Quenching wanderlust is a simple task for globetrotters, thanks to the slew of best travel apps. With these tools, researching new destinations, checking reviews, and comparing prices on the fly are easier (and more popular) than ever before. According to Statista, an online statistics portal, consumers’ time on travel apps grew by 89 percent in 2014. However, more time is only beneficial when using the right apps.
To refresh your travel app arsenal, we scoured the web to find cult favorites and new apps worth downloading. The following best travel apps will help fuel your travel inspiration, track down deals, plan an itinerary, and pack what you need for a worry-free trip.
Hitlist
Price: Free
For: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Complete your travel bucket list with flight deals on dream destinations, courtesy of Hitlist. The app notifies you when there’s a deal on any of your selected destinations. And the “Explore” section features curated lists, such as “Top couchsurfing cities,” “Best cities for vegans,” and “Whale-watching destinations,” that users can thumb through to find new destinations to add to their hitlists.
In the “Trips” section, you can also browse suggested trips, such as Labor Day deals and Caribbean getaways, or find flights with no destination or dates in mind. The one drawback is that the app could be clearer when it comes to purchasing a flight: Skyscanner opens within the app and then directs you to the airline or an online travel agency (like Expedia) when it’s time to book.
Tripomatic
Price: Free
For: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Tablet, Android, BlackBerry
Need help creating a detailed travel itinerary, complete with travel time and weather forecasts? You should download Tripomatic. This app features attractions, tours, day trips, hotels, car hires, and more. Attraction descriptions include:
- A brief overview.
- The amount of time needed for each activity.
- A list of related tours.
- A feature that allows you to request a ride through the Uber or Lyft apps.
You can create an itinerary for multiple days and see the total time you’ll need to set aside for select attractions.
All the attractions are mapped, so it’s easy to plan according to distance, and the estimated travel time between each attraction is provided within the itinerary. If the weather takes a turn for the worse, editing your itinerary is simple — you can drag and drop icons representing each attraction. Although Tripomatic is useful for mapping out your days in a destination, you can’t book hotels and tours within the app. Instead, you’ll be directed to Booking.com for hotels and Viator for tours. Other drawbacks include limited information on certain destinations and the steep price tag ($18.99) for offline maps.
MAPS.ME
Price: Free
For: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android
MAPS.ME is an easy tool for navigating offline. Users can download maps of countries around the globe and use the app to search for nearby restaurants, hotels, sights, Wi-Fi, gas, parking, shops, and more. Once you select a category, you can search on your downloaded map. Green dots marking the different locations will appear, and you can navigate to your selected destination, much like Google Maps. Before a trip, you can drop pins on places you plan to visit and easily locate them on the map later. MAPS.ME solves the problem of looking up directions with no Wi-Fi connection.
Foursquare
Price: Free
For: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android
Find nearby restaurants, museums, parks, shops, and more on the go with Foursquare. Unlike Yelp, Foursquare provides personalized recommendations and short, character-limited reviews. Users can indicate their personal tastes by adding tags such as “Margherita pizza,” “live DJ,” and “friendly quick service.” The app uses this information, along with previously visited businesses, to generate suggestions.
Aside from standard categories, such as shopping and dessert, you can also search “Trending this Month,” “Nearest,” “Specials,” and “Top Picks.” Pay attention to the “Specials” category, which generates a list of nearby places offering deals. To narrow your search, adjust any of the filter options, including those recommended by people you follow and happy hours.
PackPoint Premium
Price: $2.99
For: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android
Make sure to remember an essential at home to save a well-deserved vacation. PackPoint Premium creates a comprehensive packing list based on your destination, travel dates, weather, planned activities, and more. When it generates the approximate number of clothing pieces you should pack, the app even determines whether you’re willing to repeat wearing basics and if you’ll have access to laundry facilities. You can also view your packing list online with a shareable website link.
You can download the app for free or, for a few more bucks, upgrade to its premium version, which includes TripIt and Evernote integration, as well as custom packing templates. With TripIt, PackPoint automatically creates packing lists for your saved trips, and Evernote allows you to access your lists across all devices.
Hopper
Price: Free
For: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
In the realm of airfare predictors, Hopper is a difficult app to beat, with the company boasting it can save users up to 40 percent on flights. After putting your destination in the app, it generates color-coded calendars that indicate when it’s cheapest to fly from your home airport. Once you select your departure and return date, the app informs you of the best deal available and advises you on booking or waiting.
You can also set notifications on specific trips to find out when prices change. The price prediction gives you a timeline for the projected rise and fall of prices, including the estimated price increase after a specific date. Hopper even features a tips section that provides information on the cheapest travel dates and the most affordable arrival and departure airports. Considering all the great features it offers, mobile app development companies often seek to hire a mobile app developer that could execute such applications for their clients.
House Sitting
House Sitting is a wonderful, unknown, and unique way to travel the world. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, when you babysit, you babysit kids. You can also do pet sitting which is watching someone else’s pets while they are out of town, and house sitting and you watch someone’s house! It is a great way to get free accommodation in the location of the hosts and has a unique (and cheap) travel experience.
This is one of those great options for all budget travelers who are always looking for ways to save costs while on the road. Having the app makes it easier to manage your stays/schedule, find new opportunities to housesit in other locations, and communicate smoothly and quickly with the house owners.
Couch surfing
Couch surfing is an amazing app that connects you to locals or expats in the country you are visiting and to other travelers in the same location. You create an account and profile first, which resembles a dating app look, and upload pictures and a biography about yourself. This helps people get to know you better and reach out to you if they feel like they have something in common with you or want to meet someone new. This is one of the best and most used apps while traveling. This app is used hugely as a cultural exchange and language exchange that helps you experience a country more like a local than a tourist.
Couch Surfing used to be completely free to use, but unfortunately, due to Covid 19, you now have to pay to sign up, but you will be okay with it. When looking for accommodation, you enter the city you want to go to, browse the available hosts who are actively taking in travelers, send them a personable and detailed message about yourself and your travel plans, and wait to get accepted. Couch Surfing truly is the best way to experience a country like a “local” rather than a “tourist” and can provide you with many connections and friendships worldwide. Whether you are using this app for accommodation, events, or to make friends, couch surfing is truly a unique platform that will make you never want to be a mainstream tourist ever again. As the famous quote once said, “Strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet.”
Free on iOS and Android
This one really is essential for a lot of international trips. Did you ever travel abroad and have to buy a new SIM card to poke into your cell phone with a paperclip so you could text without blowing your beer money on that most boring of all expenses: data? I did. It was horrible. WhatsApp, however, is okay because, in addition to being way less of a hassle, WhatsApp has the advantage of using hardly any data. This messaging app can replace whatever text app your phone comes with during your trip at no extra cost—at least whenever you have WiFi. Just ask anyone you need to communicate with to download it, too, and you’re good to go. Keep in mind that while you can send pictures and videos, they’ll eat through data a bit faster.
Conclusion
This concludes the exhaustive list of travel apps that travelers often find either useful, fun, or highly needed during traveling around the world or just for living as an expat abroad. Thankfully, anyone with a smartphone now has access to countless apps that happily take on the hassle that comes with planning a killer trip. However, behind such exciting apps is the effort of not just one mobile app development company but many.
Guest article written by: My name is Luna Blaise, I have a degree related to digital marketing, I am passionate about developing, and I work as a content writer for Binate Digital, a leading worldwide provider of IT outsourcing. They provide a wide range of services, including DevOps outsourcing, offshore SEO services, and offshore iOS app development.