9 Best Travel Planning Apps Every Traveller Should Know

Discover the 9 best travel planning apps to organize your trips, book flights, find accommodations, and enjoy stress-free adventures worldwide.

There are so many vacation planner apps out there for travellers but which ones are the best and most useful? We are now in our 8th year of full time travel as nomadic retirees, and we rely on travel planning apps everyday to make our travel easier.

We have listed below 9 of what we consider to be the best and these are the ones we use all the time to seamlessly and effortlessly plan our trips.

Best Travel Planning Apps for Travellers

Planning a trip can be exciting but overwhelming without the right tools. With the best app to plan travel, travellers can streamline everything from itineraries to bookings, making trips stress-free and enjoyable.

1.  TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is one of the most popular travel planner apps. Unlike other apps that feature only major cities, TripAdvisor offers listings of both top attractions and hidden gems in just about every city of the world, along with restaurants, shopping, hotels, and flights.

You can create customized itineraries by saving the places you’re interested in to the app’s new Trips feature (trips can be kept private or shared publicly.)

When you search for a city in the app, you’ll see a feed of other users’ trips, photos, videos, reviews, great places to visit, to eat, and articles about that destination, all offering ideas and inspiration.

The forums on TripAdvisor are also a great resource for getting specific travel-related information from other travellers and those in the know.

However, we personally believe the most valuable feature in TripAdvisor are the reviews left by people on restaurants. We save our favourites (based on reviews) to our Trips and slowly work our way around the city we are visiting trying out the different recommendations and writing our own reviews.

Operating Systems: Android, iOS, Web
Cost: Free

2.  Booking.com

Booking.com allows you to find the best hotel deals at a moment’s notice, or in advance. Hotels, motels, B&Bs, and luxury apartments for your next trip are all bookable in seconds, with paperless confirmation, no booking or credit card fees, and 24/7 support from the Booking.com team.

Filters help you to narrow down your search and from there, you can sort your search to assist in comparing features and price of various accommodation options.  Each accommodation also provides a review section by past guests which can assist in making your final decision.

Operating Systems: Android, iOS, Web
Cost: Free

3. XE Currency

XE Currency is our preferred choice of currency converter app and it is constantly being updated and offers live exchange rates for “every world currency”.” We love the fact we can store our most recent currency rate searches and access them even when offline.

Operating Systems: Android, iOS, Web
Cost: Free

4. Visit a City

The Visit a City app is a great starting place when it comes to planning your day to day itineraries in a city. When you select a destination, the app offers recommended sightseeing guides based on the number of days you plan to spend.

Start with one of these adjustable Visit a City guides, and then edit your itinerary by changing the day you visit a place, revising the amount of time you spend there, or deleting the attraction altogether. Visit a City then lets you know how far apart your points of interest are i.e. three minutes by walking. It also includes the estimated time that you’ll spend at each place and visiting hours.

You can also book tours through the app and get general travel information about the destination, such as the best time of year to visit or tips for saving money.

Once you have planned your day-to-day itineraries, these can be downloaded and viewed offline. 

There is also a feature that gives you directions to your next attraction on the itinerary by linking with Apple Maps, Google Maps or Uber.

Visit a City helps solve two common trip planning challenges: figuring out how long you need to spend at each place, and maximizing your vacation time by grouping nearby attractions together.  It is the easiest way to personalise your trip!

Operating Systems: Android, iOS, Web
Cost: Free

5.  Skyscanner

The Skyscanner app helps with literally everything related to travelling. You can search, compare, and book cheap flights, hotels, and car rentals anytime and anywhere. Combine low-cost carriers, choose a long transfer time and visit one more city along your way, or choose the fastest flight possible if you need to be in another state or country as soon as possible. The service provides you with enough number of flights to select the most appropriate.

Similar to Google Flights, you can see the cheapest dates to fly, and you can also get alerts when prices change. If you’re not sure where exactly you want to go, Skyscanner offers a category that lets you explore “Top Deals” from your nearest airport, as well as a curated list of destinations at affordable prices.

