Travel Blogger Tips: 17 Must Have Travel Apps
For the modern traveller a smartphone is a must, offering access to the internet, files and applications. But if you’re about to set off on a journey of a lifetime it’s difficult to work out what travel apps you’ll actually need. To help work out the essentials, we asked the experts:
Nicole at My Itchy Feet
“My favorite travel app is, without a doubt, Free Wi Fi Finder App. This app lets you find any wifi spots in your current area and avoid roaming charges. It’s a real time saver when you need to do something online in a rush, like look for train times, airport information, public transport routes, restaurant and museum opening times, etc.”
Adam at Eating Tours London
“Because we live here in London, one of our favourite travel apps is the Street Art London app. We spend a lot of time in London’s East End on our food tour, so having access to a downloadable guide of some of London’s best street artists is really helpful. The app filters London’s street art by date and artists, or you can just use the map to see which neighbourhoods of London have the highest of density of street arts.”
Ian at Love Affair Travel
“Time Scroller – It’s great because it’s free and allows you to automatically sync up your cities time with whatever other city you want in the world. It’s incredibly beneficial for setting up Skype meetings and planning meetings with multiple people in different places.”
Jennifer at Vacation Gals
“It’s hard to narrow down my must have travel apps to just one, because I’m app-happy. On my most recent trip abroad, though, I found xe and Gate Guru invaluable. xe is a free mobile currency calculator app; those euros, pounds and pence are more meaningful once I know at a glance what they mean in terms of US dollars and cents. And Gate Guru is especially useful when traveling with wound-up, hungry children. Gate Guru tells users what shops are at what gates at almost every major airport in the world, along with flight status and other airport information.”
Corinne at Have Baby Will Travel
“Now that my kids are a bit older, I love Stack The Countries. It makes learning about the world fun (for us grown-ups too) and it helps get them excited about the places we visit (or one day hope to).”
Laurel at Monkeys & Mountains
“WhatsApp – not a travel app per say but a great way of keeping in touch with friends and family when traveling. I use it a lot to send a photo of what I’m doing to my family.”
Debbie at Delicious Baby
“I use TripDoc to keep track of everything I’m going to do on vacation. I just give TripDoc a list of the places I want to go, and it plots them all on a single map so that I can find my way around, get directions, and keep notes about what was great.? When my trip is over, I can easily send all my favorite places to a friend for their trip.”
Phil at Phil in the Blank
“In West Africa, my favorite travel app is actually one that is not travel-specific: Evernote. Evernote allows me to keep track of interesting places I’ve visited with both photos and notes and to clip webpages that make certain recommendations. What’s more, Evernote is accessible on multiple devices, including my laptop, so I can go back and review everything later. While I haven’t used it yet, I’m also excited to give Trail Wallet a try.”
Gareth at Tourist2Townie
“Travel budgeting is a very important aspect of how I can travel for a long period of time and do it like a local. I live by the Trail Wallet App to budget all of my daily, weekly and monthly expenses so I can continue traveling deeper in Latin America!”
James at Nomadic Notes
“For travel planning I use the Tripit app. I forward all of my travel confirmation emails (such as flight confirmation, hotel reservations, and train tickets) to Tripit and those plans are then placed in date order. It is a great way to keep travel plans in order, and as a long-term traveller without an office it means I don’t have to print everything out on paper.”
Johnny at One Step 4ward
“I downloaded wikitravel offline, it’s quite expensive but it’s amazing. So if you’re on your smart phone, no internet, you still have options of where to sleep, stuff to see. You can quickly check it out while you’re on transport to make sure you don’t miss anything big in the area, I love it and I don’t know anyone else who has it. This is a golden tip!”
Aaron at Happy Time Blog
“Must have travel app – MapsWithMe a fully offline map app that you can download full country maps before you leave home thus not smashing those roaming fees!”
Chris at Amateur Traveler
“For domestic car travel in the U.S. the app Best Parking can save you some money. Why park at the Pier 39 lot for $35 when you could park 2 blocks away for $10. This app helps you find those deals in major U.S. cities.”
Sherry at Meet, Plan, Go!
“One of my favorite travel apps is the AFAR travel mobile app – it’s a little travel guide and trip planner. I use it when I get to a city to get ideas of more local things to do or more unique travel experiences.? It includes highlights for Drink, Eat, Stay, and Do – so it covers lots of areas and includes maps on how to find the experiences.”
Annette at Ms Listologist
“Converter+ has been one of my most used apps while traveling out of country. It can easily convert the currency from almost any country to USD, so I know exactly how much I am paying for that special souvenir. It also can convert Celsius to Fahrenheit and kilometers to miles. Extremely helpful for the mathematically challenged folks like myself.”
Jocelyn at As We Travel
“Lingibli – Compared to so many other language courses, this app is up-to-date and innovative, both in the language with the modern phrases they use, as well as modern technology. it’s a great tool to get you out there practicing the new language and interacting with the locals.”
Matt at Travel with a Mate
“Have you ever seen trails in the sky and wondered where that plane was heading? Or how high it was? I always did and discovered an amazing app called Flight Radar 24. It displays live real-time data of all the planes in the sky right now, on zoomable maps. Not only can you track plans and watch airports for aircraft taking off and landing, you can also see their height, speed, heading, even a photo of the exact plane!? It also has an awesome augmented-reality mode so you can literally point your phone at a plane in the sky and it’ll overlay all the information. You can of course track a plane a friend might be on and know exactly when it landed or took off, so it has its uses too. I use this app almost every day as I am travel obsessed!”
So those are the best apps from those who travel the most, do you have any you think are missing from the list?