Travelling with apps

Vaibhav Sharma

There are two kinds of people: those who absolutely love travel and others who feel uneasy at the mere idea of a journey. Irrespective of which side of the fence you stand, there are a ton of applications that can make the entire experience seamless, enjoyable and far from an ordeal.  Here are a few personal favourites. 

1 TripIt: This handy travel organiser can scan your email for rail, flight, hotel and other bookings, import that data into itself and present all that information in a tidy manner, so you don’t have to keep scrolling though those long emails or PDFs. It can even add those details to your device’s Calendar. The result is that all your bookings are available at the tap of a button inside a single app. If you were to only install one app from this list, this should be it.

2App In The Air: This free app works like your personal flying assistant and keeps you up-to-date with your flight: real time status, airport tips and in-airport navigation maps, and a flight profile with all your flights logged. It even works offline and has options to deliver gate change and flight status updates via SMS. As it can use the data gathered by TripIt, you also get a neat list of the distance travelled, countries visited and corresponding badges, adding a fun element to the mix. There is also augmented reality support to interact with a globe that maps your flights.

3Airbnb: We are accustomed to booking hotels when travelling, but the thing with hotels is that they are usually expensive and seldom have unique characteristics that give you a flavour of the city you’re in. Airbnb changes that. It lets people rent their own rooms, flats, bunglows and apartments out and gives travellers the ability to really take in the city while living in any of those places, while also perhaps saving some money. There are some amazing places listed across the world, and you should look at them before you book yet another hotel.

4Yelp: The most frequently asked question when you’re out and about is: Where do I get the best food? Yelp helps answer that question along with a few others. It is great to find the best dishes and places to eat in a city, and also helps you track down the city’s main attractions, shopping districts and nightlife hotspots. In all these years, it has never let me have a bad meal, no matter which part of the world I am in. Another app that does similar things is Foursquare. With both of them, you cannot go wrong.

5Trip Advisor: This was one of the first websites to pioneer the idea of user-generated content, and till date it is hugely popular because their data isn’t compiled by ‘experts’, but by individuals who have actually been to the said city/hotel/attraction. Their mobile apps are a great way to get to know the city, plan outings, and see the major attractions. The best part is that each point of interest has hundreds of reviews written by fellow travellers, so you can get an idea of whether it is your kind of jaunt. 

6Splitwise: This is a Godsent if you’re travelling in a group and everyone is responsible for their own finances. So, whoever pays for the group can make an entry in the app, and the data gets pushed to everyone’s phone. It is very customisable, and works with all currencies. This is available for iOS, Andriod and third party apps for Windows phone.

7Google Trips & Translate: While Google’s Translate seems like an obvious tool to install, a neat trick is to download the local language of the country you are visiting ahead of time. This way it works offline as well, when you no longer have data. Another cool feature is the app’s ability to superimpose translated text on top of the local language if you point the camera for something, e.g. a menu card. Google also makes an app called Trips that, like TripIt, checks your email for possible travel plans and automatically gathers the travel reservations and organises them into individual trips. Each trip contains day plans, things to do, food and drink suggestions, and more. It is available for iOS and Andriod.

BONUS: Apart from these essentials listed above, other noteworthy apps are Hotel Tonight, for last minute hotel deals. Kayak for making bookings on the go; it also helps compare prices across travel sites. If you wish to log your journey, but don’t wish to check in on Facebook every time, Swarm is a fantastic tool. Over a period of time it becomes a great resource to remember the name of that amazing restaurant that you couldn’t even pronounce. A lot of entertainment apps like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hotstar allow offline downloading of movies and shows, so don’t forget to load up before that long flight.