I’ve used my travel agency background experience to select what we consider to be the most useful and essential travel apps using the following criteria:
- Intuitive – no instruction manuals!
- Instant gratification – fun to use.
- Genuinely useful
- Unbiased accurate and live information
The Apps Organiser – save time by organising your travel apps
Create a homepage shortcut to all your Travel Apps.
With just one icon revealing all your travel apps, you’ll avoid the frustration of searching through All Apps
Search for: Apps Organizer (version 1.5.18) by Fabio Collini
Trains
This is the best app ever!
You’re on that station platform, wondering what time the train will really arrive … or what the best alternative route is going to be.
Or, you’re in a meeting and wondering if your train will be leaving on time or do you have an extra 10 minutes?
Immediate help is at hand, just one click away, from the easy to use, friendly app that provides up-to-the-second train operating information and offer alternative routes
The information can be more up-to-date than station announcements!
Top Features:
- Live Schedules
- Departures and Arrivals information
- Recent stations and routes feature
- Purchase tickets with no fees
- Most information is ONE click away
- Live arrival and departure board even includes St Pancras International Eurostar trains.
This App is produced by Cross Country, a “Train Operating Company” so you can trust the information 100%
This App is FREE whilst similar alternatives (Thales “National Rail Planner Live”) cost £3.49
Search for “Train Tickets” by CrossCountry
British Airways
The British Airways App is an essential tool for your next flight.
Helps with the following:
- Check-in
- Paper-free boarding card
- Seat selection
- Executive membership
You need to be a BA Executive Club member to take full advantage of this app
Our Verdict: A must have app even if you only fly once with BA!
Best apps for flight search
Google
We would expect Google to provide the best flight search app. What they offer is OnTheFly, which was created by a company called ITA, which Google purchased for $700 Million
Some of the look-and-feel functions are slick, such as the option to choose other airports by distance from that requested, however you cannot choose LON for all London airports; rather, you are forced to select Heathrow, Stansted, and Gatwick individually.
Flight Search should be unbiased and all airlines must be included.
OnTheFly is, in our opinion, useless because of the absence of no-frills airlines such as easyJet or Ryanair. Furthermore, the fares displayed are expensive – only “published” fares, and no discounted ticket prices.
Our verdict: Don’t use this app!
KAYAK
Similar to the above, there is an absence of Ryanair so you cannot rely on the flight search results.
Prices seem to be fixed in USD
Skyscanner
This must be the best flight search app, brought to you by Skyscanner. We feature Skyscanner on our site because it is the most accurate and unbiased flight search available in the UK today.
Skyscanner offers all low cost airlines including Ryanair. And it sends you direct to the Ryanair and other airlines sites directly.
Flight booking by app is in its infancy and we recommend booking via a standard internet browser, but the Skyscanner app gets our approval for information on the go.
Hotel search
Hotel Reservation Service HRS
The HRS app is friendly, easy to use and the following features make it our top recommendation:
- Full details including multimedia and map placement
- 250,000 hotels worldwide.
- Flexible booking arrangements
For bookers of business travel, flexibility is essential. HRS allows most bookings to be held up to 6pm and cancelled prior, free of charge. And credit cards are charged locally at check-out.
Hotels.com
Hotels.com offers discounts of typically 10 – 15% via this easy to use, if American biased app.
The search facility using your GPS location is particularly handy for business travellers. Their loyalty scheme, ‘Welcome Rewards’ gives one night free for every 10 nights booked.
But, bookings have to be prepaid in full offering little flexibility.
Hotels Combined
Our favourite Internet based hotel search engine is HotelsCombined but their app is a relatively unfriendly. It behaves more like a web portal than a true app. Hopefully Hotels Combined will update their app.
Whilst apps are good for on-the-go research, they cannot replicate all the benefits of a full sized web based search engine such as the one we feature for booking hotels: http://www.bookingbusinesstravel.com/hotels/
Google Translate
The essential travel app will translate your phrase into most languages with a playback facility.
Can’t say more, simply try it!
