11 Essential Travel Apps & Websites
It can be pretty overwhelming finding, booking, and organizing travel, especially when we just want to enjoy the entire experience! With the internet and social media at our fingertips, there’s a massive amount of websites, apps, and other digital tools that can help us make that whole process just a little bit easier. I wrote a similar article a few years ago and I thought it would be a good idea to revisit it and make some updates. So, without further ado, here’s my list of helpful digital tools that I personally use to book, manage, and enjoy my own trips.
Booking Flights & Transportation
If there’s one pet peeve I have about travel it’s overpaying for flights and ground transportation. Here are some of the website and tools I use to find and book the best deals.
Scott’s Cheap Flights
Scott’s Cheap Flights is an amazing flight deal subscription service. I subscribe to Scott’s Cheap Flights newsletter and also pay for their Premium account (now $49 per year). With the Premium account, I get the newsletter sooner than non-premium email subscribers and I can also filter emails by the departure airport. Because I live in St. Louis, I look for deals out of STL, Chicago, and even Indianapolis. Most of my international travel itineraries originate from Chicago since those overseas flights are much cheaper than leaving directly from St. Louis. Some of the deals they send are very time-sensitive (only a few seats are left at a given price point) so you do need to be ready to book at a moments notice. I realize this is restrictive for people with large families or really strict PTO policies, so it’s much better suited for solo/couple travel. You can easily save upwards of 50% (or more) on traditional fares. Personally I feel like $49 is extremely reasonable (~$4/mo) for the potential to save a few hundred dollars, even on domestic flights.
Hopper
Hopper is a fantastic app that monitors airfare costs. You can create an endless number of alerts based on the time and location(s) you’re looking to travel. This is particularly helpful if you’re flexible on when and where you want to go. As an example, my wife and I are went to Croatia a couple of years ago for our honeymoon and I used Hopper to monitor flights from Chicago into a number of different Croatian airports (e.g. Zagreb, Dubrovnik) sometime between June and September. Hopper monitored this for me and suggested when I should book based on the cost of other flights it found that were cheaper or, alternatively, more expensive. You can see below that traveling to Split (another city in Croatia) at the beginning of June is actually much cheaper than flying in late June. Google Flights provides similar functionality through their alerts but Hopper does a better job of being more flexible when you don’t have specific dates in mind. Hopper is free to use and a must have for booking flights!
Here’s a sample fare ‘heat’ map from Hopper. The green dates are the cheaper dates to fly and then it gets more expensive (towards red, or ‘hotter’) from there.
Google Flights
I really like using Google Flights and Hopper together find low fares. It also depends on the situation. Let’s say, we have a destination wedding in Maine, where there’s really not much wiggle room in terms of dates and itinerary. We know the weekend we’re going and for the most part, are going to take the most direct route to our final destination. In this case, I’m going to use Google Flights to find specific flights for those dates and locations. I can also create alerts based on certain itineraries I’d like to monitor over time. If there’s no rush to book, I might wait on a fare until the price goes down. I’ve easily saved hundreds of dollars using this method.
I also really love using Google flights to find low fares if I just want to get out of town for the weekend. You can filter by flight cost, so you can see all of the flights to South America, say, under $500 round trip (RT). Or maybe you’re searching for any domestic flights for under $200 RT. It’s a really convenient way to find a getaway fare if you’re flexible about your destination. I will say, that while I really like the experience of flying Southwest, I never find that they offer any of the lowest fares. You also have to click through to the Southwest website via Google Flights before they show you your final price, which is slightly annoying.
One last tip for using Google Flights — it’s Airports feature is really useful if you are traveling to a location and don’t mind changing up your travel itinerary to save some coin. For example, some friends and I visited Glacier National Park a few years ago and while there was a direct flight into Kalispell, it was very expensive. Using the Airports feature within Google Flights, I was able to find several airports within 3–5 hours of the park that were MUCH cheaper. We flew into Great Falls, MT and booked a rental van from there to Glacier National Park.
