Gone are the days when travelling meant referring to big foldable paper maps for directions, asking every second person for guidance and running all over town looking for lodgings. The modern traveler is smart and savvy, with no time to waste. So here’s a list of 5 absolutely must-have apps for anyone looking to plan an efficient trip and take home an unforgettable experience:
Trip Advisor
- Purpose: Complete destination guide
- Available on: Android, iOS
- Cost: Free
This is one of the basic apps to have on your phone if you love exploring new places. It gives all the necessary information on any destination with respect to hotels to stay, places to visit and places to eat. The app essentially relies on user feedback to give ratings to different places. The vast amount of reviews from different people all over the world quickly helps you decide whether you want to go to a particular place or not. They also have an interactive forum where one can post questions to or answer queries of fellow app users.
AirBnB
- Purpose: Find Homestays
- Available on: Android, iOS
- Cost: Free
If you want to add a little offbeat flair to your vacation stay, this is the app to go to. It is basically an online marketplace to lease or rent short term lodgings like apartment stay, hostel beds, home stays or hotel rooms. The best part of this app is that it helps one discover personalized lease offers from home owners who have an extra room at their place and can offer you the best advice on local culture and sights. And most importantly, it is usually cheaper than conventional hotels. Highly recommended for solo travelers.
Skyscanner
- Purpose: Book Flight/hotel/car hire
- Available on: Android, iOS
- Cost: Free
Skyscanner is a travel fare aggregator website best suited to book the cheap flight tickets between any destinations in the world. Millions of travelers vouch for its ability to find the cheapest flights and provide best offers apt for your travel plans. If you aren’t sure about where to go, this app also provides the top deals from the airport nearest to you.
Tripit
- Purpose: Travel Organizer
- Available on: Android, iOS
- Cost: Free
This app is like your personal assistant while travelling. It will pull together all your travel confirmations including flights, trains, taxi, hotel and events and compile it into one single travel itinerary. One just has to forward all the travel confirmations to the app and it will do the rest. This means you can travel hassle free with your personalized itinerary at your fingertips.
Splitwise
- Purpose: Expense divider
- Available on: Android, iOS
- Cost: Free
Traveling with a group always involves the hassle of proper distribution of expenses among the people. But with splitwise, this task becomes as easy as eating a pie. The app offers multiple features like distribution by parts, percentage, adjustments, equally or unequally. It calculates each person’s share as well as gives an informative summary of the total trip expenses. Last but not the least, it automatically generates the amount owed by every person to every other person and has provision to record the transaction and settle up balances. Be sure to save a lot of time and hassle with this app.
