Travelling is fun. Yet it’s easy to forget all the joy when it comes to some de rigueur adventures – even at the planning stage. Luckily for us, there are plenty of digital tools to aid us on our trips. That’s why Skycop has decided to help you out recommending you the best travel apps. So here’s our list of best tourist apps to use on every step of your journey!
BUYING A TICKET
Travel isn’t cheap, especially the literal travelling part. Chances are that you will want to fly somewhere, especially if it’s an exotic location or more than two hours away by car (though American readers will probably tell you about their extreme tolerance of road travel). Luckily for us, people have made a business out of finding cheaper fares almost as long as fares existed. And to make the process even more streamlined, here are the best cheap airline fare apps.
Jack’s Flight Club App
Unlike with the Fight Club, you can talk about Jack’s Flight Club. It works in a relatively simple manner: you sign up for the service and JFC starts sending you the cheapest flights it can find. A great way to plan an impromptu vacation if nothing else.
“Constant flight deals. I need to travel to Texas from London 3-4 times a year, and this saves me the hassle of constantly checking for flight deals myself. I used to spend 20 minutes everyday trying to check for price dips. I’ve booked three trips to Dallas and saved £250-£300 on EACH in the last 6 months, not to mention time. I will also be using this for spontaneous holidays, saving god knows how much more. I never leave App Store reviews, but for this I had to.” – by Kfuruzon
Hitlist App
Hitlist is an app designated to minimize all travel-related troubles one can possibly face during the trip preparation stage. The idea here is pretty simple – you don’t have to scan all the flight search engines by yourself looking for a perfect price. Just tell the Hitlist your preferred destination and it will inform you when it’s the perfect time to book a flight tickets – as soon as the best option pops up.
The app finds seriously great fares!
“The app finds seriously great fares! And it’s probably the easiest app out there for this, everyone should use this!” – by Eldeporaqui
Tourlina App
Are you a lady? Would like to travel with other ladies (and without a man)? Tourlina is the travel organizer app for you, then. Tourlina’s marketing research shows that women like traveling with women as “having a male companion often leads to dating”, so the app helps them match before and during the travel. Looking for a female buddy to go Iceland with? Just enter your interests and travel plans, and they’ll match you with another wanderlust-stricken lady.
Absolutely the Best connection
“Great idea! there are times when it could be really difficult to have your friends organized for an adventure and it is awesome to be able to find other people out there who are eager to travel and explore.” – by Dortha Spencer
ACCOMMODATION
Unless you’re going camping, couchsurfing or doing some sort of “sleeping in the rough” experiment, you probably want a hotel to stay. Unsurprisingly, paying for lodgings is one of the chief expenses of travellers in the EU – and one of the biggest ones for American tourists. Therefore, you should try and find a cheaper (but still good) place to live. Here are apps to help you with that.
Pruvo App
Pruvo helps you rebook your hotel room cheaper. That’s right, re-book. Research shows that those who book their lodgings waaay in advance also pay waaay more (47%, to be exact). To avoid over paying, all you need to do is book your accommodation with free cancellation (this is important) on your regular website (like, I don’t know, booking.com), forward your reservation to Pruvo and wait for an email. Pruvo will notify you when (if) your rooms becomes cheaper, so you can cancel your reservation and rebook it. Simple, eh?
Amazing idea
“One of the best travel bookings website on earth. It works like magic!” – by Rob
Day Use App
Day Use is a hotel booking app with a twist: you book a hotel room for one day only (or some other short period). It’s useful if you find yourself stuck on a layover (or, you know, flight delay), want to escape from home or find your holiday lodgings suddenly beset by a plague of rats. Connecting 5000 hotels in 25 countries, it offers discounts that can range between 30% and 75%.
Pretty good so far
“I used Dayuse to book a hotel from 10:00am to 5:00pm. The experience of booking the hotel is quick and easy. And I would use this app again for anytime I would want to study in a quiet location away from home. It’s great for college students who need a few hours or almost the whole day to study somewhere quiet!” – by The-Skellington
PACKING
Packing takes up a large part of the whole “preparing to travel” routine. You have to take luggage allowances with your airline of choice. You need to consider the weather at your destination. You have to take clothes and utensils that will make your planned activities easy and fun. You also need to remember to pack it all. But there’s an app for that!
