17 Best Travel Apps We Can’t Live Without

Although there are many apps to choose from, the apps listed below made our top 17 because we have used many of them and feel they have proven to be very user friendly and useful in aiding us in our travels.  We hope that you can utilize some of the apps below to help save you time, money, and stress during travel planning and while exploring destinations!  Please let us know about your best travel apps in the comment section below.  Happy travels!

Trip Advisor 

This app is very versatile in that it is a catch all when it comes to travel.  It showcases a great number of reviews, photographs, and opinions from travelers who have visited various destinations.  Some of the sites covered include hotels, restaurants, national parks, theme parks, and historical locations.  Of course with any site, you have to take the reviews with a grain of salt at times, but it can be very helpful when you are on the fence about visiting a restaurant, bar, hotel, or taking an excursion.   The reviews on this app are completed across the globe and odds are someone has posted something on what you are looking for!

Skyscanner 

Similar to Hopper (mentioned below), this app searches for the best value when it comes to flights.  One difference from Hopper is that you can search for discounts on car rentals and hotels as well.  This app is like a one stop shop for most of your travel needs.   You can get alerts with this app via push notification when prices change and you can also explore the “Top Deals” from the nearest airport if you are looking to fly on the cheap.

TripIt

TripIt is a travel itinerary app where you can store all your travel plans in one handy place. TripIt works by taking all of your travel confirmation e-mails from your hotel reservation, airline, car rental, and restaurants and creates daily itineraries for you in the app. The best part is your itineraries can be accessed offline as well. I hate when I’m standing at a counter somewhere trying to search thru my e-mail looking for a confirmation number. I don’t have to do that anymore with TripIt which is by far the best travel app around for itinerary organization.

Hopper 

This app is a great tool for someone to utilize who is looking to save on flights.  We all know that flight prices can swing quite a bit for no reason, and it is one cost that can make or break a “budget friendly” trip.  You can utilize this app to search for the cheapest dates to fly or you can enable push notifications which allow you to receive notice from Hopper on when to buy your tickets.  This app uses its software to provide you with a date when the price for your airfare will likely rise so you can hopefully avoid the sting of missing out on flight savings.  Ultimately, this app will help give you insight on how good or bad the listed flight prices are.

Yelp 

This is another great app to refer to when you are doing research about an upcoming trip!  If you should know anything about us, its that we love to research places thoroughly and carefully weigh our options while we are in the planning stages.  This app was one that we used for reviewing restaurants in Iceland ahead of our trip since many of the menus were written in the Icelandic language.  Another nice feature about this app is that it has the location of the restaurant, a contact number, hours of operation, and sometimes a menu is included as well.  Bon Appetit!   

Air B&B 

This app can be used both within the United States and abroad as well.  This can be very handy for someone who is looking to stay in a home or on a property to get a more authentic and real-world experience.  It connects travelers with individuals who have apartments, rooms, trailers, boats, etc.  The app also has a feature called “Trips” which allows you to choose from experiences offered by local guides.   

Hotels.com 

With this app you can have access to thousands of hotels across the world.  One great feature of this app is its “Deals for tonight” which offers deeply discounted rates on last minute bookings.  This is a nice feature for the spontaneous traveler who isn’t afraid of making last minute plans.  Another nice feature of this app is that you can earn rewards through their program towards free nights.  You can sort hotels by star ratings, guest ratings, price, and distance from specified landmarks. 

Google Translate 

One of the best travel apps that I certainly can’t live without when going overseas is Google Translate. One of the biggest challenges of travelling abroad, can be understanding the language of the native residents.  Some countries are much more open to speaking or understanding the English language, while some others are not.  This app offers translation for over 100 languages and also lets you have two-way bilingual conversations.  One neat feature of this app is that you can snap a photo of a sign or menu and typically Google Translate will provide you with a translation of the photo so you can better understand what you are looking at.  This app isn’t fool proof, however it can give you an edge when you are exploring the world!

