Traveling. It can either be an exciting experience or a nightmare waiting to happen. Luckily, awkward situations can be avoided with a little bit of pre-journey preparation. On a day to day basis, apps make my life a lot easier and the same can be said when I’m on the road. Need to book a last minute accommodation? Hotel Tonight’s got you covered. Trying to find the best sushi in town? Yelp has the answer! From booking flights to finding your way around town, here’s a list of some of my favorite travel apps that I think you should download before your next trip! Your future self will thank you for it.
1. Hopper
Before you board the plane and head off to your next adventure, Hopper is the app to download to book your flight. Not any flight but the cheapest flight. Put in your destination and your travel dates and Hopper will tell you when is the best time to make the purchase. The reason why I like it so much is that unlike other price monitoring websites, it tells you right off the bat if you should book it now or wait, in which case it will proceed to monitor the prices and send you an alert when the time has come. Make your wallet a service and use it next time you book a flight!
2. Hotel Tonight
Staying on the saving wagon, let me introduce you to Hotel Tonight. If you’re the spontaneous type and regularly don’t know where you’re going to spend the night when you travel, this one is for you. Hotel Tonight features everyday some hotels’ last available rooms at a discounted rate. Forget about paying extra for booking last minute! (Even if you’re more organized and want to book your accommodation in advance, the app still has really good deals).
3. Maps.me
Ha maps.me… If you only had to download one app, it would be maps.me. A friend of mine introduced it to me back in 2015 when I was solo traveling in Indonesia and I never stopped using it ever since. What makes maps.me special compared to other similar apps is that it works offline. You read well, you do not need an internet connection to be able to use it. All you have to do is download the map of the country you’re going to when you have wifi and then wander the streets carefree knowing that the days spending hours trying to find a museum are behind you. Pro tip: You can also pin your favorite places so that when you’re back home, you can look back to the sites you’ve been to and recreate your itinerary!
4. City Mapper
City Mapper is another app that, as it name suggests, will help you get around a city. It doesn’t work offline but is a good one if you plan on taking public transportation as it gives you live departure time and duration. If you fancy pedaling your way around town, you can also select the bike option which will give you the best biking route. Bonus: uber is integrated.
5. Uber
Talking about the devil. When traveling abroad, Uber can come in very handy if you can’t find a local taxi or are traveling in a country where services like Uber can be safer than taking a regular taxi. I’d say download it even if you don’t plan on necessarily using it, just in case you ever need a last minute ride.
6. Podcasts
I used to be skeptical about podcasts but that was before I had found the right programs for me. On an international flight or long drive, listening to music can get a little tiring after while, and that’s usually when I like to listen to a podcast. Some of my favorites include How I Built This from NPR and Kalyn’s Coffee Talk. If you want more recommendations, please let me know in the comments down below and I’ll share my playlists with you all!
7. XE Currency
Managing money in a different currency can be tricky. I remember in Bolivia, I would bust out my phone every time I wanted to buy something to do the math and convert the price in bolivianos to euros. Then I heard about XE Currency‘s app. I had been using the website to check the exchange rate for a while but the app is a game changer as it converts whatever amount of money from one currency to the other on the spot… No maths required.
8. Yelp
I will credit a friend of mine for this one too. I used to just google good restaurants around town but on my last trip to the US, a friend kept researching places on Yelp and the ratings proved to be pretty reliable. We discovered so many nice places thanks to the app that on my next spot, when another friend started googling places to eat, I opened Yelp and convinced her to use the app as well. If you can choose between the best, don’t go anywhere that has a lower rating than 4 stars.
9. Google Translate
Does it even need an explanation? Google Translate can be your bilingual friend at a restaurant when you’re trying to figure out the menu or when you’re negotiating at a local market. Avoid a lost in translation kind of situation by translating words with the app and not phrases (the translation isn’t always the most accurate… Don’t blame me!).
10. [ Insert your favorite app ]
There you have it, those are some of my all time favorite travel apps. I hope you discovered new ones and most of all, I hope that they will make your next trip better. Now I’d love to read about the apps you use the most when you travel. Please share them in the comments below and let’s keep the conversation going!
Safe travels,
Céline
I love maps.me; it saved us so much time in Iceland! One of my favorite apps is Flight View. You can track your flight and receive notifications of delays, which I often get faster than from the airline itself. It also lets you see where the plane you’re taking is originating from and whether it’s on time or delayed.
