Having said all that, however, we do acknowledge that travelling can be very stressful. But luckily, as with almost everything else these days, there are apps to help you deal with the challenges and manage your entire trip better. You’ll find them as useful and convenient as playing on the go at your favourite mobile casinos, and your trip will be so much better for them.
There are literally hundreds of apps to help you have a smoother journey, and if you’re a regular tourist or savvy app store user, you’ll soon have a rotating list of favourites that is constantly updated as new tools are released. Exploring on your own like this is highly encouraged, but we though we’d start you off with some of our favourite wheel-greasing apps for Kiwis going anywhere and everywhere. They’re all free to download in their basic versions, and are all available for both iOS and Android devices.
Planning is Smooth Sailing with Kayak
The biggest headache about travelling is all the planning that has to go into it. And today, there are so many offers that finding the ones that suit you best and save you the most money can be a full-time job. To avoid getting totally stressed out and needing a holiday from planning your holiday, allow us to recommend Kayak to you.
Kayak is among the best flight price tracker engines we’ve seen; it pools the information from a huge collection of booking sites and makes comparing the airfares easy with its clean, user-friendly interface. You can also use the app to do the same thing with hotel rooms and rental cars, which is obviously a lot handier than switching between apps to compare the costs of different things.
Added to all this is the fact that Kayak will often bring you deals that you won’t find anywhere else, and has a great feature called Price Forecast to help you decide whether to book now or hold out for the price to drop – and a way for you to set an alert for when prices hit specific levels. You can even use it as a trip planner and check important details like your airport gate number or hotel confirmation number with a single glance.
TripIt: Your Own Personal Travel Agent
Get the same individual attention that you would if you visited a travel agent, but for free! TripIt is no doubt single-handedly putting a lot of agents out of work. As soon as you’ve made your bookings, simply forward all details to the app. The magical TripIt elves will organise them all in a way that makes perfect sense.
The first thing TripIt does is to pull all your itinerary information from the messages that you’ve forwarded, and then stores them in the app. After that, you can trust TripIt to remind you where you need to be and when, right on your phone. You don’t need to keep a separate schedule or chase down the times in a whole barrage of emails; everything is kept simple.
You’ll love the basic, free TripIt app but if you’re prepared to spring AUD40 or so you can get the TripIt Pro edition. This alerts you to flight cancellations or delays, lets you know if the airline owes you money, gives constant updates on security wait times in airports and offers interactive airport maps to make getting around a breeze.
Translations You Can Trust with Google Translate
A quick dig around any app store will yield several translation tools, but Google Translate gets our vote for a number of reasons. The technology is widespread and stable, and the programme itself has been going since 2006. All this means the app works well and is very polished, supporting 103 languages in the current version.
Languages can be cached for offline use, and signs or printed words can be snapped with your phone’s camera and then put into the language of your choice. Check pronunciations by having the app speak words and phrases aloud, and see what those mysterious items on your restaurant menu really are. The Google Translate app is even able to listen to someone speaking, detect the language and translate it into your mother tongue, all within an instant! To feel comfortable and secure anywhere in the world, Translate is a must on your phone.
These apps make exploring the world that much more enjoyable, and they are just the tip of the iceberg. No matter where you go, there’s sure to be an app for whatever you need assistance with!