Technology has been of great help when making travel arrangements and mobile applications are not the exception. In the past 5 years people have created hundreds of apps to make our trips much easier, interesting and fun. We offer you here 20 we like the most:
1. Where do you want to go? If you need to find the nearest bar, supermarket, pharmacy, taxi or historic landmarks, wheretogo or AroundMe are the applications you need. Regarding wheretogo, this application features over 500 types of locations and provides directions to get there. It is fully customizable with a very simple interface, and if you don’t know where to go you can use the Shake-to-function that will give you suggestions that you can explore.
2. Restaurants and Bars: Urbanspoon explores your location and helps you find the nearest restaurants, bars and much more. You can search by type, price and features. Good for anyone wanting to try something new and explore the area. Urbanspoon is great for London but contains data on other cities.
3. Toilet Finder: This app called SitOrSquat lets you access and record information related to the state of the toilets wherever you go. All content is added by users, and the database now has more than 100,000 toilets. Featuring a map with the results of an interactive, reviewed toilets for the rating of "Sit" (when you enjoyed the toilets) or "Squat" (when it could be better or a lot better). So next time you are traveling and need a toilet ask yourself what you prefer Sit or Squat?
4. Notepad: AwesomeNote is able to take unlimited notes, keep diaries, recall information, create to-do lists, list expenses when travelling, and supports calendar integrated graphics. This application is helpful to take note of travel recommendations during your trip, record information about points of interest or simply to help you remember and schedule tasks that you must complete when returning from your trip.
5. Travel Vaccines: HEALIX is a great application that shows you the different vaccines that need in order to travel to any country around the world. Plus it informs you the risks of the vaccines and provides health tips and information related to possible infections or diseases at the destination.
6. Flight information: GateGuru to receive real time information on flight status (including mobile notifications), see your electronic tickets, flight schedules, see changes at the last minute and information on security checks at the airport, see the list of restaurants and shops at airports and suggestions on what to do at different terminals and airport facilities.
7. Booking and flights purchases: Skyscanner allows you to view, select and purchase a flight from anywhere, at any time and destination. Provides all necessary flight information, airlines choices and prices, and offers several ways to book.
8. Book flights, hotels and others: Kayak is an application that helps you to find and book flights, hotels, car rentals and more. In addition you will be able to compare prices among several aggregators like Orbitz, Expedia and Priceline, comparing hundreds of travel packages with a single search. Kayak is also useful for tracking flights and for itinerary management.
9. Search for hotels: Hipmunk allows you to search for flights and hotels - analysing the factor of "agony" or discomfort related to aspects such as how long to wait before traveling and the number of stops you could make. The results show the hotel on the map so you can see exactly where you're staying, and also it can be converted into maps that show the best areas to stay based on unique interests like restaurants, historic landmarks, nightlife and much more.
10. Climate Information: The Weather Channel is one of the most important when you are traveling or going on excursions. It provides accurate weather information at anytime and anywhere in the world. With more than 200 meteorologists and the latest forecasting technology it provides the information needed to plan your day, week or even the next hour according to the weather.
11. Travel tips: TripAdvisor let you know what other travellers think. With TripAdvisor you can read the reviews and get real opinions of more than 50 million passengers, also you can write and publish your own comments and help your friends when they want to travel to the same destinations that you have visited, just let them know you're on tripadvisor and invite them to join it too.
12. Travel Guide: Lonely Planet Travel offers the free download and storage of Travel Guides for hundreds of countries, tourist guides, audio phrasebooks and audio walking tours that have been previously purchased. The more than 80 city guides include GPS location applications, offline maps, hundreds of places to visit and things to do, all within an easy to use application that requires no Internet connection, so it works everywhere without incurring in roaming charges!.
13. Travel expenses: Trip Boss Expense & Budget Travel Manager allows you to stick to the budget, save and control costs in more than 50 categories, with the option to show the cost of foreign currency in your local currency. It is also provided with a tip calculator and currency converter, and you can even take pictures of your receipts for your personal use.
14. Foreign Exchange: XE Currency allows you to see the different exchange rates of all currencies in the world, helping you to simultaneously monitor up to 10 currencies, set a base currency, and automatically update the rates every time you have internet access after being off line.
15. Panoramic photography: Photosynth is the application that lets you create panoramic photos and share them on Facebook, Twitter, and also publish to Bing, Bing Maps and search results from Bing. Using the latest computer vision techniques, you can make a panorama from left to right and top to bottom, allowing you to capture a "spherical" image.
16. Photography: Instagramis a high-use application now allows you to add depth to your photos and add a number of special effects like borders and filters that make each photo into a work of art. You can also upload
17. Communication – Call and Video call: Skype lets you call, video call and send instant message to anyone else on Skype for free, also you can call and text your Contacts (or any other number) at low rates. The application is free to download and works over 3G or Wi-Fi.
18. Communication - SMS: WhatsApp Messenger is basically the latest in communication app-to-app. With notifications that let you know the instant message input from friends, colleagues and family. It also allows to exchange SMS, send pictures, audio notes and video messages to WhatsApp users at no cost. WhatsApp uses any Internet connection, 3G/EDGE or Wi-Fi, and there is no cost to send WhatsApp messages internationally. In conclusion, you can chat with anyone as long as they have WhatsApp Messenger installed.
19. Translation: Google Translate app translates words and phrases between more than 60 languages. Depending on the language, it also has the ability to translate text tht has been spoken instead of typed, and can translate non-Latin languages (eg Chinese, Japanese, etc..) into Latin characters making it possible to read phonetically.
20. Navigation: TOMTOM for iPhone, offers high precision navigation and is one of the most used applications on the car, one of the big advantages is that you do not need internet connection to use it while traveling.
Wherever you want to travel analyse in advance which of these applications is worth having, some are simply the perfect travel companion!
