Episode 355: Review: Travel Apps you Should Use

(00:00:53) - I came across this article from the travel points guide.com site talking about 30 essential travel apps at every traveler needs. Send us travel season, and I've been traveling a lot lately. I wanted to share a few of these and review those that I've used. Thank you for tuning in Andrea's point of view, I am your host, Drea. If you are on Twitter, I can be founded. Drea Point and Andrea's point of view on Clubhouse, Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook. What are your go-to apps for hotels? I seldom go to the actual hotel site itself because for some reason when I wanna travel, they don't have deals. usually wind up going to Orbitz or booking.com, mainly because you don't always have to pay upfront and you can get free cancellations, but one of the apps I read about is Hotel Tonight. I've never used this app, but it looks like the hotels are put into styles like basic or luxury and so on, and they have a daily drop feature to get you a special price, but you have a short time to take advantage of it.

(00:02:03) - I think it's like 15 minutes to swipe and get that special price. An app that l've been using, which seems to be a hot topic nowadays, is the Airbnb app. After you enter your destination, you can add a lot of filters like price, amenities, the type of home and more. You can either pay in full or deposit and you can read the reviews of the previous guests as well as see some of the pictures. So, so far I will say that l've been lucky with my experiences. I usually stay at an Airbnb during events because that's when hotels like to increase their prices and always try to only stay at a place two days and then move on to the next. In case I don't like it, I'm not trapped in that one spot. There are apps for organizing your trip. For this, I just use my phone notes, but there is an app called Triplt.

(00:02:57) - It keeps all your itineraries in one spot. Instead of searching for your phone for your car reservation, then you gotta go scrolling for your hotel reservation and then so on and so forth. This app will keep them all together, so I think I might consider using that. There is the Packpoint app for those who don't know what to bring or bring too much. It tells you how to pack for the weather and you know, depending on the length of your trip, it gives you laundry facilities so you can just enter your destination and trip details. That's really very helpful for a lot of us women who over pack. I'm not one of them though. I, l'm a one bag airl now. I do have a luggage set. recommend investing in a nice luggage set. However, I wanna say the past few years I'm happy with a duffle bag.

(00:03:48) - You know those Vera Bradley style duffle bags that look like diaper bags. You can get so much in there. I like rolling everything up, mixing and matching and just packing whatever I need in that. It's amazing how many people are so shocked that that's all i need. All women don't over pack fellas <laugh>. It's possible for us to only bring one bag. There are apps for getting you through airports and lounges. One is lounge buddy. So many airlines give you long layovers in places, so instead of killing time walking around, you can download Lounge Buddy to help you find where the lounges are in these airports. There is a fee to get in, of course, but it's nice to be able to recharge, grab a drink or take a shower in an airport. The Flight Aware app allows you to track all flights online, see a live map of a flight and check on delays, cancellations, and even gate changes.

(00:04:48) - You can even see when a flight lands if you're picking up someone from the airport. I've used this app a few times and it's pretty cool to see, you know, when they announced, like when there were their storms and the stuff that went on with Southwest, you get to check out that app and see, okay, what flights are canceled and what airlines. It's pretty cool when you're traveling overseas, there are a few apps that will come in handy. The XE currency converter is helpful for currency rates. Google Translate is one that I use when I travel. It translates over a hundred languages and even has a handwriting tool. You can also take a picture translate as well if you are with friends and this is a huge one. Splitting the bill is usually an issue, so you can enter your information with the try count app, invite your friends adjoin and it will figure out who owes what for you. 

(00:05:41) - You can also add receipts. Receipts in that app. I don't think I'll be using that app because I'm all about separate checks. Just telling the server upfront you'll be doing separate checks and yeah, because it gets complicated whenever you're with somebody. I pay for this.

so, but that’s  for those of you who like traveling in groups and like splitting up the checks fairly. One of my favorite apps is WhatsApp. It eliminates the need to worry about using your text data because you can talk to people in other countries through this app. You're also able to call and use video chat as well, and it's came in handy too. I actually recently used it to set up a nail appointment and it was perfect. I didn't have to even worry about any extra charges. When you want to make a food reservation, you can always go to open table and get a text, but overseas there's an app appropriately called the Fork.

(00:06:38) - It has more than 60,000 restaurants on it. You can book or you can look up these restaurants by cuisine. The difference with this app is that some of these restaurants offer discounts, so that would be kind of fun to use. Another app that I like to use is TripAdvisor. I was able to book a tour of that app the day before when another tour canceled. You can also read reviews on places, get hotel and activity suggestions. One app that is new to me is Smart Traveler. It's helpful for those in the states who need to know what vaccines and visas are needed abroad. When you enter your info in, it gives your information to embassies so if there's any type of disaster they can contact you. I mean, who wouldn't want this app? Another safety app is Trip Whistle. You enter your location in and it gives emergency numbers like local police departments and almost 200 countries. What are your favorite apps to use or do you use any apps or you just wing it?

Hopefully you can use one or more of these on your next travel venture. Please don't forget to subscribe to this show so that you don't miss any of the multiple episodes I have for you each week. Iam not trying to change your point of view, just to get you to listen to Dre's point of view.

Thanks so much for listening.