It’s that time of the year when everyone is busy packing bags to fly out of the country. All of us want our summer travel to be easy and uncomplicated. Mobile Travel Apps can certainly help you plan your trip and unload essential bits and pieces. Whether it’s an amusement park excursion with the kids or an adventure filled trekking trip, apps can be very useful. You can book a flight and hotel, rent a car, learn the local language, use roadmaps etc.
Below is a list of 10 travel apps that you must have on your mobile before boarding the flight: -
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 Trip Advisor City Guides – The apps includes city guides, free self guided tours, list of restaurants, hotels, attraction etc. You don’t need an internet connection to use the app once you download the guide for a particular city, therefore, no roaming fees. At present there are 59 city guides available for download.
Available on iOS and Android
Price – Free
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 Hotel Tonight – If you are stranded, this app could save you from spending the night on the street in case you missed your flight or there is a potential delay. It works equally as well for those travelers inclined to book rooms at the last minute. One important thing to note – it’s good for same-day hotel bookings only, and you can’t book until noon.
Available on iOS and Android
Price – Free
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 Wikitude – The World Browser allows you to discover your surroundings in a completely new way. By using the camera, simply hold up your smartphone and explore what’s around you in Augmented Reality (AR). See places, points of interests and other exciting AR content through your camera’s field of vision.
Available on iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows and Nokia (Symbian)
Price – Free
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 TripIT – This is one of my favourite apps. We carry around all sorts of confirmation printouts on our vacation. From e-ticket print outs to hotel confirmation number to rental car reservation number to the online cruise booking. TripIt gets you organized: simply forward all your confirmation emails to your TripIt account, and all the details are organized into one neat itinerary for you. All your travel details are available through the app.
Available on iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows
Price – Free
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 Flight+ – This is must app on your mobile. Running late to catch you flight? You need to logon to this app to check the schedule. Flight+ lets you check out the boards of your favorite airports and view all the flight information in real-time. Simply enter your flight itinerary and get live updates incase, there is a delay in your flight or change in the boarding gate. It covers over 16000 airports worldwide and the flight schedule is updated real time. Share your trip info on social media or email. If you have a Tripit account, it will sync automatically. Search for Flight+ Free to get the free version.
Available on iOS
Price – Free
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 Postagram – Take a picture, and send it as a postcard to your friends and family while on vacation. Postcards are printed in 300dpi resolution, so make sure you take a good shot. You can send cards to international addresses (apart from the US) for just S$1.99. Do note that it can take up to three weeks to receive them which means you may be back by then.
Available on iOS and Android
Price – Free
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 – This app has the ability to translate spoken English into a huge range of nearly 60 Languages, from German to French. What’s great about this app is that you don’t have to type out phrases or whole sentences and paragraphs, making for a far more easy and simple mode of translation. Another fantastic feature is the app’s capacity to store previously translations created on the road or in preparation for the trip and play them back without internet, although you will need internet access to create a new translation.
Available on iOS and Android
Price – Free
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 Trip Journal – Trip Journal allows you to document vacation experiences and share them with your friends and family. Impress everybody with real time updates from the visited destinations and let people see proof of your latest adventures, as your journey unfolds. With Google Earth integration, Trip Journal allows friends and family to easily see your traveling routes, waypoints for visited locations, full screen photos, videos, comments and blog entries. Trip stats such as distance, time and geography traveled are also documented in real-time
Available on iOS, Android and Nokia (Symbian)
Price – Free
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Now you can save some space in your travel case by unloading heavy travel guides, hotel and flight booking, maps, journals etc. Happy journey!
The post was first published in the Qatar Today magazine’s August 2012 issue.
Another new travel app which has become one of my favourites is Simply Declare. The night before we return home I am always trying to organize my receipts to figure out what I have to declare when we get to the customs agent. Simply Declare organizes my receipts, takes pictures, keeps my purchases in real time currency values. Simply Declare even let’s me hop from currency to currency, since some of our trips a over a number of countries. This app produces a tidy list to help me fill out my customs forms, which takes away a lot of my stress.