WiFi Finder

We all know the feeling of being without service and wanting to connect with friends and family or lookup something.  This can be very frustrating, and expensive if you are travelling abroad and your carrier does not include data coverage unless you are willing to pay the extra charges and fees.  Enter the Wi-Fi Finder App, a great tool that helps you find WiFi hotspots while you are offline travelling abroad.  Another nice feature is you can sort by venue (restaurant, café, coffee shop).  This is a tremendous tool and the best travel app for finding wi-fi which can save you both money and the hassle of worrying about seeing your next cell phone bill with roaming charges or extra fees.  No one wants to come back from a great trip to face an inflated cell phone bill!

Uber 

This can be very helpful for both getting from the airport to your destination or getting across a town or the countryside while travelling abroad.  Although this app is not available everywhere, it is active in over 80 countries and more than 800 cities throughout the world.  Typically, Uber is cheaper than utilizing a standard taxi, and it is a great way to meet someone who is local and hopefully knowledgeable and can provide you with some places to go or things to do while you are exploring.  One of the nicest features of Uber is that you pay your fare with a credit card and no cash is needed.  Even if you are big on walking around and exploring, it never hurts to have this app on standby in case you run into inclement weather and have a need to make it back to your hotel in a hurry! 

Cruise Ship Mate

Love to cruise? Ship Mate is the #1 app for cruisers! It gives you deck plans, reviews of the ports, meet other people who will be on your ship, and cruising photos as well. You simply enter your cruise date and the app will populate with everything you need to know about your ship, ports of all, activities, and even gives you a countdown. The app also has a budgeting feature so you can keep track of your expenses and a place to put contact information of people you have met on the cruise.

CityMaps2Go

This app is a great resource if you are going outside of the country and you won’t have cell phone service. Instead of relying on WiFi, you can download your city maps directly to your phone so you will be able to see them offline as well. The app includes 150 different countries, 60,000 destinations and 50 million places. It will also give you a list of recommended sites and attractions based on your travel style. We put CityMaps2Go to the test in Iceland and it worked great which is why its our best travel app for city maps.

Pack Point

Pack Point helps you decide what to pack depending on where you are visiting, the time of year, and what activities you plan to participate in. When we visited Iceland last year, I had no idea what to pack. We were going in June and from what I had read it could be anywhere from 30 degrees to 60 degrees – that’s quite a spread. To add to that, we were only taking carry-ons so it’s not like I could pack 10 outfits. This app was great – it even checks the weather forecast for you and tells you what you need to pack!

Trippie: The Airport App

This app provides you with all of your airport and gate information in one place. It has maps of the airports, shopping and restaurants in your terminal, and services available for over 150 airports (mostly U.S.) For me, the airport experience is the one I dread the most when traveling. It’s especially hard since we’re both gluten-free to find somewhere in the terminal we can eat at. With this app, it’s much easier to know ahead of time and be able to plan for a non-stressful airport experience.

Award Wallet

This is without a doubt the best travel app to keep up with your rewards memberships. Keeping up with hotel, airline, and credit card rewards is a daunting task. With Award Wallet, you can link all of your accounts and it will keep a running balance of all of your awards points in one place. It will keep track of your travel plans, let you know when points are getting ready to expire, and alerts you to changes in your travel itinerary.

Mobile Passport (U.S. Only)

You know those long lines in Customs after returning from an international flight? Yeah, I hate them too. With Mobile Passport you can skip the paperwork and the lines. Just answer a few easy questions on the app and head to the Mobile Passport desk. All you have to do is store your passport and personal information in the app and you’ll be good to go.

XE Currency

Currency Converter will convert currency for you, in real time, for over 180 different countries. It also has the ability to store currency information offline, just make sure you download all of your destinations before your trip. You can also set up alerts on currencies you use the most. This is definitely the best travel app we have found for currency conversion.