Flightster

Top 4 Travel Apps I Could Probably Live Without, But Choose Not To

• by Srinivas Rao
• on January 3rd, 2011
• 6 Comments

Editors Note: This is a guest post by Jen Fromal, author of The Smashed Planet

I love cool travel stuff. I love cool travel stuff even more when I can access it on my iPhone. As someone who travels fairly regularly, travel apps have become an increasingly more important part of my travel routine. Apps are just a more practical way to go – less paper, less confusion, less stress. From booking the flight to finding where to eat when I reach my destination, travel apps provide real-time useful information that makes traveling easier and more organized. Below is my list of the top five travel apps I would recommend to any traveler, whether you are going on one flight or a round-the-world excursion.

1. UrbanSpoon – The mobile app for this website is well-populated and extremely user-friendly, making it my go-to app when I’m hungry and don’t know where to eat. The app allows you to search for restaurants by proximity to where you are, by friend-reviewed spots, by browsing, or (my favorite) by shaking your phone. A “slots style” design allows you to shake your phone to reveal a combination of location, type of food, and cost. Keep shaking until you hit a culinary jackpot.

UrbanSpoon has populated their database with restaurants in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia. While I’ve found this app useful in many cities, my greatest UrbanSpoon success was in my own city. On a night where I couldn’t decide where to eat, I shook my way to the Ugly Moose, a local restaurant I had never been to. It’s now one of my favorite spots to eat.

2. TripCase – TripCase is like your really organized travel buddy who reminds you about exactly where you are going and the info you need to know. When you book a flight, just enter in your confirmation number and TripCase will display your itinerary compete with airport information, travel alerts for your trip, rental car and hotel info, and maps of nearby locations. The free version of this app does all the basics, while the paid version gives you additional benefits like seat maps and text alerts.

This app is extremely useful, especially if you are traveling on more than one airline per trip. When I fly American Airlines to rack up miles, I use American’s app for travel details. If I’m flying on more than one airline, TripCase is definitely the way to go to store information. One of the best parts of this app is that it works in airplane mode on your phone, so you don’t have to wait until you land to access your itinerary.

3. FlightTrack – Maps are cool, especially ones that are zoomable and have real-time updates. FlightTrack is exactly what it sounds like, a map with a plane and two dots for your departure city and destination city. As the plane you are on jets through the sky, so does the plane on the map. With FlightTrack, you can also enter in your itinerary to get airport info like gate numbers and delays. Add the FlightBoard feature to get real-time updates of arrivals and departures for airports around the world.

For frequent fliers, the search is always on for new, sleek, informative travel tools. While there are a few great apps that can manage your itinerary, FlightTrack’s maps definitely set it apart. One of my favorite features of this app is the airplane information – I can easily look up info about the plane itself and the speed and altitude we are flying. FlightBoard makes it fun to check out your own flight on the board, or flights of friends that are traveling.

5. HomeAway – While hotels are often the most convenient type of accommodation when traveling, you certainly have other options. Recently, vacation rentals have become more popular and with the HomeAway app, it’s easy to search for your perfect rental match. HomeAway’s app gives you the same access to an extensive list of rental properties around the world that you would find on their website. Search rentals by size, property type, amenities, nearby activities, and special request (like pet-friendly).

One of the best parts of this app is the photos – you would never want to stay somewhere that you couldn’t see beforehand. The HomeAway app makes photos of the rental the most prominent part of the initial search, allowing you to scroll down for more information after seeing the photos. Once you find something you like, you can contact the owner to arrange booking the rental, email the listing to yourself or others, or share the link on Facebook or Twitter.

Jen Fromal is a writer and traveler, working on a career that allows her to do both of these things. While writing for her blog The Smashed Planet, Jen is constantly on the lookout for new and exciting opportunities in travel and business. By day, she is the content manager for an Internet advertising agency. By night, she is an idealist dreaming of ways to better herself, and better the world

Srinivas Rao

Srinivas is an avid surfer and personal development blogger at The Skool of Life. He's also the host and co-founder of BlogcastFM, a podcast for bloggers.