Life on the go with the smart traveller
Back in the day, to make smart and stress-free travel decisions, people would gather numerous travelling tips from travel catalogues to newspapers or phoned friends for travel recommendations. Booking travel itineraries, from flights to hotels, even meant long lines in the bank or travel agencies. When it came to scheduled flights, people would carry piles of papers — from airline tickets, hotel confirmation to passports.
In this day of mobile technology, the smart traveller is not the one with the most travel catalogues, not even the one carrying several pieces of luggage and definitely not the first one in the airport. Today, the smart traveller only holds one travel essential, and that is an Internet-connected smartphone with charged up batteries. This necessary device has all the information needed for a stress-free vacation. Innovation in mobile technology has made life easier and definitely made travel a whole lot better.
Mobile technology radically changed people’s way of life from their everyday activities to work dynamics and even travel life. A blog post from Kiip mentioned several ways mobile technology has changed travel for the better and one how easy it is today to decide on a destination. Before, to discover new destinations, people would have to secure dozens of brochures and travel catalogues, but mobile technology changed all that.
Travel in style
Today’s smart traveller only needs a mobile phone and several mobile apps to plan the whole vacation. Mobile apps have made it possible to seek bargain hotels, plan travel itineraries and take care of their business and bills while basking under the hot Bali sun or skiing through the Colorado Alps.
The mobile app generation has replaced the good old travel agent with mobile apps that suggest the best-priced airfares such as Expedia, Travelocity, and Kayak. My Destinations and TripAdvisor also offer travel information tips for a hassle free vacation. And then there’s Destinations on Google, which is a go-to mobile app with a wide collection of easy-to-browse options. It has integrated its services with Google Flight and Hotel search to browse on cheap flights and instantly see hotel prices in real time.
Travel documents need not be as bulky as it was before, thanks to Tripit. The mobile app saves copies of passport, hotel information and other travel documents safely and securely on a mobile phone. The mobile app is also available offline, so there is no need to worry about losing data connection.
Smart travellers have no problem getting around while on vacation because Waze provides traffic and navigation updates through their mobile phones. Waze is the largest community-based traffic and navigation app.
When boredom strikes, the smart traveller always has entertainment on the go, be it books crossword puzzles or an endless list of songs. Entertainment mobile apps range from addicting games, like puzzles, to digital libraries and music on-demand, like Spotify.
Even while on vacation the smart traveller is updated with what‘s happening around the world, be it business updates or current events. Business Insider and Bloomberg are great sources of business news. But for travellers who are always on the go, Born2Invest is a mobile business news app that delivers carefully curated business content in an 80-word summary. The brief summary allows for easier navigation from one news story to another. The app has a business travel and luxury section as well, providing savvy travellers up-to-date information on global hotspots and trends in the travel industry that they should know of.
A significant part of travel means scouting the best food finds within an area. The mobile app Restaurant Finder is a convenient way to find restaurants around the area by typing a zip code. But when it comes to locally grown food Farmstand is the mobile app that connects users with the best local farmer’s market nearby.
Photos are the best travel memories to keep, so while on vacation, travellers take as many photos and let friends indulge in their vacation getaway through Snapchat and Instagram.
