WiFi Finder
Using free WiFi saves us so much money while we travel, so we love this App. We also love café’s and restaurant with free Wifi, and we’re happy to buy a cup of coffee for the privilege.
Google Trips
Wow! Amazing! Love this app, it’s like magic. Google Trips will download all of your travel bookings (accommodation, restaurants, activities) directly from your email. It then offers Things To Do near your accommodation, with ratings and opening hours, and Food & Drink suggestions. Use a gmail account, or forward all your bookings to your gmail account for this to work.
I Know The Pilot
We love this App for it’s cheap flight and holiday package deals. We’re pretty open to new places to explore, so this one is a big bonus for us, saving us time searching for deals as it does the searching for us! Mark gets excited when he hears a new deal notification on his phone.
Booking.com
This has been one of our go-to apps for travel accommodation for a long time now. It gathers well over a million properties on one site, and often has excellent deals. One of its’ best features, is the ability to ‘book now’ and pay at the time of stay – often with free cancellation. This means that we can bag a deal that looks good, but still have time to research a lot more in case we find something better. We’ve even cancelled a booking.com reservation and re-booked the same room when we’ve seen the prices drop. After you’ve booked a few times, you get 10% “.genius” discounts.
TripAdvisor
An oldie but still a goodie. We use this to check out traveller reviews, although we do try to work out if the reviewer is after the same experience as us, or has a different expectation, as that makes a big difference in how they have reviewed their holiday accommodation, activity or dining experience. We love checking out some of the photos too.
Google Translate
We use this for reading signs, menus, and instructions mostly. You can hold your phone camera up to read something in another language and it will translate it to English. Can be helpful.
Uber
What’s not to love about UBER. This is so easy when we’re travelling both within Australia and overseas – we don’t have to try to find the local taxi service, as long as UBER is in the area. We’ve always found them to be fast, efficient and very friendly. Not only that – they’re a good price, and you don’t have to worry about getting your credit card skimmed as you’re charged directly by UBER. Available in 81 countries so far.
AirBNB
There are amazing places to stay in the world that are not hotels, motels, resorts, hostels or backpackers. This app allows you to find rental accommodation almost anywhere in the world, from super cheap rooms in a shared house to super superb luxury pads. In Amsterdam you’ll find canal boats you can sleep on, in Florence , a 1 bedroom apartment in a residential area so you can truly feel like you’re a local for a moment in time. Check out this site for some pretty quirky places: http://www.refinery29.com/crazy-airbnb-rentals
Flightradar24
Want to track an incoming or outgoing friend’s flight? Download this one, it’s pretty fun to check where they’re at and see if they’re delayed, sitting on the tarmac, when they should be in the air. It’s so interesting to see just how many planes are flying at the same time.
Skyscanner
We search hotels, flights and car rentals on this app. You can also set up a travel alert. So when prices come down, you get notified via the app! The more we save, the more we travel.
Luxury Escapes
When we want a luxury holiday, but don’t want to pay the luxury price tag, we look to this app. Super cool to be alerted to 61%-off deals at some of the top resorts in the world.
Toilet Finder
There’s always the good old fashioned, “can I please use your toilet”, which we certainly still use regularly, but if you have a good travel data plan or are using free wi-fi, this app is worth having.
Facebook Messenger
Perfect for keeping in contact with our friends and family while away, and easy to have group conversations when needed. We use this for the free texts and phone calls while in wifi where possible. If not, you will be using your data allowance and it could start costing if you go over that allocation.
Just like Facebook Messenger, however all you need is the person’s phone number, so it’s a good add-on to Facebook Messenger. We’ve used this quite a lot when communicating with AirBNB hosts. Again, use when you’re connected to wifi if you want to avoid data charges.
Period Tracker Lite
OK, so this one sounds like it’s just for Kirsten, but Mark gets a lot out of it too! By easily being alerted to when your period is coming, you can plan around it, or plan for it. Travel requires us to be with each other 24/7 a lot of the time, so something as mood-changing as a period is going change the travel vibe. It’s good to be aware of this. Also, planning ahead for the right pads, tampons, or the gaining-in-popularity ‘menstrual cup’, is important. Some countries don’t sell tampons so if that’s what you use – make sure you carry supplies.
Interesting list of apps. I use a few of the same and a few different.
It’s funny about a find a toilet app. I left home without it but very soon added one lol.