PackPoint App
Packing is terrible and no travel app will fold your linens for you. However, PackPoint helps you pack the right things for the trip. Enter the length of the trip, the weather (at your destination, natch), and your planned activities. The app will then prepare a list of things you need to take.
Necessary for basic survival
“Mode of this application allows you to configure each trip list according to your specific plans. Kids? Ski? Beach and Ski? Working while on a family vacation? International? Trips get complicated quickly, and I alway forget something. Now, domestic peace is restored, its a calm and orderly process. This has totally changed my life.” – by winddogOO7
TRAVEL TRACKING
You can already agree with me when I say that traveling is complicated. There are so many moving parts to keep track off. It would be nice if you had a dedicated officer to record the details of your trip and help organize them. Well, the Queen’s Own Government will not supply you with a Travel Adjutant, but we can recommend you some travel apps!
Lola Travel App
Lola is the travel app for when you’re traveling for business, not pleasure. It handles everything, from booking flights to accommodations to tracking your trips. And if something goes wrong, Lola provides 24/7 live concierge support via the app itself!
Lola.com makes booking travel a pleasure!
“Lola.com makes an often painful, time-consuming process an actual pleasure! Getting our whole team booked for flights is quick, easy and without any hassle at all. I couldn’t recommend Lola any higher for teams needing a travel solution.” – by Eden
miFlight App
Surprisingly enough, this is not an app for traveling Mi-Go. No, it’s a crowdsourced platform for checking the waiting times at airport security checkpoints. That way, you’ll know when you have to hurry and get in line to be on time for your flight.
“I always try to be on time for flights… but there’s been those times when I putter around at my gate for two hours thanks to the airport being completely empty. You’ll soon learn whether or not you need to get a move on or have that second cup of coffee with MiFlight at your fingertips. It’s one more thing that’s helped me remove one more ounce of uncertainty at the airport. Love the new additions and expanded support. The backgrounds are beautiful and the gorgeous interface is incredibly intuitive. Thanks MiFlight!” – by BlueLBlock
WIFI
Internet connects people around the world, and that’s great, because we’d like to share some Coliseum selfies. However, nobody in their sane mind wants to paint roaming rates, and this is where wifi comes in. But can you trust public wifi while travelling? You probably can’t. Can you improve your position somehow? Yes, via an app!
TunnelBear App
TunnelBear will not give you wifi access in a tunnel, but it will provide you with a safe connection! It works by encrypting your traffic whenever you have to use public wifi (and it also helps you bypass region locking and other nasty stuff). The free version only gives you 500MB of data, but if you’re travelling type, you can probably afford the $5/month yearly subscription.
Works to perfection
“Works to perfection. For some unknown reason, the program “FileZilla” which I use for uploading files to my server is blocked at my school, but with TunnelBear installed everything works without problems.” – by Jonas
TRANSPORTATION
So you finally managed to get to your destination or within reasonable proximity of it. That’s great. But how will you get to your hotel or all the cultural moments you want to see? Well, you will need to employ some kind of transport. Fortunately for us, many an app tracks the transportation networks of the world.
Bolt App
Bolt is a taxi app that works in many, many countries and cities around the world. That way, you don’t even need to know the how’s and what’s of getting a ride in a foreign country. Just use the app and be on your way.
Used twice on recent visit to Malta
“Used twice on recent visit to Malta. One “test” trip short distance with Christina M, courteous, efficient and very reasonable price. Second journey from hotel to airport, again excellently priced in rush hour and the most pleasant taxi driver ever, Hassan E. Many visits to Malta, best taxi experiences from Taxify-safe, courteous drivers, not always the case in Malta!!!” – by Gwen
Trafi App
Want to get around the town? Trafi is here to show you how to get there. It combines public transportation, taxi and uber routes, and bicycle and rides renting. It doesn’t work in every city, but when it does, it’s beautiful.
This app is really helpful to reach places for people with little knowledge of the city streets.
“this app is really helpful to reach places for people with little knowledge of the city streets. User better also understand the transport system, then could combine some choice with other possibilities that might not incl. here, such taxi or online taxi etc. And it will be functional if trafi include distance (in km) as walking measurement not time (in min)” – by Novieta
Rome2rio App
Ever joked about asking Google Maps to plan you a route from home to Arkhangelsk? Well, Rome2rio is a bonafide app working on that concept. R2R will show you the entire trip from your chosen location to the destination – including all the bus rides and flights, and so on. It integrates with services that track bus routes or cheapest fares, so you’re but a couple of clicks away from starting to plan your trip today!
