Here is a guest post from John works works for a travel insurance company specialising in holiday let insurance and general insurance for holiday homes. He’s a keen traveller and never goes anywhere without his trusty iPhone. If you’d like to do a guest post please see here
With globalisation making the world an ever smaller place, thousands of people every year travel internationally for either business, holidaying or just for the travel. But as most of us will know travelling to foreign countries brings with it a host of issues, particularly if you’re looking to buy and lease a holiday home abroad.
So with that in mind, here’s a list of some top iPhone apps to help you on your travels:
1. Rent Holiday Homes and Villas
Yes that’s the title of the application, not just me being lazy! This app allows you to search for a holiday home or villa from 1000’s around the world, as many families are now choosing to rent a holiday home for their vacation, rather than spending more money on a less private hotel room. The application also works well for property owners, giving them the ability to upload details of their property to prospective renters; meaning home-owners and rental agents can get their properties viewable to a potential 22 million iPhone users throughout the world.
2. iTranslate
A great little app for those moments when you’re stuck in a shop or restaurant while in a foreign country and you can’t remember how to ask for bread. This application allows you to type in the phrase you’re after and the iPhone will show you a translated response on the screen, as well as letting you hear how the phrase should be pronounced. From the quick look I’ve seen it’s a nice, clean interface that works very well for shorter conversations and phrases. Could be extremely useful for those travelling to several different countries, or for those who are travelling to a country where they don’t speak the language at all.
3. FourSquare
An awesome little application that’s more of a social media tool than an all-out guide, Foursqaure collects user recommendations and experiences of local hotels, restaurants, theatres, etc. So when you’re in an area and you want to know what’s good, turn on the application and the built in GPS will find where you are and provide you with a stream of user-generated recommendations of things to do in the area. A nice app, well designed and with enough users generating content to make it worth getting.
4. Currency
Simple, easy and free, Currency allows you to quickly convert one currency to another. Not too much to this application but it works perfectly, has a nice interface and included every currency I wanted to look for. Feels a little like it should have come as a built in app with the iPhone!
5. Pennies
An extremely useful application for keeping track of your budget and staying on top of your daily spending, particularly useful for travellers and students as it allows you to keep tabs on your day-to-day payments, updating your available balance as you go. A perfect application if you’re looking at sticking to a tight budget while on holiday or travelling.
6. World Mate
This is a great little app that allows users to quickly and easily find flight details, hotel information and a fair amount of other travel information based on your location. It’s not by any means exhaustive, but it you specify where you’re travelling to (and from) it will provide you with some hotel suggestions as well as flight details, price, etc. organised by airline. From what I can the results differ quite drastically dependant on the location of your searches, but I imagine this will change as the app gets reworked and they can database more information.
7. Flightcaster
Another application that can tell you your flight details, except this one’s a little more in-depth. It will tell you all the usual details, as well as the current flight status and even a prediction on the likelihood of your flight being cancelled or delayed (taking into account weather, other delays, incoming flights, etc). The app then gives you’ve a percentile statistic on how likely your plane is to be delayed, and by how long. One of the most expensive apps on this list, but also one of the better ones as it could end up being VERY useful.
Wherever you’re going on holiday, and whatever your needs, you’re bound to find an app to make your life that little bit easier. Have a good look on the app store before you go away and try some of the apps mentioned above, I guarantee you’ll find something useful.
If you haven’t got an iPhone (or any kind of smartphone) it’s time to catch up with the rest of us and get yourself a next generation mobile phone, you don’t know what you’re missing.
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I always believe Skype is the best application to stay connected with your family ..
It really is, not a lot beats it