In our increasingly connected world, it’s easier to travel now more than ever. Gone are the days of folders with your flight and hotel confirmations printed out, organized, and color-coded. No need for paper maps, travel agents, traveler’s checks, etc. These are my favorite apps for travel (in no particular order):
Best Apps For Travel
Google Maps
Before you leave for your destination, open Google Maps and download offline maps for the regions you will be traveling to. If you’re offline, you won’t be able to use the navigation, but you will still have detailed maps with street names. On iOS 8.3 and above, GPS still functions even while in airplane mode, so you can see exactly where you are on the map. Better than having to whip out that giant paper map in the middle of Barcelona, don’t you think?
When you do have wifi or internet, the navigation works great, especially for public transportation(in most cities). Depending on the city, it will show you granular details such as what bus or train number to take, where to wait for it, what time it comes, when the next one is, and even the price.
Download: iPhone / Android (pre-installed)
Moovit
There are some cities, for some reason, where public transport directions are not available in Google Maps. This happened to me in a suburb outside of Barcelona (understandable), but also in Vienna, Austria last summer (July 2017). We took a cab from the Vienna airport just because Google Maps indicated there was no viable way there with public transportation (not without a 35-minute walk included). I had completely forgotten about Moovit, which I already had on my phone. I remembered it as soon as we walked outside of our hotel and saw a U-Bahn station (the subway system in Vienna). Why hadn’t Google Maps shown it? Once I loaded Moovit and set my location to Vienna, all of a sudden we were able to travel around the city with ease.
Note: It looks like Google Maps does show U-Bahn directions now, but I’d still keep Moovit as a backup just in case.
Google Translate
Before leaving, you can download the languages for the country you will be traveling to in advance so that it will be able to translate offline. You can simply type in words or sentences into the translator for more than 100 languages. But by far my favorite feature is the photo feature, which allows you to take a picture of a sign in a foreign language and Google Translate will translate the words shown, no typing needed. It can also translate in real time just by you holding it up and pointing it at the sign, but I find it much more reliable to snap the picture first and then highlight the text. You can also choose images from your camera roll to translate. The photo feature does require internet access and is available for 27 languages.
SpanishDict
Obviously, this only applies if you are traveling to a Spanish-speaking country, but this is a fantastic free app and works offline as well. If you are online, you can get voice pronunciation. It has regional-specific vocabulary and provides example sentences for nearly every entry. It’s not only a dictionary, but also offers translations and verb conjugations, has word games, word of the day alerts, and more. It has ads, but they are very unobtrusive. However, they can be removed for $2.99 a year.
Converter+
Great for converting ANYTHING. Currency (it will automatically update rates if connected to the internet), length, weight, temperature, you name it. It even has a tip calculator. This app is especially necessary for us Americans who have to learn how to talk Celsius and kilometers wherever we go.
Download: iPhone
Unfortunately, there is no Android version, but Unit Converter for Android looks promising (I have not tried it).
TripIt Free or Kayak Trips
There are several apps out there that allow you to simply forward your e-mail confirmations to a designated e-mail address and the app will organize them into an itinerary for you. You can normally share your trips with other people for collaboration, or for read-only access. For example, I always share my itineraries with my dear mother so she always knows where I am. I can also share an itinerary with anyone else that may need to know about a specific trip.
I currently use TripIt Free which is great for organizing itineraries, but recently heard great things about Kayak Trips, which is part of the Kayak app. Kayak Trips takes it one step further and allows notifications for things like flight delays and cancellations (TripIt allows the same, but with a Pro subscription).
Download TripIt: iPhone / Android
Download Kayak: iPhone / Android
What are your must-have apps? Let me know in the comments!
Wow thanks! I can’t wait to use tripit!