When you book your flight, hotel, and car together you get a more significant discount.

You can monitor your bookings with status updates in Trips and move booked flights from one trip to another in the Trips tab. This lets you move things around without losing your saved details.

Operating Systems: Android, iOS, Web
Cost: Free

6. Organic Maps

Organic Maps is one of our favourite travel planner applications. One of the main reasons is the ability to download maps and stay completely offline, with no SIM card needed. Not only does it allow you to plan out your trip via roads, but it also includes bicycle paths, train lines, hiking trails, and back roads.

The Organic Maps data comes from OpenStreetMap. You can perform detailed searches (by coordinates, names, categories, and addresses) even when you are offline. Some of the more common categories used by Organic Maps are Where to Eat, Hotels, Groceries, Sights, WIFI spots, Transport, Petrol, Parking, ATM and Banks.

As a bonus, it also includes travel guides, public transportation, and you to export / import bookmarks in KML/KMZ (we do this from our Google MyMaps). If you are looking for a tremendous offline journey planner, Organic Maps could be your new best friend.

OS: Android, iOS
Cost: Free

7. Rome2rio

The Rome2rio app searches just about every mode of transportation – plane, train, subway, bus, ferry, taxi, Uber – figures out the logistics of getting there and then recommends the best ways to get from point A to point B.

You can enter either two destinations within a given city or two points farther apart, and the app will display your options, including the time it’ll take to travel and the approximate cost. Note that the listings are for planning purposes only, and you can’t actually book your flights or tickets through the app.

Operating Systems: Android, iOS, Web
Cost: Free

8. TripIt

TripIt travel planner is one of the best travel organizer apps available. It turns an inbox full of scattered booking confirmations for hotels, tours, car rentals, flight confirmations and restaurant reservations into a single master itinerary that you can access offline, sync with your phone’s calendar, and share with loved ones. You simply forward each confirmation email to [email protected] and let the app do the rest.

OS: Android, iOS, Web
Cost: Free (Upgrade to TripIt Pro ($49/year) for other useful features such as real-time flight alerts, rewards program tracking, and the ability to locate alternate flights if your original plans are disrupted.)

9. Google Translate

Google Translate is an essential app for travellers when you don’t speak the local language. It supports over 100 languages and can translate both text and the spoken word. In its most basic form, you set the language you want translated and the language you want it translated into, type in the words and Google Translate translates it for you.

However, over the years the service has become far more sophisticated. Now Google Translate can access your phone’s camera and microphone to translate signs and menus through your camera’s lens or listen to and translate conversations in real-time.

We have primarily used this app for real-time conversations in taxis to tell drivers where we want to go, and translations of menus in foreign languages.

OS: Android, iOS, Web
Cost: Free

In Summary: 9 of the Best Apps for Travel Planning

Crafting a trip itinerary can be both fun and overwhelming at the same time. How do I get from A to B? Which places are an absolute must-visit, and which ones can I skip? How much time should I spend at the museum, and how close is it to that restaurant I want to eat at for lunch? Also, how can I keep all my ideas and bookings neatly organized?

The best travel planning apps can solve all of the above problems for you. Download these apps and you can throw away your endless spreadsheets and Word docs.

Do you use any other app for planning travel which we haven’t mentioned above? Do you have any questions, or have we missed anything we should add to this post? Feel free to contact us on Facebook or via email and let us know.

Choosing Your Next Travel Destination: Related Blog Posts

Want more info to help you decide on your next travel destination? Check out all the articles we’ve written about travel planning and the ‘Best of World Travel’ in all parts of the world and continue your travel planning.

TRAVEL PLANNING IN GENERAL

• How to Pick a Travel Destination: 13 Factors to Consider (Learn From Our Mistakes)
• 9 Best Travel Planning Apps Every Traveller Should Know

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