Flawless
“This is my first ever app review, but I felt it my civic duty to sing its praises:
I’d be lost in Europe begging on some corner with a crumpled up map in my hands and tears running down my face if it weren’t for this app. I live to travel, but I consider myself “directionally challenged,” and the idea of doing a bunch of research on the best way to get from point A to point B would be unimaginably frustrating. Rome2rio takes the stress out of traveling, and I recommend this app to people ALL the time! Yes, it helps you find the best route to get from country to country or city to city, but you can also narrow it down and put in an address or attraction. I can finally travel solo confidently with this app. It hasn’t let me down yet! I’d follow it to the ends of the earth and back. How this app isn’t more widely known or reviewed is beyond me, every traveler should have it.” – by katerw-93
TRAVEL EXPENSE
I once wrote that travelling is difficult to organize, and that the tourist has many moving parts to keep track of. But what about that most fluid of things – money? Sometimes, you don’t even need to do anything to make them go away. And when you’re travelling, your Money Sense is most definitely out of order. Why not download an app to help you with that?
Trabee Pocket App
Trabee Pocket allows you to track your travel expenses. You set your budget, record the spending and voila! you know how deep in the red you went while buying shots last night. It also converts local prices (which feel fake and unreal) into your home currency, putting all your spending into an extremely sobering context.
A Backpackers dream app 😉
“I’ve been backpacking for a while now and I haven’t been able to find a good app to just do expense tracking for each place, I can’t use anything else! I really hope the developer of this app keeps adding features Thank you!” – by omarofmars
LOCAL ACTIVITIES
One of the biggest reasons to travel is to go beyond your usual context and find yourself in a place unfamiliar to you. As a tourist, you aim to be a stranger in a strange place. The trouble with that is that you’re unlikely to know all the highlights and places where stuff happens at your destination. Never fear – there are apps that will make you feel like a fish in the water!
EatWith App
EatWith tells you what spoon to use for what ice cream. Just kidding, it’s couchsurfing for foodies. EatWith helps you connect with the locals in 130+ countries, who will host a dinner/brunch/lunch/whatever for you. Of course, the meals aren’t free, but you’re getting the real local experience.
Selected as “Best of 2017” by the App Store
VizEat has changed the way I travel
“VizEat has changed the way I travel. I love how it is using food to bring people together and making it easy to explore a city off-the-beaten-path. Every VizEat event I’ve been to has been memorable in its own way, whether because of the interesting stories around the table, the unbelievable food, or the welcoming presence of the host. From the moment you walk in the door, VizEat hosts make you feel like an old friend, and this is a very special feeling. I can’t wait to try many more VizEat experiences on my upcoming trips!” – by mackenzie216
Nearify App
Ever wanted to have an app that does “Events Near You?” Well, that’s Nearify. This platform will show the festivals, concerts, plays and other such shenanigans occurring near where you are. Great for planning some cultural outings while you’re travelling!
And if your trip is disrupted by flight delays, cancellations and overbooking, we can suggest tapping Skycop! Our website provides an easy way to claim flight compensation. Claim up to €600 and entrust the entire effort to us!
I rarely rate any app BUT THIS ONE!!!! You’re in for a treat!!
“Seriously this app is a huge help!! For dates with your partner or just if you want to hang out with your buddies. The problem is too often when is time to go out no one has a clue what to do and guess what! PROBLEM SOLVED!! this app has you covered and will make you seem like the fun person that always knows where to go and what’s hot and fun!!!! It’s a must!!!” – by I got this!
Flight disruptions happen even if you’re well prepared
We hope the above list will come in handy when you’re planning your next trip – let us know in the comments below if they do! And in case your thoroughly planned trip gets disrupted by a delayed, cancelled or overbooked flight, we’ve got your back. Simply fill our flight compensation form and we will help you get a compensation of up to €600! That would be a nice addition to your travel savings, wouldn’t it?
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Hi
Doron here from Pruvo.
Thanks for the mention!