activities, as well as detailed trail and annual climate data.

 

AllTrails: Hike, Bike & Run

AllTrails is an app that helps you find hikes within a given area, with information about the degree of difficulty, length, elevation gain, current conditions, and route type. It also offers reviews and photos from people who have hiked it recently. AllTrails also has a paid version, called AllTrails+, that allows users to download maps for offline use, which is important in the backcountry. It also pushes alerts if you make a wrong turn and find trails by distance from you.

 

Google Translate

All you have to do is enter a word, phrase, or sentence that you want to translate and then indicate the specific languages, such as Japanese to English, or Creole to Spanish. The app can translate meanings in 243 languages, and it lets you save them to your own personal phrasebook so you can remember them when you’re offline. It also offers camera translation in 37 languages, which only requires that you take a picture of a word in order to translate its meaning.

 

HotelTonight

HotelTonight lets you book last-minute hotel rooms at incredibly affordable rates in cities like New York City, Paris, and Barcelona. The app’s inventory is well vetted, with legitimately cool boutique hotels categorised by easy-to-use filters, like basic, solid, hip, luxe.

 

Xe Currency

Before your trip, just add the currency of the country you’re traveling to into your list on the app. Then when you land, all you have to do is plug in the price you want to convert to sterling etc., and the app will spit out a rate equivalent in seconds. It’s super easy to use while you’re shopping or at a restaurant. You can even use the app to view rate conversions when you’re offline, as long as you saved the relevant currency to the app while using Wi-Fi.

 

Splitwise

“This app tracks shared expenses. If you’re traveling with friends on a group trip, it spares you the awkward conversations about whose credit card pays for dinner or who’s going to call the Lyft, and it prevents resentment that could arise from anyone paying more or less than their fair share.

 

HappyCow

HappyCow is an app for finding vegetarian/vegan restaurants. It works like Google Maps, pointing out all the options. The map surfaces vegetarian and vegan spots (including regular restaurants that have good choices for non-meat eaters), lets you filter by specs like price and gluten-free, and includes write-ups with information on what kind of options you can expect, what the veggie burgers are made of, and even whether the place serves vegan drinks. Entries also include key info like opening hours, payment options, and reviews. There’s a free version of the app that will show you what’s near you.