There are a gazillion tips people will try to give you when you’re traveling, like: pack hand sanitizer, roll your clothes to save space, go only with a carry on. Most of these tips are overused and obvious, and therefore, not helpful.
What we really need is one app that makes travel as convenient as Seamless makes ordering food, but it seems like they haven’t invented that yet.
So here are the next best resources I’ve found that promise to help you live your best travel life.
Apps that tell you when to buy
I’m pretty sure finding flights is the most stressful part of the whole travel thing. We have to go through all the feels: fatigue from checking flights every day multiple times a day, stress from finding flights that are more expensive than what we were planning to pay, and hopefully, ultimately, relief when that “book” button finally gets clicked. Instead of going through all of that though, with a little advance planning or at least advance thinking, you can hand off most of that stress to an app. With Hopper, you can enter your destination into the app and it will give you a prediction about when the flight will be cheapest and setup alerts that will ping you when your flight hits the price you’re willing to pay. You can do it with Kayak, too.
TripAdvisor for more than reviews
Though it started as mostly hotel reviews in destinations all over the world, TripAdvisor is really trying to own the travel space and fulfill all of your travel-related needs. The thing I’ve found it most hand for is booking tours or experiences on trips where I’m traveling solo and trying to figure it out all on my own would either be too much or not safe. On their “Things to Do” tab, you can enter a destination, see all of the things to do there, and click to buy different tours on offer. I used this to visit the Great Wall of China and to explore Rio de Janeiro.
Somewhere to find unique lodgings
If you’re more particular about the places you like to stay and prefer something that’s more unique and not a hotel brand that has similar versions of itself all over the world, check bedandbreakfast.com. It will find you all the cute, one-off spots where someone’s grandma is probably making the breakfast that comes with your bed.
Everything you need to know about airport wifi
It’s 2018 and I’m voting for all airports just offering automatic free WiFi. They’re making enough money charging us $6 for water bottles. It’s the least they can do. Until then, however, this handy Google map is at least trying to help. It lists all the major airports in the world, tells you whether the WiFi is free, and even tells you what the login process and password is in some cases.
Your destination for required vaccines
This one’s never fun to think about (or do), but it also wouldn’t be fun to come back from a trip with a disease you could have avoided getting. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a travel site where you fill out a quiz about what kind of traveler you are (pregnant, immune compromised) and what kind of travel you’ll be doing (visiting family, a cruise, disaster relief) and where you’re going, and it tells you which vaccinations you might need, if any.