Planning a trip used to mean keeping printed tickets, hotel confirmations, maps, and handwritten notes in one folder. Today, your smartphone can handle almost every part of a vacation, from finding flights and hotels to creating an itinerary, navigating unfamiliar streets, tracking expenses, and keeping reservations organized.
But with hundreds of travel apps available, choosing the best travel planning apps for travelers can be surprisingly difficult.
The ideal application will be dependent on the type of journey you will be going on. For instance, the solo traveler may have the need to plan for his/her itinerary and navigation, whereas the family may have more needs, including budgeting capabilities and collaborative planning.
In this guide, we will take a look at the applications that are useful when it comes to planning journeys and find out what these applications should be used for.
What Is a Travel Planning App?
A travel planning app is an application which can help you plan various aspects of your travels.
According to the type of app you have chosen, you can use it to:
- Build an itinerary on a day-by-day basis
- Book flights and compare costs
- Look up hotels and accommodation options
- Add locations to your must-visit list
- Navigate through strange cities and new roads
- Download maps for offline use
- Keep track of booking confirmations
- Track your flights and travel information
- Plan a road trip
- Budget for your travels
- Split travel expenses with friends
- Look for good restaurants and tourist sites
- Plan your packing list
There is no need for a program that combines all functions into one. Indeed, it can be even more useful to use two or three applications that perform their own special functions.
Traveling Apps That Make Your Trip Easier to Plan
The following are some of the most helpful apps that you can use when planning your trip.
1. Wanderlog – Best for Full Trip Planning
One of the best tools for travelers who prefer planning everything about their trip in one place would be Wanderlog.
It offers itinerary planning, organization of locations on a map, reservation management, planning of road trips, collaboration with fellow travelers, and tracking of trip costs. Other features currently offered by Wanderlog include route optimization, offline mode, flight tracking, packing lists, and an AI assistant.
Good for:
People who need their itinerary, maps, bookings, and trip organization in one single application.
Reasons why travelers might enjoy it:
- Map-based planning
- Itinerary planning
- Collaborative trip planning
- Planning a road trip
- Trip budgeting
- Booking management
- Access to trips offline
For families and groups, the collaboration feature can be particularly helpful because everyone can contribute ideas to the same trip plan.
2. TripIt – Ideal for Making Itineraries
TripIt is a good app to use when you have made all your reservations for a trip and would like to create an itinerary from them.
You don’t have to go looking in your emails every time you need a confirmation code or address of a hotel, since an itinerary maker will help you organize everything into a schedule for the trip.
Most suitable for:
Frequent flyers and business people who make many bookings.
TripIt is especially handy for multi-city trips when managing a number of booking codes becomes challenging.
3. Google Maps – Best for Directions and Location
Google Maps is one of the most useful applications that can accompany you while traveling.
Despite the fact that it is not a regular itinerary planner, it may be extremely helpful during planning stage of your journey as you can learn more about the places, transportation, and walks you will have to use.
Having the possibility of using offline maps may help in situations when the network connection is poor.
Good for:
Finding one’s way around, finding places near by, traveling, and visiting destinations.
A good way to do this would be to mark your map with all the important destinations and eateries beforehand.
4. Google Flights – Best for Comparing Flights
Google Flights is helpful when you are at the planning phase and you have flexible dates.
You may compare the routes, airlines, dates, and prices before making up your mind about when to travel.
Best for:
Comparing flights and doing research on travel dates.
Do not rush into booking your first found flight; compare flights of different departure dates and nearby airports if possible. Sometimes a tiny shift in dates makes a great difference to the total cost of the journey.
5. Roadtrippers – Best for Road Trips
While planning a road trip, you might require something more than a regular itinerary planner.
Road trip-oriented apps would allow you to find locations on your road trip route, calculate distance by road, and plan your travel around the road.
Best for:
Road trips, scenic routes, family vacations by car, and multistop trips.
While planning a road trip, remember that the trip does not always revolve around your destination alone. The locations, sights, restaurants, and attractions on the way might become the highlights of your trip.
6. Flighty – Ideal for Frequent Travelers
Frequent travelers may require much more than just confirmation of their flight.
Flight tracking apps like Flighty were created specifically to assist frequent travelers to be aware of their flight data and updates.
Ideal for:
Frequent travelers, people traveling with multiple flights.
Having all of your flight data in one place can make your trips easier.
7. Rome2Rio – Best for Transportation Comparison
Rome2Rio comes handy in cases when you don’t know how to travel from one point to another.
