Apps for travel
There is an app for everything. Start with packing your bag – no panicked phone calls to mom anymore – to sharing videos of your trip online – has any Millennial around the world pasted photographs in a bound photo album? Apps have made the traveller master of travel plans, placing so much power in your hands in the form of that smartphone. Consider this: with numerous apps for booking flights, hotels, cabs, experiences, payments, budget management, planning your itinerary, currency conversion, language translation and even one that helps you make up your mind about which destination you should zero in on, all you actually need is your smartphone. Empowered, the traveller of today dictates every stage of the travel cycle.
Read more: The Skyscanner 3-in-1 app: Making travel life easy
Geek speak
With multiple user friendly tools jostling for your attention all in one app, no wonder that Skyscanner shows up on most geek radars. Digital Trends emphasises that the world can be your oyster, as long as you download the Skyscanner app. “Flights, hotels, rental cars – Skyscanner has got you covered. The app searches for the most affordable and best options via its travel partners.” Geeky Explorer lists Skyscanner in its list of best apps to find cheap flights on your phone. “Since it’s free I would say this is an amazing life-saver app and a must-have for any traveller looking for cheap flights.” Tom’s Guide calls the Skyscanner app “the perfect tool for travellers looking for the perfect deal on domestic and international flights.” The Cheat Sheet review highlights the app’s “easy flight search functionality, with a color-coded calendar and chart view.”
Top apps for travel
1. Cheap destinations
Bitten by the travel bug but not sure where you are headed? Let this mind reading tool decide for you. Skyscanner’s Everywhere Search is one such tool that gives you a list of multiple cheap destinations from your departure airport. If you are operating on a budget and have dates in mind, try out their Map Tool, a visual guide to every flight from your city along with its cost. Destination dilemmas have never been so interesting!
Read more: How to plan the perfect budget friendly vacation
2. Cheap days to travel
It’s always someone else who bags that cheap flight – not anymore, not once you know how to browse Skyscanner’s Cheapest Month and Whole Month view. These tools work well for when you have flexible travel dates. With the Cheapest Month tool, you can zero in on the cheapest month of the year to travel in; narrow it down further to the cheapest dates during a given month with the Whole Month view. Doesn’t get more budget friendly than this.
Read more: Skyscanner tools and tips: Browse prices for flights across the entire month
3. Book when its cheap
When you are looking for cheaper than cheap, there is Skyscanner’s Price Alerts you can subscribe to, for free. This tool keeps you on top of modifications in the flight you are tracking by sending you a notification as soon as there is a change in the price.
Read more: Price Alert Tool: Get flight rate alerts as and when flight charges drop!
4. Book your stay
After you book your flights, the next bookings that should be done pronto are hotel rooms for your stay. This can be quite a drag, especially if you have more than one destination to go to. Try Skyscanner’s hotel booking page where all you need to enter is your destination, your check-in and check-out dates, the number of guests, and the number of rooms required. Voila! You have in front of you a list of hotel options that can be custom sorted by popularity, price, guest reviews, rating, and by the distance to the city centre.
5. Zip up
Calling mom before you zip up the suitcase? Not if you’ve got PackPoint on your phone. This cool app draws up your packing checklist after considering the weather forecast for your chosen destination during the dates that you will be visiting. It also narrows down its list according to the purpose of your visit – be it business or leisure, PackPoint will make sure that you throw in that tuxedo for the formal dinner or your two piece for sunny days sprawled on the beach.
6. Plan your itinerary
Not everyone is a happy-go-lucky traveller. For the more organised ones among us, there is Google Trips that extracts travel details like reservations and bookings from your email and sets them up in a comprehensive itinerary. Trips takes care of hotel reservations, flight bookings and car rentals. Digging into Google’s vast reservoir of information, Trips also gives suggestions of things to do and places to eat at so that you can fill in all missing spots in your itinerary. This data can be stored off line too for access anytime and anywhere. Say goodbye to shuffling through countless emails and printouts.
Read more: Best places in the world to visit in 2018
7. Go about town
Let Citymapper help you find and make use of public transportation in a new city. Get connected with ride-sharing services, identify the fastest way to reach your destination, and check out subway and train timings for a large number of cities. If you subscribe to certain train or bus lines, the app will alert you when and where you need to hop off. Quite handy, we say.
8. Dinner’s ready!
No trip is complete without a taste of local grub. And you might as well dig into some at the best places, right? Get onto Yelp, a review fuelled app that filters the best restaurants and bars around the world. Once you’ve identified the watering hole of your choice, Yelp will also hook you up with phone numbers, addresses, hours of operation, and in some cases, even the menu.
9. Find your way around
Find your way around a new place with one of the best navigation apps in the world – Google Maps. Google Maps is not only your guide to local public transportation options, it also lets you know operating hours of museums and restaurants. In a recent addition, Google Maps shows you how busy a place is in real time.
10. Money matters
Exchange rates muddling up your shopping spree? Download XE Currency, an easy to use currency converter which operates on live rates. A great feature is its ability to store the most recent rates so that you are not at sea when offline.
Business trips are made simple with Expensify – this app lets you create a report in which you can add receipts manually or scan them after which the app fills in details. All that is left for you to do is email the report at the end of the trip. All expenses, complete with the individual breakdown, will be detailed in your report.
11. Know which side you’re facing
On a multi-city Europe tour? You’re juggling languages and customs already, so let Circa help you keep track of time. Literally. This convenient time-zone tracker is ideal for when you are travelling multiple countries during a short period of time. Once you add your home time, Circa shows you time overlaps during which both countries will be up and about.
12. An app for nature’s call
When you’ve got to go on the move, SitOrSquat zeroes in on restroom options for you. With data for more than 100,000 public restrooms under its belt, it identifies the nearest one to your location. Rating based, the ones that come with a ‘Sit’ rating are clean; there are even details about if they are free of charge and whether equipped with a changing table.
Be the master of your own plans, download the Skyscanner app now.
Cheap Flight Ticket Hacking Tools
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