Guest post by Cassie Phillips
Here are 10 apps you should have when you travel:
- Kindle – It is inevitable that while you’re traveling, especially between multiple countries, that at some point you’re going to have some downtime. Be it in a hostel in the middle of nowhere, or a long flight high above the clouds, at some point, you’ll need something to keep you entertained. Kindle is a great app to have on your phone because you can store several copies of your favorite eBooks to read or listen to on the go. The app itself is free, but the books themselves are a little extra and can be purchased from Amazon.com.
- Parkhound - Parking can be tricky, even for the most skilled drivers in their own neighborhood. If you’re in a foreign place and you don’t know the road rules, it can be even worse for you to find a park. Parkhound fixes this issue by showing you parking spots in the local area and allowing you to book in for paid parking spots with ease. You won’t have to worry about driving around for ages or worry about parking limits, because if you use Parkhound, it is all planned out beforehand, and will save you lots of money compared to other paid parking spots in many capital cities worldwide.
- WiFi Map- Something that is extremely important when you’re a serious traveler is a good WiFi connection. Whether you need it to book your next flight, or to communicate with family and friends, finding somewhere that has free WiFi close to where you’re staying is a must. But, when you’re in a new city, these spots are often hard to find and sometimes the internet is hard to access. With the WiFi Map app for your phone, you can find free WiFi hotspots close by and their passwords. The best thing about this app though? You can download a map of a certain are when you have internet access and save it to use later when you aren’t connected anymore.
- Foodspotting - If you’ve ever been to a new city and ventured out for dinner one night, it can be hard to decide what it is that you want to eat. This can be even harder for those who have food allergies or are picky about what they eat because there are specific foods that they’ll want to have, and these places can be hard to find. Foodspotting is a great app that allows you to search your local area for the dishes that you want, and they provide pictures and reviews of the food so that you know exactly what you’re getting.
- Airbnb - Airbnb allows you to rent or lease accommodation in several areas across the world for differing prices. You can rent places on a short-term or longer-term basis, and the places can range from small units and townhouses to larger-scale building and houses. Sometimes this is better than a hotel because you get to immerse yourself in the local culture bit better by living as the locals do. Airbnb also offers ‘Airbnb Experiences’ now, where local hosts or experts can take you on tours of the local area and allow you to engage with the culture more than you might if you planned the trip yourself.
- PackPoint - Packing for a trip can often be tedious and exhausting. And knowing what to pack for where you’re going can often be the hardest part. PackPoint is a great app that helps you pack exactly what you need for your trip, by finding out what you’re going to be doing and where you’ll be going. You can add where you’re going and what time of year you’ll be traveling to the database, as well as activities you may partake in like swimming or hiking and they’ll tell you what to pack. The list can also be amended by you, so you can add your own suggestions if need be.
- Tripit - When you’re planning a big trip with several flights and cross-overs sometimes it can be hard to keep track of where you need to be and when. With Tripit, you can plan out an itinerary for your trip, and have all your travel details in one place. All you have to do is send the app your digital booking details like your flight confirmation or your hotel booking details and it will create an itinerary for you. It will even give you maps that correspond to your destinations, so you won’t get lost. You can also allow access to your inbox, and it will scan your emails for other details to add to the list that you may have previously missed.
- Hopper - Hopper is a great app for when you’re booking flights last minute and you want to get the cheapest price you can. The app works like Skyscanner which tries to find you the cheapest flights possible at that time, but Hopper goes a bit further than that. Hopper gives you the option to ‘buy’ which allows you to buy the tickets immediately, or to ‘wait’, and they will send you a notification if the price of your tickets drops in the allocated period of time. This way, you’ll always be able to maximize your savings on flights, and you can use the rest of your money for other parts of your trip.
- SitorSquat - How many times have you been in a foreign place, and been unable to find a public toilet? With the SitorSquat app, you’ll never find yourself in a pickle again. The app has a map with over 10,000 locations worldwide that helps you locate a public toilet close to you. But best of all, the app also gives each location a ‘Sit’ (clean) or a ‘Squat’ (not so clean) rating, which allows you to pick and choose the best bathroom closest to you. You can also add your own ratings or add your own locations to the ever-growing database to help out other travelers in similar predicaments.
- Google Translate - For all your translations while you’re traveling to another country, you can’t go past Google Translate. The app has 103 languages loaded into the database and you can type, write or record your translation. They also have a ‘conversation’ feature available now, which allows for you to translate conversations the way that people speak, which may differ slightly to the traditional translations and can pick up on some dialects. This great for when you’re out and about and need to know something urgently, rather than trying to remember the translations yourself.
