Best Apps for Travelling
If you’re heading abroad on a gap year, volunteering overseas or embarking on any type international travel, there are a few apps that are definitely worth installing before you go. These can turn your smartphone into the ultimate travel tool.
We’ve listed out our favourite below. If we’ve missed any you can’t live without, get in touch and we’ll add them to the list.
Flight Search Apps
Once you get the travel bug, your life soon revolves around searching for and finding the best flights available. SkyScanner and Kayak are a good place to start and have apps that mean you have search for flights wherever you are.
Hopper is another great app to get. Hopper helps you by telling you when to buy your tickets via push notifications. The company claims it can save you up to 40 percent on your next flight, and that’s all done by analysing and tracking flights.
These apps are also very useful for anyone who suddenly decides they want to jump into another adventure when they’re already abroad. Once you start a gap year you may find that you don’t want it to end, so having quick access to check for new flights is always a great option to have on your phone.
Google Maps
Google Maps is a great app if you’re exploring a new place. Finding the hostel or hotel you’re staying at, or trying to find a local bus stop, can often be more challenging than you hoped for. Google Maps helps make this simple and straight forward.
Google Maps also displays local cafes, hotels, places of interest, and activities in cities and towns around the world, helping you make the most of anywhere you go. These are also connected to online reviews so you can quickly find the best option.
Currency Exchange
Having a reliable currency exchange app can help make sure you stick to your budget and understand what things are costing you in certain countries. Doing a vague exchange in your head can often lead to spending more than you thought, due to the currency exchange.
If you’re lucky enough to be travelling for a long time, exchange rates can also change quite a bit, so you may find yourself better or worse off.
Online Banking
Another useful app to install is your bank’s app. Keeping an eye on what you’ve been spending and ensuring there aren’t any nasty surprises in there, will help ensure that you stick to your budget and don’t overspend.
Luckily, volunteering in Fiji with Think Pacific means that you won’t have any daily costs while on project, so you can stick to your budget much easier.
Language Apps
Language apps like Google Translate or Text-to-Speech readers are great tools to have on you when travelling abroad.
Google Translate allows you to write in your own language and then pick a language for it to be translated into.
This can mean you communicate better in any language and help build more meaningful relationships with the local people you meet on your travels. The relationships and bonds formed while abroad is often what makes a gap year so special so any app that can help with this is certainly worth downloading.
Uber
Although Uber isn’t available in every location in the world, it’s worth downloading if the places you’re visiting do have it.
This means you don’t need to spend time trying to find taxis and negotiating prices – instead, Uber makes this simple, easy and often cost-effective.
Offline Reading
Apps like Pocket mean you can save interesting blogs and articles you find around the web, and save them for later. When you’ve got a long journey ahead, or waiting around in airport lounges, Pocket and other apps can make the time much more useful.
For example, if you’re travelling to Fiji, then saving all our blogs about Fiji would be a wise move! 🙂