My Favorite Travel Apps for 2018

2018 BEST TRAVEL APPS

There’s literally an App for just about everything now, but for Travel I’ve found the following list to be ones I rate at the top. I've used them and have found they worked great for me but download and play with different ones. They definately made our travels easier.

Airlines Apps

Pro Tip - Always download the app for the carrier you are traveling on and make sure you enter all your contact information. Airlines will notify you of any changes, you can have your boarding pass at hand without having to print it out.

Skyscanner is one of my favorite flight finder apps. It’s an easy to use app that told me in seconds what airlines where offering the best prices. It can also be used for Hotels and Car Rentals, but I did not use it for anything but flights.

Hopper great for finding lower pricing and getting alerts if you’re not in a hurry for your tickets. Now offering some secret deals for foreign travel could make this a great travel app. Lots of followers have recommended this app on my IG.

Lounge Buddy Want to know what to do or plug in for long layovers. Lounge Buddy will help with that. Whether your flying coach or first class, this little app will help you find a place in more than 500 airports.

Recommended Budget Airline for Cheap Foreign Travel

WOW Airlines This discount airline is based in Iceland. We found incredible deals to Germany, and yes, there will be charges for seats, and luggage, but if you watch their deals paying extra for seats and luggage will still put you ahead of the competitors.

The best part of WOW Air is that they have a great App, and when our flights going and coming back were delayed coming into Iceland, all connecting flights were held. It is their policy. They follow the size rule on luggage, so don’t try to pack big and think you can carry on. Pay for all your extras ahead because if you wait for the day of, it will cost more.

Tracking Flights

Flight aware for the inner airline nerd, (me) I love the real-time tracking of airport conditions and flights and helpful if your tracking someone else’s flight.

Trip Itinerary in One Place

TripCase This is a game changing app for any traveler. It features relevant information which is sometime obscured in airline apps, flight time, type of plane indoor airport maps and airline phone number. You can save receipts or even order an Uber directly within the app. If you get just one Travel App, I would highly recommend this one.

Google Trips will turn your smartphone into an all in one travel assistant consolidating ravel itineraries and reservations from your emails into automatically sorted trips.

Customs

Mobile Passport is for incoming travel back to the United States. You can create a profile ahead of time and save. As soon as the plane hits the tarmac and service is on, pull up Mobile Passport, fill in the information and you have a 3-hour window and a special Mobile Passport line to go through customs.

We were through customs within 10 minutes.

Currently only 24 US airports are using this app, and more are being added all the time.

Language Apps

Duolingo was a great app to learn just enough German to get us by. If you know well in advance where you are traveling, you could learn quite a bit of the language for the country you are traveling to.

iTranslate is a quick fix to figure a word out if you don’t have a language book. You can type in what you want to say and put in the language you need to translate it to and in a second you have a translation.

Transportation Apps

GasBuddy You’ll be so happy to have this app when it comes time to fuel up your transportation. You’ll be able to find gas by location and price.

Maps

Google Offline Maps Our biggest issue on our trip was the lack of Wifi connections during the day. So, find a good map App to download for the country you’re in that can be used without Wifi.

Uber Getting a ride in a new city used to be a challenge but it’s so much easier now. Remember, give reviews of your driver and they will also give a review of their clients.

Transportation

Rail Planner app I downloaded and signed into for Euro passes, but since we did not travel out of Germany we didn’t use this. If you are traveling anywhere in Europe this will work great. Buy tickets in advance for lower prices.

DB Navigator in Germany was fantastic. I set up my account in advance and if you know when you’re going you can book and purchase your tickets on line. In fact, I recommend getting tickets in advance to keep your cost down. The later you book up to the day of the higher the prices will be.

iExist very simply tells you exactly what is near every highway exit from gas stations to restaurants to ATM’s

Hotels and Restaurant’s

Trip Advisor was a great help in finding the right places for us to stay. Since I used this site so much for my planning I gave reviews on every place we went during our trip in hopes that others would find my information useful. Play it forward the reviews left by others played a huge role in my decision to stay somewhere.

Airbnb can connect you with people who have rooms and can be excellent resources to what to see and do locally, tours, workshops, and excursions. Best advice is to book ahead of time and be sure to read the reviews and leave one yourself. Just remember, on Airbnb, you’ll be reviewed as a guest also.

Hotel Tonight just in case you need a place to stay on the fly, specializes in selling off same day hotel reservations, often at steep discounts. You can book in advance, but best deals are for now.

Weather

Weather Underground will give you city by city all details hourly of what you need for the day in any city. It is highly accurate, and I could dress appropriately every day, carry an umbrella if I needed it, plan for sunset photos according to the times. This is an app that I use daily but, on this trip, it was gold.

Money

Euro counter was my app for converting dollars to Euros. There are several different apps but this one worked great.

Bank of America app or your Bank app enabled me to locate ATM’s that were partners with my bank in Germany and would not charge me a withdrawal fee, so I could get money, and I was able to log into my checking account to verify the balance and I was also able to report that we would be out of the country ahead of time. Be sure to tell your bank before you leave where your going.

Encrypt.me Public Wi-Fi may be convenient for travels, but it’s also notoriously unsafe, so you’ll also want to get your hands on a tool like the Encrypt.me VPN to encrypt your data and route it through a virtual private network. The app aims to provide an added layer of security and protect you from malicious activity on open, unsecured networks. The app comes with a 14-day trial and cost $9.99 per month thought shorter week-long passes are available.

Stay Connected for Free

WhatsApp
Skype
Facetime
Google + Hangouts (and Macs)
WiFi Map

Overall Travel Planning

Not everyone wants to plan the details of their trip, but I found:

Former’s Travel also an App and their blog posts where super helpful. Use the forums to ask questions because people are super helpful, can make recommendations, advise you and help with your details.

Rick Steve’s audio Europe App has some great videos and I learned a lot from what he YouTube videos, they had a wealth of knowledge for “Do’s and Don’ts” and everything you would want to know in a country.

European Destinations -https://www.europeandestinations.com/ to plan and pay ahead

I realize this is just the tip of the Travel Apps, but these are tried and true for us and I would highly recommend them.