Depending on the route, you will have the option of using various modes of transportation such as trains, buses, flights, ferries, and even cars or a combination of several of them.
Best for:
International travel, traveling through multiple cities, comparing transportation options.
It’s particularly beneficial in case you’re traveling to an unknown destination and are not aware of the transportation system there.
Quick Comparison of Travel Planning Apps
| App | Best For | Useful Feature |
|---|---|---|
| Wanderlog | Complete trip planning | Itinerary + map |
| TripIt | Reservation organization | Centralized itinerary |
| Google Maps | Navigation | Maps and places |
| Google Flights | Flight research | Flight comparison |
| Roadtrippers | Road trips | Route and stop planning |
| Flighty | Frequent flyers | Flight tracking |
| Rome2Rio | Transportation | Route comparison |
The important thing to remember is that there isn’t one universal best travel planning app. The best choice depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
How to Find the Perfect Travel App
Before installing multiple apps, consider your own needs first.
Think About What Kind of Trip You Are Going To Have
A two-day trip to the city is quite different from a three-week international holiday.
For example:
Weekend city trip:
Google Maps + a simple itinerary app may be enough.
Family vacation:
Look for collaboration, reservations, maps, and budgeting features.
Road trip:
Choose an app that supports multiple stops and route planning.
Business trip:
Reservation organization and flight tracking may be more important.
International trip:
Navigation, transportation, offline access, and currency tools become more useful.
Search For Offline Features
Internet connection is not always assured while traveling.
You may find yourself in an airport with no connectivity, traveling through countryside areas, or you may incur high roaming charges when accessing internet abroad.
Some features to download before traveling include:
- Offline maps
- Hotel details
- Important bookings
- Boarding passes
- Directions
- Documents
Offline access may convert the potentially stressful moment into just a small hassle.
See if Your App Allows Collaborations
A group travel can turn into a confusing experience when all travelers are keeping their own notes and conversations.
A collaborative travel application may enable different people to add activities to the trip, choose some places to eat and other activities.
This can be especially helpful for:
- Vacations of the family
- Vacations among friends
- Couple vacations
- Group road trips
- Bachelor/bachelorette vacations
- Multi-family vacations
For instance, Wanderlog already enables collaborative vacation planning.
Do Not Forget about Privacy and Safety of Personal Information
Some apps may ask for access to such information as your location or traveling details.
Make sure you read the privacy and data safety policies before using any particular application, particularly if you plan to link email accounts or have automatic reservation imports.
Grant permissions only if they make sense regarding the functionality you are using.
How Travel Planning Apps Can Save Time
The biggest advantage of travel apps isn’t necessarily that they provide more information.
It’s that they put the information you need in one place.
Instead of searching through emails for a hotel confirmation, opening another app for directions, and checking another website for attraction information, a good planning system can reduce the number of steps.
For example, your itinerary might show:
9:00 AM: Breakfast
10:00 AM: Museum
12:30 PM: Lunch
2:00 PM: Walking tour
4:00 PM: Free time
6:30 PM: Dinner
You can then use your map to determine realistic travel times between those locations.
That combination of itinerary + map is one reason visual trip planners have become popular.
Conclusion
It is important to choose the travel app that will help you resolve all your planning challenges and not complicate the journey in any way.
If you want to have a general itinerary of trip planning, then Wanderlog would be a good choice. The app such as TripIt could be helpful to organize all your reservations, and Google Maps still remains handy for navigation and exploration.
FAQs
Which is the best app to plan your travels?
Not all of them are good for everyone. The Wanderlog app is an excellent way to plan an itinerary and create a map, the TripIt app can help you plan reservations and Google Maps can be used for navigation and discovering places. It depends on where you want to go and what kind of travel you prefer.
Which is the best free travel planning app?
Some of these applications have great free versions. You can use Wanderlog, Google Maps and Google Flights for many different needs that do not require a paid subscription. Things may vary from time to time.
Would you be better off with one travel app or multiple travel apps?
It’s much easier to use two or three specialized apps rather than trying to use one all-in-one app. You can choose one app for your itinerary, one for navigation, and another for flights.
Which app should I use to plan a group trip?
The right app for planning a group trip would be the app for collaborative trip planning, which means that several travelers will be able to contribute to the creation of the itinerary.
Can I use travel planning apps while being disconnected from the Internet?
Travel apps might have the ability to function while you are offline, but not all of them can do this. Download all the information you need while being connected to the Internet.