Travelling is so easy nowadays with everyone owning a phone.
It is not only that you can stay in contact with people from home or friends you made on your travels, but there are so many more useful apps for travelling.
It makes every part of travelling easier.
These are just some of my favourite apps, of which some I use daily.
Meeting people
Bumble, Tinder
I still swear on making friends on dating apps.
It doesn’t even matter what you turn out as.
If you are ending up as friends or actually dating, or if it is just one date to have some company and get to know some new, interesting people.
Dating apps are useful for all of that, and I find it so much fun getting to know so many new people, and it is easiest through those sites.
Before starting your travels, you should inform on what platform travellers connect on in that country.
In Australia and New Zealand, everybody uses Facebook and there are great backpacker groups that you can join.
There you can post about ride-shares and travel buddies, just meeting up with people, activities you would like to do with someone or just general questions, and you will most likely always get an answer.
I made many friends through road trips, where I found the people on Facebook.
Sometimes you might get messages from weird people, but you don’t have to answer everyone and can ignore those.
Getting around
Uber
If you are stuck somewhere without public transport going anywhere, I would always choose to pay the money for an Uber (or taxi) to get to places.
It might be expensive sometimes, but I think it is better that having to walk for hours or wait in the dark, whatever situation you’re in.
It is easy and quick to get one to most places.
The local Ubers might be called differetnly in different counties, as in Indonesia they use “Grab” or “Gojek”.
That’s the apps I know of, but I am sure there are more, different ones all around the world.
Google Maps
I definitely use Google Maps daily.
I use it to find my way around to places, but also to plan road trips by marking places I want to go and getting an overview of which route would be best.
Often on Google Maps, they already recommend places to visit if you’re zooming in a bit.
I also prefer to use Google Maps to find buses and trains I have to take, rather than downloading a new app for public transport in every city.
This might not be the case in every country, so if there is a common app for public transport, you can check that one as well.
Maps me
I got recommended that app for being able to download maps for offline use.
You can use them best for hiking because you get to see every small trail, how long you have to go and your altimeter.
It is also good for anywhere else when you don’t have signal.
Money
Money converter apps
Often if I am unsure if an item is expensive, I find it easiest to just put the price in any random money converter app that works offline, so that I don’t always have to google how much that is in my currency.
Tricount
This app is perfect when you are travelling with others and might share expenses.
You can put in the price of everything, and it will tell you who owes who how much money at any point.
You can choose who paid and between whom it is shared.
This saves a lot of time of counting how much money is owed and saves a lot of trouble around money.
PayPal
So many people I have met and whom I had to transfer money to used PayPal, which was very convenient.
Not everyone has a local bank account, and transferring money internationally is expensive and complicated.
The other option would be cash, but that’s not the best option for bigger sums, and not everyone has cash on them all the time.
With PayPal, you can transfer money in every currency, and it will arrive at the other person’s account immediately, and you only need an email address.
It can be that easy.
Accommodation
Couch surfing
Couch surfing is used nearly worldwide and helps if you are travelling low budget.
You can stay with people who are interested in getting to know people from all around the world, who like to show people their area and who like to give back, as many also use Couch surfing for their own travels.
You have to pay a small fee for using the app, but you don’t have to pay accommodation, so you save a lot of money if you use the app, and you get to know a lot of locals.
Again, here you have to filter out who you would be comfortable staying with and if you put the dates of your trip to a certain city in the app, hosts might even ask you if you want to stay with them.
Booking.com, hostel world, Airbnb
Those are the apps I usually use for booking accommodation.
I like to compare prices and places on each of the apps and book it through the cheapest app.
It is easier in the apps, than having many tabs with the different websites open.
I always also just google it because in some places you might find a cheaper deal on a whole other website or on the website of the accommodation itself.
Language
Google Translate
For quick and small translations, I like to use Google Translate.
You can download languages you often use, so you can use it offline.
For longer translations it might not always be 100% accurate, but even if someone doesn’t speak your language, they could understand the context if you’re translating it quickly on the app.
Camping and hiking
I haven’t tried any of those apps, but heard a lot of good things about them.
They are helpful to find trails for hiking or biking, or for finding camp grounds in Australia and New Zealand.
The app for all kind of trails is called “Komoot” and for camping it is “CamperMate”
There are more apps for finding places to camp, also free camp and hiking.
You can just look some up in your play store.
With all those apps, I find travelling really easy.
Nearly everything is digital nowadays, and it is easy to plan ahead and meet up with new people.
Even though some of those apps you have to pay for, I think they are worth it rather than going through a bigger hustle when travelling, when it is already stressful enough at times.
Let me know if you know about other useful apps that you like to use for travelling!