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When I started traveling solo years ago, I quickly found out that my smartphone was my travel agent. From the palm of your hand, you can book flights, plan accommodations, make restaurant reservations, and much more using your smartphone.
If your travel plans have been canceled this year, there’s still an opportunity to plan a vacation that doesn’t require air travel. And, even though travel restrictions are easing, now is the perfect time to plan a road trip. There are hundreds of travel apps available for free and for purchase claiming to make travel easier and more accessible. If you're not sure where to get started, here are a few of the top road trip apps available to help you plan your travel or help plan stops along your route.
1/ Roadtrippers
This app is one of my favorite travel apps. Though, I may be a little biased since Roadtrippers is a Cincinnati-based company and I know some of their former developers. But, regardless of that, this app is a great resource to help you plan your next roadtrip. The Roadtrippers app was built to intersect good navigation with points of interest along any route. And, it does just that.
With Roadtrippers, you can plan your route with stops along the way using its easy-to-use interface. It’s simple to use — just enter your destinations and the app will calculate trip time, mileage, and approximate gas cost. You can view the map of your route and toggle restaurants, camping spots, hotels, local attractions, outdoor recreation areas, and much more. When you add any point of interest to your trip
Roadtrippers also provides a vast library of free guides, including 48-hour city guides, a collection of family road trip guides, camping trip guides, and much more. All are perfect for planning out short trips in cities across the United States.
To gain access to all the features of Roadtrippers — like offline maps, no ads, the ability to plan longer trips, live traffic and more, you’ll have to subscribe to their plus plan.
Available on Android and iOS.
2/ TripScout
TripScout was created to strip away the need to pay for city tour guides and endure hours of walking tours and bus tours. The app employs actual local guides to curate lists of the top cultural and historic sites in a given city. With TripScout you are getting the best of the best from the locals, which is extremely helpful when you’re planning a trip without a travel agent or going on an organized trip.
The app includes pre-recorded talks with local guides that you can listen to as you explore the points of interest given in the app. Even more, TripScout has offline maps so you can enjoy all the points of interest in a city without needing to recharge your phone or worrying about how much data you’re using, which is extremely helpful when you’re travelling internationally.
Although the app doesn’t include hotel or restaurant recommendations, you can still add custom pins to keep track of any other places you’ve found doing your own research. TripScout completely eliminates the need for you to book expensive Segway city tours or walking tours that keep you tied to someone else’s schedule, not your own.
The TripScout app is free to download; however, each city map costs money. Compare that with a $25+ city tour, the app may be well worth the money spent.
Available on Android and iOS.
3/ TripIt
TripIt is a complete travel app with all the features you need to plan and organize your travel. Simply share your hotel bookings, flight details, car rental bookings, dinner reservations, and more with TripIt and it will create a master itinerary for you. All you have to do is either forward your email confirmations to their email address or add your own plans in the App. That’s right, once TripIt has this information, they will aggregate all the information from your travel and put it in one place. The master itinerary will be your go-to place in the app to see all the information about your travel.
The app also works offline so you can check your flight confirmation number, boarding time, terminal, and check-in gate without internet connection. With TripIt, you won’t have to sort though countless emails to find every booking you have -- all your bookings will be neatly organized in the app. And as an added bonus, TripIt also has navigation so you can map any route you’re taking.
TripIt is free to use, but there is an upgrade option for an annual cost which gives you access to additional features. The paid version of TripIt gives you access to live travel alerts, interactive maps, fare tracker, alternative flights, security wait times, and more.
Available on Android and iOS.
3/ iExit
If you’re already on the road, iExit is a great app to find restaurants, gas stations, hotels, and other points of interests that are at each exit on your route -- for up to 100 exits ahead of where you are. The app includes turn-by-turn navigation to the points of interest in the app as well as business phone numbers you can make reservations or check availability before you arrive. If you’re driving an RV, iExit even offers specialized information about parking and where to find scales.
iExit’s navigation and points of interests are limited, so it’s not an all-purpose travel app or guide. But, that doesn’t mean it’s not a good app to use on your road trip. If you’re on the road and looking for places to stop for food, gas, accommodations, and more, iExit is a great app to quickly find your next stop.
iExit is completely free, unless you want to remove the ads from the bottom of their app. That will cost you $1.99 for a lifetime.
Available on Android and iOS.
Conclusion
If you’re planning on hitting the road this summer for your vacation, choose one (or more) of these apps to help you plan your travel and keep you organized while you’re on the road.
If you're heading out for a road trip, check out these road trip tips!