Five great apps for international travelers.
How to plan your travel, find your way around, and connect with friends while on the road.
My family and I have been traveling the world for almost six months now. When we first planned our year long trip, we knew we wanted to split our year three ways: four months each in Europe, Asia and South America. We knew we wanted to start in Europe and wrap around the world in an eastward fashion. And that’s about it. We didn’t buy a round the world ticket or book amazing places to stay months in advance. We booked our first four weeks of accommodation, bought one-way airfare to Paris and a Eurail pass, and figured we would plan the rest on the road.
Travel planning while on the road has been incredibly fun and rewarding for our family, but it’s also more difficult and takes more time than we had anticipated. We found we needed a different set of digital tools than the ones we were using to plan summer vacations or weekend get-aways from the comfort of our wifi-bountiful Portland home. We are on a tight budget, which requires the ability to easily compare and contrast options. And we have stayed in enough crappy places along the way to have learned how to be picky and discerning without breaking the bank.
Here are five of our most-used travel tools, in hopes it helps other international adventurers. I have omitted a few of the more obvious travel tools like Google and Google Maps, which we use religiously. (We thank our lucky, modern-day stars for Google every day.) I’ve also left out review sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp and Lonely Planet, which can be helpful in certain circumstances but are an entire category unto themselves. What you will find below are the travel tools that were either new to us, or surprising in how valuable they have become in our lives.
1. Rome2Rio
We learned about Rome2Rio from my father-in-law, Michael Campbell, who has been traveling for over three years and was a huge inspiration for our trip. Rome2Rio a transportation planning gift. It’s very simple. You plug in your starting destination and the city to which you want to travel. Rome2Rio shows all the different travel options available, with an estimated time and budget ballpark for each. With Rome2Rio we have been able to choose between travel options in a much smarter way. Sometimes we use Rome2Rio to decide whether it’s worth spending the extra money to fly because it’s faster and easier on the kids. Or sometimes we choose the cheapest option, like a bus, because the connections are seamless and it’s a direct shot. Either way, Rome2Rio is a very helpful information collation tool that works all over the world.
2. SkyScanner
SkyScanner is a global travel search service, similar to Expedia or Orbitz. I used to use Expedia at home, but I’ve found SkyScanner to be better for global travel. They are more connected to the smaller, local airlines, and they have great budget travel features. For example, you can pull up a full month view of the flight rates to see which day is cheapest for flying that route. You can also set up a price alert for a flight segment. SkyScanner is different than Expedia because it simply collates all the fares that are available, and then connects you with the local airline to make the ticket. There is no cut or service charge.
3. Airbnb
We have stayed in all kinds of different housing since we’ve been on our trip — hostels, guest houses, home stays, self-catering corporate apartments, and private homes. I am so glad we have gotten to experience them all. But when it comes down to it, we prefer to stay in a private apartment or house where we can spread out with our family and cook in a real kitchen. We use Airbnb almost exclusively for finding these houses. The Airbnb app is beautifully designed, simple to use and human. I would go so far as to call it friendly. Airbnb understands how important pictures and user reviews are to choosing a place to stay, and have made those two aspects prominent in their site experience. I love their filtering system, which allows you to customize your search by needed amenities, map location, super hosts and, of course, by budget. We use the Airbnb Picks as inspiration for where to travel, and have stayed in several of their featured houses, which were all fabulous. Airbnb’s Wish List feature makes it easy to favorite Airbnbs in a city so you can easily compare and contrast options. Paying for your accommodation is seamless on Airbnb (your credit card is stored), and they do all currency conversions behind the scenes, which means you only see prices in your currency of choice. Airbnb also translates all reviews and descriptions automatically for you. The only downside we have found is that it’s difficult to change plans when you are staying in Airbnbs, as cancellation policies are very strict. But that’s a trade off we are willing to give to get to stay in these amazing places.
4. Maps.Me
There are times when we have limited internet access while we are traveling. If we stay in a country for two weeks or more, we buy an inexpensive pre-paid SIM card for our phones. SIM cards give us internet access without having to rely on wifi, which enables us to use Google Maps to figure out how to get around a city. But there are times we we don’t buy a SIM card, and we need to figure out how to get around a city without internet access. It’s much, much harder. You can’t just look up a subway connection on the fly without wifi. Here’s why Maps.Me is such a great find. Maps.Me is an offline map service. You download the maps of the country you are in when you are somewhere with wifi. Once the maps are downloaded onto your phone, you can use them offline. There is even a directions feature which can be used offline. It’s not as seamless or beautiful as Google Maps, but it’s a great back up.
5. Skype
We don’t have an international calling plan, and thus had to figure out how to make calls without the luxury of a normal phone. In this process, we have come to really appreciate Skype. Skype gets a bad rap from some people but we have found it to be more reliable than FaceTime, and more useful than WhatsApp. WhatsApp is awesome, but a lot of Americans don’t use it which diminishes its efficacy for us. FaceTime is finicky and you have to be an iPhone user. We have found that Skype works great around the world. We have it on our phones and on our laptops. We do video calls with friends and family on Skype, but our favorite features are actually audio calling features. You can make a regular phone call to other Skype users for free and to non-Skype users for a very small fee. For example, I put $5 of calling credit on our Skype account two months ago and I still have almost $4 in credit. You can call toll free (1–800) numbers for free as well with Skype. I have found the sound quality to be great as long as your wifi is strong.
I hope these travel apps are helpful to you in your adventure planning. What are your favorite travel tools? We’d love to hear. Happy travels!
