I love to travel – exploring new cities, states, countries is so refreshing and invigorating. I try to plan my travels to a tee, organizing everything and finding ways to make the planning and exploration that much easier. I’ve come across some amazing apps perfect for travelers, that I am excited to share with you!
WAZE
Whenever I travel to a new place, whether it is a 25 minute ride to a new store or a 3 hour ride to a destination vacation, I’ve always popped the location into Google Maps. UNTIL…someone introduced me to Waze. Not only does it give directions, the community-based app notifies you if there is an accident or police officer on your path, as well as consistently provide for you the fastest route to get where you’re going. Real-time traffic and road info has saved us a bunch of time and frustration. (Free, available for Android and iOS).
The Weather Channel app
I don’t leave the house in the morning without checking the weather. When it comes to travel, I check the sunshine factor at least a week in advance of our departure, and then every day thereafter. The Weather Channel app is my go-to to save my future destinations. I personally like the hour-by-hour breakdown, which helps me plan our days out. The radar helps me know how long that rain cloud is expected to hang above our heads. (Free, available for Android and iOS)
Gate Guru
If you travel frequently for business or pleasure, it is super helpful to know the basic layout of the airport you’re about to fly in to – especially if you have a connecting flight. I like that Gate Guru stores your upcoming flight information as well as where the closest Starbucks is located! (Free, available for Android and iOS)
Tripcase
Organization is key, especially when you travel frequently. Tripcase is a great app to collect all of your itineraries, track your flights and note places of interest that you want to remember while traveling. (Free, available for Android and iOS)
Dayuse.com
Let’s say you have a long layover and instead of walking aimlessly around the airport or sitting for hours in an uncomfortable seat at the gate, you could take a nap! With Dayuse you can book a hotel for a few hours – the perfect opportunity to take a shower, grab a few Zs. Even nicer is that you can get up to 75% off a typical hotel night stay. You’ll be refreshed and ready for the next leg of your trip…love it! (Free, available for Android and iOS)
Grab
If you know you’re going to be at the airport during meal time, check out Grab. This useful app allows you to check out the menus of restaurants at the airport and even order your meal ahead of time. You can even “favorite” your favorite meals – i.e. macaroni and cheese – and find a restaurant that offers it right from this app. Grab also collects the receipts and forwards it to Concur, making it an easy way to report expenses. (Free, available for Android and iOS)
Autoslash
Autoslash isn’t an app, but a website that will help you find the best deal on your next rental car. I compare this site to RetailMeNot.com when it comes to finding coupons and discount codes but it does a lot more. Enter your rental car company membership info and allow Autoslash to track the rental rates and even rebook if the rate goes down below what you initially booked for!
Geosure
You know how you hear frequently (well at least I do) that the world isn’t the way it used to be – that cities, neighborhoods, towns used to be safer than they are today. Now you’re traveling to a new state, country, etc. and don’t know if the hotel you’re going to book is in a safe neighborhood. GeoSure does the work for you by analyzing the most recent crime statistics to score your location based on safety. (Free, available for Android and iOS)
Google Trips
Similar to Tripcase, Google Trips allows you to store your itineraries and track places of interest. It offers up suggestions of what to see and do based on your schedule. I like that it is also available offline, just in case you stumble upon a non wi-fi area (Free, available for Android and iOS)
Hotels.com
We book almost all of our hotel stays through Hotels.com, and their app makes it that much easier. I love that after 10 hotel night stays, you earn one free stay. Hotels.com also offers packages and flights, and some of the greatest hotel deals I’ve seen in a long time! (Free, available for Android and iOS)
What apps do you use to make your travel that much easier? I’d love to know!
Natalia Jones says
I love the app Tripit – puts all my itinerary together, usable offline, stores all the hotels details and allows you to share it with other so they can find and contact you if needed.
If you’re vegan the Vegan Passport is very useful. It explains what vegan is in many languages so you’re always able to eat something. Happy Cow is a great app for finding vegetarian and vegan restaurants world wide.
“Here” allows you to download countries of roadmaps so you can use them offline. Especially useful if you hire a car, but don’t have any data on your overseas sim to access maps.
Rome2Rio gives you the possible routes, transport times and approx costs for travelling between 2 locations.
Booking.com. I use for all my hotel reservations. Great app and site. Most hotels are bookable with free cancellation until a week before the date. Which allows you to easily plan and book hotels in advance and make changes.
Thanks for your list!! I’ll look into some of those. 🙂
picaram says
The only app I know is Booking or Tripadvisor. Thank you for sharing these helpful apps!
Dana says
My pleasure – I’ll check out Booking!
Devayani says
I am actually amazed with your initiatives as well as actually pleased to see this post.