Your smartphone can be your most valuable travel companion. From helping you to plan a vacation getaway to navigating airports and working out transportation, dining and sightseeing in a new city, today’s travel apps can make your next journey a more economical, more efficient and more fun.
Travel and tourism is now a $4.5 trillion global industry. A slew of apps and services are emerging to cash in on the opportunity. Today, it hardly matters if your mobile phone or tablet is running Apple iOS, Google Android and Windows Phone OS. Travelers can now find tools to help plan, capture and enjoy their travel time.
you are travelling for business or pleasure, the following apps designed to do exactly that. They’re all free and just a simple download away from making you a highly effective mobile maven on your next trip.
Before You Go
1. Kayak
Kayak automatically converts emails for flights, hotels and rental cars into a single, convenient, easy-to-read travel itinerary. The app scans the body of emails for reservation times, automatically adds events to your calendar, sorts them in chronological order and pulls in maps to help with navigation. You can share your itinerary with friends or family. The app and accompanying website also allow you to book flights, hotels and rental cars. Kayak also offers real-time flight and gate change notifications.
2. SeatGuru
Never quite sure which are the best seats on the plane? SeatGuru can help clear things up. This free app and web service offers over 700 seat maps from almost 100 of the world most well-known airlines. SeatGuru plane maps are color-coded so you can easily see where the desirable and less desirable seats are. The SeatGuru community provides more detailed reviews that factor in everything from proximity to the bathroom and galley to the lack of power ports or limited overhead bin space.
3. Airbnb
The diversity of Airbnb‘s 1,000,000+ listings. Rental options range from yachts and RVs to castles to luxury condos, with everything in between. Aribnb’s ever-growing catalog of sofas, rooms, apartments and homes cater to just about any budget. Using the app is similar to the typical hotel booking — you’ll need to authenticate your identity and work out the logistics of the key hand-off with the host. You can read reviews about your host and your accommodation from other Airbnb users, and leave a review of your own once you’ve completed your stay.
While You’re There
4. TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor is used by millions of travelers to rank restaurants, bars, hotels and sights on a five star system. Collectively, this enabled TripAdvisor to create an impressive, crowdsourced list of cities and must see attractions. For more curated travel tips, TripAdvisor also offers a standalone Offline City Guides app to more than 80 destinations. You can download this companion app to access information on your destination without a mobile data connection.
5. Uber
Uber is the ride-booking service that’s revolutionizing how ride-seekers connect to drivers in more than 300 cities in 58 countries. Uber is a great way to conveniently navigate a city without having to wait in a long line or deal with an over-priced taxi fare. You need a Wifi or mobile date connection to use the Uber service.
6. Waze
If you prefer to rent a car and explore a city on your own, there are few better apps to help you get around than Waze. This “social GPS” app uses crowd-sourced traffic info to lead you on the fastest route. Whether you’re driving to the city center, a rural hideout, or the airport, Waze can help take you there.
7. Google Translate
The Google Translate team recently launched a must-have feature for travelers to foreign-language speaking countries: “Conversation mode.” To use Google Translate all you have you do is open the app, hold the mobile device between two people speaking a different language, and listen as it translates a conversation live. The app still throws fair amount of mistranslations, and sometimes has difficulty understanding thick accents, but it certainly beats trying to communicate through shouting and hand waving.
Preserving the Memories
8. Instagram
This popular social media platform now has over 300 million user. That’s a whole lot of people that likely includes folk you’d want to share your travel memories with.
In addition to sharing your memories, Instagram is also a great resource for trip planning, as a lot of travel bloggers showcase their adventures and recommend great places for catching the sunset of posing for selfies in front of popluar landmarks.
9. Postagram
If you want to reserve your photographic mastery for a more exclusive club, Postagram may be the app for you. Postagram allows you to upload a vacation picture, type in a greeting, and the service will print out the card and send it through snail mail.
10. Pinterest
The popular “pinning service” allows users to search locations, to see photos and articles that other users have posted on Pinterest. Over 70,000 place pins are uploaded per day and there are also city boards, where pins are mapped out, so that you can plan an itinerary in advance.
Of course, there are lots more apps out there that can help make your trip a success. What travel apps are your favorite?
Bevil Wooding is the Chief Knowledge Officer at Congress WBN (C-WBN) a values-based international non-profit organization and Executive Director at BrightPath Foundation, responsible for C-WBN’s technology education and outreach initiatives. Follow on Twitter: @bevilwooding and on Instagram: abrightpath