Tourism Breaking News
It’s always important to bring a few essentials while travelling but equally important are some key smartphone apps for an easier and more efficient travel experience. Here are 6 apps that cover important aspects of travel such as navigation, itinerary organisation, language translation, currency conversion, and weather forecasting.
TripIt
TripIt organizes all your travel plans in one place. Simply forward your confirmation emails for flights, hotels, rental cars, and more to TripIt, and it will create a detailed itinerary for you. It also sends you real-time alerts for flight delays, gate changes, and other important updates. It keeps you updated in real-time and offers convenient sharing and integration features. TripIt provides insights into your travel habits, including the number of miles you’ve travelled, the number of countries visited, and more. You can access your TripIt itinerary offline too.
Google Translate
Another essential app apart from Google Maps is Google Translate. It helps communicate with locals by translating text, speech, and even images. It supports over 100 languages and offers offline translation for when you don’t have internet access. Whether you need to translate signs, menus, or written instructions, you can simply type or paste the text into the app, and it will provide a translation in your desired language. It also has an instant camera translation feature such as street signs, menus, or documents.
Weather Underground
This app provides hyper-local forecasts, interactive radar maps, severe weather alerts, and crowd-sourced reports from weather enthusiasts, ensuring you’re prepared for whatever Mother Nature throws your way. The app features interactive radar maps that allow you to track weather patterns in real-time. This can be useful for monitoring approaching storms, assessing current weather conditions, and planning routes to avoid adverse weather. It also includes crowdsourced weather reports from users in the area.
Your airline app
Whichever airline you use for your next trip, it is always great to have the conjoining app downloaded a few days before your flight. Typically, they allow you to check in and have your flight details directly on your device rather than needing to print any paper copies. American Airlines and United Airlines also will enable you to watch complimentary entertainment through the app and connect to WiFi (usually for a fee).
Mobile Passport
When traveling internationally, having access to a mobile passport can save you time and stress while engaging through US Customs and Border Control. Although enrolling in the service may take a few steps, it can save time upon border re-entry. Although not active in all airports, 24 currently allow mobile entry, so it’s worth checking out if it involves your typical port of entry.
Been
After your trip, you may want to remember where and when you visited the place. Been allows you to put in when and where you travelled somewhere and puts it on both a timeline and a map, which you can export to show friends and family. This is a great place to document trips and visualise your exploration. The app also includes demographic information about every country and region globally if you are curious.
