As the holiday season approaches, I felt I would share a compilation I’ve made from personal experience and research on sites like hellotourists.com, Skyscanner, pcmag and industry reviews for holiday apps. I hope you find this useful.
- FlightTrack
Follow the path of thousands of international flights on slick, zoomable maps, with detailed information on departure gates, delays and (heaven forbid) cancellations. Great for those anticipating the arrival of loved ones, or particularly nerdy train-spotters looking to up their game.
Available on iPhone (£2.99), iPad (£2.99), Android (£2.99) and Windows Phone (£3.99)
- WeatherPro
An intuitive app offering weather reports for well over two million geographical locations, feeding in everything from cloud formations and atmospheric pressure to wind speed and humidity, all in enough detail to leave Michael Fish clammy-palmed with excitement. It’s also accurate to the point of clairvoyance, so if you’re travelling to Berlin and it predicts rain, pack your best umbrella.
Available on iPhone (£2.49), Android (£1.99) and Windows Phone (£2.29)
- M25 Cams
Sadly, for London’s motorists, embracing the great English countryside usually involves grappling with the terrifying Tarmac gauntlet of the M25. Make life easier with this – a searchable selection of 150 live video feeds of the notoriously troublesome motorway. Certainly not the most thrilling app you’ll ever download, but you’ll feel more than slightly smug when you spot trouble in advance and shave an hour off your journey.
Available on Android (£0.99)
- Tune In
If you’re approaching middle-age, and really *must* listen to Radio 4, or any other station, when you’re on holiday, then this app is for you! It allows you to tune in to over 70,000 radio stations for free.
Available on: Android, IOS, Windows Phone
5. XE Currency
Don’t bother paying up for one of the many currency conversion apps out there in the digital hinterland – this freebie is slick, easy to use, and – best of all since it uses live currency rates – completely accurate. It’s been downloaded more than five million times to date, so don’t even think about hopping on a plane without it.
Available on iPhone (free), iPad (free), Android (free) and Windows Phone (free)
6. Sunscreen
Until the bashful lobster look finds its way into the style zeitgeist, this is a crucial piece of kit for those venturing to sunny climes. Having detected the UVI rating of your current location, this nifty little app sets a countdown timer to alert you when you’re due for your next slathering of sunblock. All you have to do is input your skin type and the SPF of your lotion, then kick back and soak up some worry-free rays.
Available on iPhone (free)
- Tipulator
Leave 10% on the table after a meal in Tokyo and your generosity will cause offence; do the same in New York and you’ll be called a skinflint. Thankfully, wherever you go, there’s this – a nifty tip calculator to help the mathematically challenged split bills and tips while neatly sidestepping social embarrassment.
Available on iPhone (£0.69)
8. Perfect World Clock
Does pretty much what it says on the tin, this one, providing easy access to the time in hundreds of cities and therefore averting arithmetic-induced stress your jetlagged brain could really do without. Nothing revolutionary, but still an essential download, especially considering the rather nifty option of adding several clocks as home-screen widgets.
Available on Android (free)
- TravelSafe Pro
A potentially life-saving database of emergency service numbers for just about every country you’d ever care to visit, plus plenty for those that you wouldn’t. There are also embassy details should passports go missing and – for the truly paranoid – the option to pin certain services to your home screen as widgets, for one-touch access to police, ambulances and fire engines.
Available on Android (£0.99)
- Expedia
Expedia has been long known as a travel search, information, and booking website, but its mobile apps have some unique deals. Using the Expedia iPhone app or Expedia Android app, for example, you’re likely to uncover a few mobile-exclusive discounts on last-minute hotel bookings, in addition to having at your fingertips all the usual flight and hotel search functionality. I also like that you can sort reviews by “recent,” “favourable,” and “critical” to see if people tend to have consistent feedback or whether the cranky pants guests had too-high expectations.
Available on: Android, iOS, Windows 8 and RT, Web
- Packing Pro
Packing Pro is a mobile app made for super list makers. It helps you remember what to pack and can also serve as evidence of what you packed if your luggage were ever lost. You work from one of many sample lists of items to pack, or you can create your own and tick off items as they go into your luggage. It has a handful of other reminders, too, like booking reservations and watering the plants before you leave home, which you can save into checklists to guide your harried soul while you’re running around your apartment like a chicken with its head cut off worried that you’ll miss your flight if you dally a moment longer. The $3 app may seem like overkill to those who have packed down to a science already, but it can be an excellent tool for parents who are packing for multiple family members before leaving on vacation.
Available on: iOS
- Viator
Looking to save some money but still do some interesting site-seeing? Viator (free) shows you deals and discounts either nearby or in the place you’re going to visit next—provided that location is in Viator’s list of potential cities, regions, and countries. It’s great for ideas of what to see and do, especially when you’re feeling clueless, although the quantity and quality of the deals vary dramatically by place.
Available on: Android, iOS
13. Trip Advisor Offline City Guides
TripAdvisor Offline City Guides pairs maps and suggestions for where to visit, shop, and eat together. You can download offline maps for your cities of choice, too. The app does not automatically install the maps locally (to save space on your iPhone), so just remember to download what you need before you leave an area with a Wi-Fi connection.
Available on: iOS only
- City Guides, Offline Maps
CityGuides, Offline Maps—that’s the app’s full name, but it’s easier to remember as Stay.com’s mobile app. Stay.com lets you explore new travel destinations and cobble together a loose itinerary for what you might want to see, do, and eat when you arrive. Thus, the iPhone app largely does the same, while saving much of it for you to use offline. You can plan new trips from the app, as well as import itineraries you’ve designed on the website. The offline functionality, including maps, make Stay.com’s app a superb resource for international travellers. See PCMag’s full review of Stay.com’s City Guides app.
Available on: Android, IOS
- Around Me
Allows users to find nearby points of interest such as restaurants, hotels, theatres, parking and hospitals. For me, it’s the best app of its kind.
Available on Android, IoS and Windows Phone
- Air BnB
Allows users to find nearby points of interest such as restaurants, hotels, theatres, parking and hospitals. For me, it’s the best app of its kind.
Available in Android, IoS
17. Evernote
As soon as you’ve booked your trip, you need one place to store all those email confirmations, reviews, packing lists and recommendations from friends. Evernote syncs with ease between devices that might get damaged in transit and you can then use it at your destination to upload photos to remind yourself of exactly how you spent all that extra time you used to spend juggling pieces of paper.
Available on Android and IOS
- Trip Advisor
Easy to use, the guest reviews are helpful, it’s informative for a first-timer to make travel plans, and it has great content.
Available in Android, IOS and Windows Phone
I will like to get feedback on your experience with some of these apps. Contact me via [email protected] or +44 203 097 1718
Published on 2014-07-11 12:44