Wanderu
Wanderu is incredibly helpful in booking ground transportation (buses and trains). I haven’t used it overseas (yet) but I have found it to be a very useful and user-friendly way to book domestic bus and train travel. Wanderu serves an aggregator, pulling in trip schedules and fares from a myriad of different travel providers, such as Amtrak or Greyhound. You can even purchase tickets directly through the Wanderu web or mobile app — avoiding the often clunky experience of other booking sites.
Booking Hotels and Lodging
Booking.com
Booking.com is by far my favorite platform for booking hotels (non-vacation rentals) for a few key reasons. First, most of the hotels on their platform can be booked at a slightly higher rate with a guilt-free cancellation policy. Many of these hotels allow you to cancel within one week of your arrival time so it’s a great way to hold spots if you’re even thinking about planning a vacation. On the flip side, if you aren’t worried about cancelling, you can book a non-refundable room for slightly less dough. Outside of this amazing feature, the user experience is fantastic and their review system is incredibly robust. You can even sort reviews by the type of guest. When booking a hotel for a romantic weekend getaway in Miami, for instance, I was particularly interested in verified reviews from couples instead of families. The one drawback (much like many third party sites) is that if there’s any issue with your hotel, especially upon check-in, you typically have to go through Booking.com to resolve issues or lodge a dispute. The communication between guest, the platform, and the hotel can also be suspect at times versus booking directly with the hotel. For instance, our hotel was overbooked in downtown Cincinnati during Labor Day weekend and our reservation was cancelled by the hotel. Apparently they tried to contact us, but I was never left a voicemail or got a notification via email. So there we were, on an incredibly busy weekend with no hotel vacancies within 20 miles of the city center. Had we booked directly with the hotel, this issue would have been completely avoided. Like I mentioned before, the ability to cancel unwanted reservations with certain hotels is a huge value add. If there’s absolutely no change I’ll cancel my reservation, I do my research via Booking.com and then book directly with the hotel to avoid any mishaps.
Hotel Tonight
I’ve used this app a couple of times in a pinch — the first time I used HotelTonight I was in New York for a work conference and due to some miscommunications with my host, my Airbnb fell through. The host gave me an incorrect address and was super difficult to get a hold of — so frustrating! Anyway, I ended up downloading HotelTonight and found a clean, reasonably priced room in Hell’s Kitchen just a few blocks away from the conference. It’s a great resource for emergencies, but, if I’m booking something well in advance, I’m likely going to use Booking.com. Their inventory and sorting features are much better.
VRBO + Airbnb
I’ll write about the differences between these two another day, but I almost always prefer booking vacation rentals versus straight hotels since they provide so much more customization and character than traditional stays. Especially during the pandemic, it was nice booking stays with VRBO or Airbnb where there was contactless check-in and I didn’t have to haul my luggage through a crowded lobby. Over the last few years, a lot of the ‘host's’ on have started to dual list their properties on both sites. Generally speaking, there’s much more variety on HomeAway when it comes to renting larger vacation homes and the site is almost exclusively dedicated for group (4 or more people) stays. And the reviews really do tell a pretty thorough story about how responsive, friendly, and accommodating the host is, in addition to the quality of the property.
Organizing Travel
[ Your Airlines App ]
It may seem like quite the pain (and you may not have the storage space on your phone to accommodate), but I really like having an app downloaded for the airline(s) I’m using for my specific trip. They typically all allow you to check-in, check your seats, present an electronic boarding pass, and even access in-flight wifi or entertainment (all with varying degrees of ease). It’s also great to track airline miles within each app too. I HIGHLY recommend signing up for the free miles program (all online) for each of the airlines so you can track miles and earn free flights, perks, and gear!
TripIt
TripIt shines as an itinerary organizer for travel. Let’s say I’ve booked an international trip to India (which I’ve done), and I want to keep track of my train ride from St. Louis to Chicago, my flights from Chicago to Amsterdam, then to Delhi, back to Chicago and then import my rental car information for the final leg back home. I can forward any confirmation email from these services (even hotels!) to plans@tripit.com and they will automagically get imported into my handy dandy TripIt app. The app also has some really helpful push notifications for flights — including gate changes, delays, and other helpful announcements (often before I get one from the actual airline). The PRO features are pretty solid too. I can track all of my travel rewards in one, central place, discover airport lounges, and even search for better seats.
