How the mobile web has revolutionized travel
And the 6 apps that made our trip an unforgettable experience
In 2013 I travelled around Europe for 5 weeks. Last year, I travelled the world with my girlfriend for 7 months, fulfilling our wanderlust in South East Asia, more of Europe, Nepal and India. Only two years had passed between the trips but while I had a two year traveling hiatus, the mobile internet travelled on, seemingly at light speed to revolutionize the way we travel.
As I effortlessly used my smartphone to book a train from Spain to France, simultaneously reserving two bunks in a 12 bed dorm at a highly reviewed hostel, I had a flashback to sitting in a Seville hostel two years prior, frustrated. You see, I was using my iPad to book a flight out of Spain and into France when the battery died. Waiting for it to recharge, I tried booking the flight on my iPhone. No chance. Scrolling around the desktop version of the site on a mobile screen was proving futile. Every time I entered details into a form everything went everywhere and I resigned myself to sitting and waiting for my iPad to flash back to life.
What a difference two years has made. Having a responsive site is no longer an option but a necessity, the mobile-first movement making it even more so. On this trip, whether we needed to compare flights, train and bus prices, review and book hostels or find the best baklava in Instanbul, we did everything on our phones, my trusty, formerly unbookwithoutable iPad staying neglected and unneeded in my backpack.
It’s now easier to connect with people who want you to sleep at their bed and breakfasts, their own apartments and also other travellers who will be there. Ride sharing services turn the frustration of booked out flights into nothing more than a minor annoyance and while wandering around old towns without knowing where you are is a great way to spend an afternoon, offline maps ensure that you only have to get as lost as you want to.
Below are the 6 sites and apps that made our trip easier, more exciting and connected us to people we otherwise would have never met:
Being on a shoestring budget no longer means that you have to resign yourself to sleeping in squalor. Hostels all around the world are lifting their game, providing bunk beds with hotel standard mattresses, lively common areas and create an atmosphere of shared adventure among travellers. Hostelworld’s easy to use site and app are a blessing for those who would rather spend their money on experiencing the food and culture of a place than having a 5 star pillow to lay their head on. Users review hostels based on cleanliness, location, value and atmosphere amongst others so you know what to expect when you get there.
My girlfriend and I were backpacking, keen to meet lots of other travellers and not fussed about sleeping in a 14 bed dorm to get amongst it, but there does come a time on every trip where you just need to recharge your batteries in your own space. Airbnb was our go to for those times when a little privacy was welcome, but the price of an expensive European hotel was not. Whether you go for an Entire Home or a Private Room in someone’s house, Airbnb’ss user experience and interface ensure that from searching to booking, it’s all smooth sailing.
This was my favourite find of the trip. We were stuck between a €150 flight or €120 train ride between Portugal and Spain, having left it to the last minute and about to pay the very inflated price of winging it. Searching on Rome2Rio (another fave) we found a ‘Rideshare’ option with the comical sounding BlaBlaCar. Lisbon to Seville in a brand new, air conditioned sedan, sharing the ride with our Portugese driver travelling to Spain for work and an American girl backpacking Europe just like we were, the funny sounding ride share option was fun, fast and only cost us €21 each.
No destination hop was complete without first checking in with the oracle of all flight bookings, Skyscanner. Its simple interface and preferences make this a site you can’t do without on a big trip. If you’re flexible with your dates you can view all the flights for that month and really grab a bargain, choosing to fly a seldom booked weekday. Ask any traveller about a flight and they’ll be typing Skyscanner into their phone’s search bar before you’ve even finished your sentence. This is the site that made me realise how far the mobile internet has come, my frustration with booking a flight two years prior turned into one of the easiest experiences the internet has to offer.
So you’ve gone walkabout and now you need to find your way back to the hostel. You have two options, find Wifi, which is not too hard to do in European cities (McDonald’s golden arches look just like a Wi-Fi symbol to most travellers), or you can fire up your offline map app of choice and find your way to your temporary home. We used CityMaps2Go, as it was loaded up with all the major sights and attractions of each city, with details of what it costs to get into a museum, how to get there and when it’s open. It’s easy to use and my only wish was that they had more restaurant options to choose from, that would really elevate this app to a staple in every wanderluster’s pocket.
What Skyscanner is to flying, Tripadvisor is to eating. Sure, there are reviews of attractions that are very useful, but most of the time you’ll be using it to find out where to grab the best Pizza in Naples, where you can even find Pizza in Nepal and knowing which places to avoid eating at completely. Anything with more than 5 ‘terrible’ reviews in the current year constituted an avoid at all costs from us, while most of the time we read the ‘average’ reviews as they seemed to be the most balanced. Unfortunately, for all its wealth of reviews and information, this is probably the worst app and site from a usability perspective. The website can’t decide whether it wants to show you a review, or sign up to its newsletter or force you to download the app, while the app won’t show you certain reviews and wants you to sign in repeatedly. Having said that, even for all of its faults, there’s nothing out there that comes close for finding a place to eat, so here’s to hoping that they’re hard at work at improving the TripAdvisor experience!