Oh, and TripIt is amazing for keeping all my travel plans organized. It will automatically import flight and hotel itineraries from gmail which makes it seamless!
Thanks for the recommendations! Last time I flew from Boston to Minneapolis, the flight was delayed and we received a notification from the airline quite late. I think I’ll give Flight View a try!
great post! Maps.me is a life saver working better than any other offline map app. my personal favourite is google maps – but not for navigating. when you looking for a place in google maps you can find “popular times” very helpful when you want to make sure you won’t wait in line for a long time.
Oh that’s good to know! I have google maps on my phone but honestly rarely use it. I didn’t know about that function though, sounds very helpful indeed! Thank you for sharing 😊
I would add 1 more apps for transport. In Europe is getting popular 1 more app. MyTaxi. Sometimes is even cheaper to use this app than Uber.
Offline maps are an absolute lifesaver!! Will definitely be trying Hotel Tonight though.. always love to save and travel! Great post 🙂
Aren’t they?! I’m sure you’ll find it useful, everybody loves a good deal! 🤗
Thanks for sharing this list of 10 travel apps. Learnt about quite a few. We use Skyscanner for checking flight prices and look up for good deals. Would love to explore Hopper the next time we book flights! Now, need to make space in the phone for these new apps to download 🙂
I’ve used skyscanner in the past too and it’s pretty good! Let me know what you think of Hopper when you give it a try ☺️
Thanks for sharing, so useful! Never tried maps.me and other people also comment that it’s good, so I’m definitely gonna check it out.
I also use apps like WIFI map or Instabridge, there people submit wifi passwords from all over the world so that others can connect to locked wifis. Also, you can download any region and all the passwords will be saved for that region, and you can connect to a wifi when you don’t have data.
Such a good concept! So particulars give their wifi password? I wonder about the networks’ security but it definitely sounds very practical. Usually I just get wifi at places like Starbucks but I’ll have try it out!
Thanks for this list of apps to check out. I had not heard of many of them! I have a horrible sense of direction so I always have Google Maps handy, but looks like I also need to check out maps.me…
You should! Just don’t forget to download the country map before you board the place 🤗
Awesome post. I love Maps.Me too.
It’s just the best, such a lifesaver when there’s no Wifi and you’re in a new city!
I am a big City Mapper fan, I also LOVE Mapstr! It is an app where you can list restaurants and bars, for a foodie like me it is great! 🙂
I just checked it out it looks great! So far I would just pin the restaurants as I would pin other places in maps.me but I’ll download it and use it only next trip. Thanks for the suggestion Claire! 🙌🏼
I’m happy to say that we have used almost all of these apps! We loved maps.me It totally saved us during our vacation in Europe when we didn’t have wifi! Thanks for sharing!
Great list! I love using Uber in foreign countries. Gives me a sense of confidence that I am not going to be dragged around for a higher fair in an area that I know nothing about. Also I love Google Translate! There is a function where you can hold your google translate up to a sign and it will try to translate it to your native language. That way I can read some historic or any signs and not end up in a ditch! (Don’t Laugh, it has happened before cause I took a wrong turn cause I didn’t read a sign properly!)
I have 4 of these app on my phone. I think after reading this, I probably download the others that I dont have to make life easier for me ! Thanks for sharing
I just love this post as I have most of these apps on my phone. You should also download TripAdvisor and Airbnb that make your stay so much simpler.
This is a collection of valuable apps any traveller should try! Thank you so much! We also use Foursquare to find the best places to eat & drink, both when we travel and in our hometown. Pinning this post for sure!
My number 10 is park4night, but that is only if you travel by van or camper van…..
Back to your list the first three are the one that I will definitely download.
Thanks for sharing it!
All of these sound useful. I think I’ll be trying out Hotel Tonight for my upcoming trip. Thank you for sharing
We’ve used a few of these (especially maps.me, it’s great) but didn’t know about quite a few. I’m downloading Hopper now, it looks awesome… thank you for the tip!
Great ideas and tips in your post! Maps.me has saved us countless times in many countries, even when the cabbies didn’t know the directions!
Great list. Am also writing on useful apps (region specific though) and I could totally relate to your article. Great work.
Hmm Hotel Tonight is the one I did not know about. Thanks, I think I will use it.
Great round up! If only I knew about some of them before our trip to Italy last month. We have been using Triplingo to translate.
Thank you! I’ve never heard of Triplingo but I’ll look into it! x