Planning a trip soon? Here’s the essential apps you need to stay organised.
Planning a trip away can be confusing, disorganised and expensive, so it’s important to keep track of all your travel info to make sure you don’t end up lost or paying unnecessary extra fees. These travel apps can help make your next trip fun, cheap and stress-free.
SkyScanner
A lot of your holiday planning will be simply about finding the cheapest and most convenient flights. Thankfully, there are a multitude of flight search apps to help you find the right flights, including SkyScanner’s mobile app. This app has a fantastic search interface for finding the cheapest flights. You can look for a flight on certain dates to anywhere in the world based on where it might be inexpensive to flight during that time. So if you’re on a budget and you’re wondering where to go next, just ask SkyScanner. The app also has an interactive graph to find the cheapest surrounding dates to travel which is super handy for those who are a bit more flexible.
Available for: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone.
TripIt
With TripIt, you can access your travel itinerary and all your trip information in one place. All you have to do is handle the bookings and forward the info to your TripIt account which transforms all the relevant travel information into one day-by-day master itinerary. You can then access that information at any time without the need for Wi-Fi or data, via the mobile app or a web browser. This is a highly useful app for the frequent traveller or if you’ve got a lot of flights and hotels to keep track of!
Available for: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Firefox.Airbnb
With Airbnb you can discover thousands of places to stay in over 34,000 cities around the world. With all kinds of accommodation on offer, from single-rooms to penthouse apartments, Airbnb is super useful for finding affordable last minute bookings as well as long-term sublets. Airbnb gives you a unique experience of a city and you’ll find it might be very different to a hotel or hostel. You can message the hosts of the accommodation directly to find out all the info you need about check-in and house rules.
Available for: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone.XE Currency Converter
The XE Currency App is a currency converter app for Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Windows. The app allows you to convert currency on-the-go and keep track of live exchange rates and historical charts. The app frequently updates the exchange rates so even if you’re stuck out in the middle of nowhere and don’t have any Wi-Fi, you can still convert to the most recent rate. With over 25 million downloads, XE Currency is the most downloaded foreign exchange app and was even featured on Apple’s app of the week! And of course, if you want to get rid of the third-party ads and store double the amount of currencies in your app, you can upgrade to the PRO version for $1.99.
Available for: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone.Gogobot
Gogobot is a social travel app that helps you find places to stay, places to eat and things to do. I know what you’re thinking – there are hundreds of these types of apps, and you are totally right – but Gogobot stands out because it’s reliable. This is because of the size of the active Gogobot community that upload millions of photos, ratings and information for different places around the world. Much like TripAdvisor, Gogobot can help you book hotels, find great restaurants and attractions with the help of thousands of reviews and ratings. You can also explore different tags in each city to find the places you want to go that suit your interests, whether it be foodie culture, music, bars or nightclubs. The sheer number of user photos also helps you get a better understanding of what each place is actually like before you go there. Best of all, Gogobot is completely free to download.
Available for: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Firefox.Don’t forget to check out OrbitRemit’s money transfer app if you have a bank account in a country you are visiting. OrbitRemit makes it easy to send money to accounts in other countries and it costs less than other methods!