Tourism and Technology are becoming more and more connected and when travelling, having everything we need on our smartphone makes it just easier. This is why paper maps and travel guide books tent to be replaced by apps.
Planning a journey by yourself takes time and patience, especially because all the different steps need to be taken into consideration: choosing the right period, the best means of transport, understanding how to move into the city once arrived, how to reach another place, what to visit etc
Here you can find nine travel apps that will help you planning your next journey or be extremely helpful once abroad!
1 - Maps.Me
Maps.Me is a navigation app perfect for road trips, especially when you don't have internet connection. You can download in advance your distances from one place to the other and the app will keep the journey saved without requiring any data. It's also possible to download a city or a country map so that you'll be able to see all the roads on your smartphone without getting lost!
2 - Spotty
If you like to visualise a place or a tourist attraction before going there, this is the right app for you. Spotty is a tour guide based on pictures that gives you a lot of ideas of the best spots depending on the city you would like to visit. It's based on different categories like Food, Things to Do, Nightlife, Café and Shopping and provides you with interesting suggestions. People can upload their own picture that will be featured on the city's page, it's basically the photo version of TripAdvisor!
3 - Eik
You're about to leave for a country with a different currency and you have to struggle all the time to calculate the conversion? Eik can do it for you, it's quick and easy! You just have to choose the currencies to convert and the app will automatically display two different columns from 1 to 10 comparing them.
4 - Hopper
Hopper is definitely one of my favorite travel apps! Depending on the destination you have in your mind, this app will give you the best period to book a flight to go there and the different price ranges. Not only, you can decide to set the option 'Watch' to get notifications every time the price drops or increases. The same principle is used for hotels: by selecting a city, you can explore the different accommodation available and receive notification to know then the prices change.
5 -Tricount
Tricount is the right app to use when you're planning an escape with a group friends. Who's gonna pay for the hotel reservation? How much do I owe to the person who took care of buying food and beverages before leaving? With Tricount it's possible to create a group with all the participants and adding the different expenditures of each of them. In this way the app divides them all and assigns to every person another one to pay or to receive money from. Thanks to Tricount the total expenditure is balanced equally and there are no money issues at all!
6 - Skyscanner
Skyscanner is my secret to book flight tickets.
Every time I'm looking for a new destination, I first go on Skyscanner and try to play with the dates and the airports in order to check the price changes. I normally try to select bigger airports because flight fares are usually cheaper and then I select the entire month to see the cheaper dates to book my tickets.
According to several studies, Tuesday seems to be the cheapest day to book a flight, but there are different theories and with the Yield Management it's extremely difficult to predict the exact price. In fact, if you ask the other people on your plane how much they paid for their ticket, they will all tell you a different amount!
Skyscanner also creates alerts for you sending you an email every time the price for the selected flight is increasing or decreasing.
Anyway, I personally use it just to collect all the necessary informations and once I have the details as date, hours and air company, I book my tickets directly on the airline website. The price may be slightly different, but at least in case of cancellation or delay, you'll have immediate and trustful assistance.
7 - ViaMichelin
Via Michelin can help you calculating the cost of a drive from one destination to another including fuels and highways fees. It's useful for shared journeys to compare the costs and choose the car or a cheaper means of transport.
8 - Polarstep
Polarstep is the REVOLUTION. I've discovered it recently thanks to a girl who is currently in Australia and I felt in love with it immediately! This app allows you to visualise your road trip on a map by highlighting all the different stops and sharing pictures live so that the your family of friends can follow you and your adventures while travelling.
9 - Mapstr
<<While I was in Rome, I've eaten an amazing Cacio & Pepe pasta in a nice traditional restaurant, but I can't remember the name now...>>.
It can happen to everybody to forget the names of the places where we've been if we don't note them down! Mapstr is an interactive map where you can pin the restaurants, bars and hotels in the world where you've been so that you can always keep track of them. You can also share your personal map with your friends so that if they're planning to go to a destination where you've been already, they can benefit from your suggestion on spot!
Don't forget to download them for your next trip and always remember that