Best travel apps for your smartphone

The greatest advantage of cell phones is that they’re with us all the time. This comes in handy, especially with smartphones, which can store tons of useful information. Think of all the times you’ve had to carry around various documents. Most of the time you can condense them and put them on your smartphone. There might be no better example of this than travel itinerary. If you’ve ever carried around a manila folder with your itinerary, you know the feeling. Things can fall out of it, and things can get misplaced. Keeping everything on your smartphone makes life much easier.

Here are some great smartphone apps to help you keep your travel plans.

TripIt

Organization is a friend to any traveler. Yet it’s hard to keep all that information in one place. There’s not only flight itinerary, but also hotels, rental cars, car services, shuttles, and attractions along the way. Can you imagine carrying around a physical folder with all that information in it? Not only would things be prone to fall out, but it’d be a pain to go through it all. And that doesn’t even mention the bulk of the thing. It’s best to keep everything organized in one compact place. That’s where the TripIt app shines.

Once you receive your confirmation for a flight, hotel, rental car, or really any travel itinerary, you then forward that to a specific TripIt email address. TripIt recognizes these confirmation emails, and automatically populates your app with the information. Looking for your flight confirmation number for check-in? It’s right on the app. Forget what hotel you’re staying at, or what company you used to rent a car? No problem. All that information is right in front of you.

This is a boon to any travel, frequent or infrequent. Best of all, it’s available on all major mobile platforms. And yeah, it’s free.

TripIt for BlackBerry
TripIt for Android
TripIt for iPhone

WorldMate

A few years ago WorldMate actually got ahead of the travel game. They were one of the first to let you forward confirmation emails for them to process. Their BlackBerry app, BlackBerry Travel, takes that to a whole new level — it automatically detects when a confirmation email hits your inbox and does the whole process by itself. For iPhone and Android, though, you’ll have to forward the email. But once you do that WorldMate provides tons of free services.

Not only will it tell you what hotel you’re staying at, but it works with Google Maps to give you a route. It also contains weather information, reminders, and a currency converter. That is, it’s an all-in-one tool for your travel. It can also help you book hotels, car services, and rental cars. You know, for the times when you’ve landed and realize that you haven’t made those arrangements.

WorldMate does have a premium package, which includes flight alerts and statuses, plus calendar sync. But for most of us, the free version will do. It’s available on all three platforms as well.

WorldMate for Android
WorldMate for iPhone
BlackBerry Travel

Orbitz

While WorldMate and TripIt do a good job of keeping your travel information in order, they don’t let you book flights. If you’re looking to buy your airline tickets from your smartphone, you would do well to get the Orbitz app. It basically provides you the functions of the website. That is, you can book your flight, hotel, rental car, and other amenities right from your smartphone. It might not sound totally practical, but it’s definitely a plus for frequent travelers who don’t always have easy access to a computer.

Even better: Orbitz has mobile-only deals. If you’re looking to a book a hotel, you might want to do it from your smartphone, even if you’re in front of a computer. Orbitz offers various deals on hotels through their smartphone app, so you can save a few dollars along the way.

The Orbitz app also has an itinerary organizer, so you’ll still get that feature. But if you don’t like their interface, it’s easy to supplement the Orbitz app with WorldMate or TripIt. Book with one, organize with the other. As long as you have enough storage on your phone, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Orbitz for iPhone
Orbitz for Android
There is, unfortunately, no BlackBerry app, but BlackBerry users can access Orbitz’s mobile site, m.orbitz.com.

Filed under : Mobile Applications