Our Top 5 Travel Booking Apps
Everybody likes to travel a bit differently and everybody travels for a different purpose. When we travel, we like to get the most bang for our buck while also still being able to enjoy the experiences around us! If your style of travel includes boujee hotels, five star flights, and bullet trains that get you places the absolute quickest way possible this may not be the advice you’re looking for. Our style of travel includes saving a little here and there by finding the best prices using some of our favorite travel apps. Spencer and I are creatures of habit and have perused many different apps and booking websites and have found a few that we have been able to trust throughout our entire travelling experience! While shopping around for the best prices is absolutely something you should do, there are plenty of benefits to finding a trusted site to use more often since many will have rewards for people who repeatedly use their services for booking. Our top choices for travel booking includes Booking.com, Airalo, GetYourGuide, Skyscanner, and Omio, let us tell you why!
#1 Skyscanner for Booking Flights:
When you’re booking flights it can be extremely tedious to check every single airline website making it very difficult to find out which flight has the best price as well as the best flight path. Many airline companies are also quite expensive to book with since they obviously only have a limited selection of options with their airline and their affiliates. Looking at one specific airline can decrease your options significantly and increase the amount you pay per flight. When we look to book flights, especially when we are already out of the country we always turn to Skyscanner to find the best flights for the best prices! Skyscanner does a broad search over many different airlines and partners to get you an extensive list of flight options. They also allow you to change your specifications for things like direct flights, baggage allowance, and even if you have specific airlines you’d prefer to check. You can sort the flights by the best (least amount of time) or the cheapest (which can be a very long flight). If you keep the standard filter, Skyscanner will show you the best flight for the cheapest or most reasonable price. This allows you to choose what you feel is most important to you when you book a flight and allows you to see your list of options without having to jump from site to site!
Another really amazing thing that Skyscanner does is allow you to see which city would be the cheapest to fly into or out of if you are undecided on where you want to go. If you know the country, you can search for all flights within that country and the app will show you all of the flights from each city starting with the cheapest or most popular city to get flights in. This is a really nice feature if you like to travel with a bit of flexibility and you might even find a city that you haven’t even heard of before! You can also see the prices of flights for each day in a month which is great when you are deciding when you want to go. This feature allows you to see which week or day might be the cheapest option for flights, therefore narrowing down the decisions you need to make during the planning process. Skyscanner will also search for hotels by scanning a multitude of different hotel booking platforms which is awesome if you don’t want to look through all of them and price match, Skyscanner does it for you! Lastly, you can also book a car with Skyscanner. We have not tested out this option yet but I’m sure it’s just as amazing as the rest of this app! Skyscanner has been our trusted and true option for booking flights within almost every country that we’ve visited so far!
#2 Booking.com for Booking Hotels:
Where you stay while you are travelling can really make or break your experience. If the room is dirty, the bed uncomfortable, the food is bad, or the location makes it impossible to explore you likely won’t enjoy the rest of your trip to its fullest potential. Booking.com allows you to fully customize your stay and lets you choose what is most important to you for your travel accommodations. We know that almost every other booking site allows you to set a multitude of filters so that you are able to choose the perfect place for your stay but Booking is honestly one of the easiest to use and has some really neat filter options. Obviously it has all of the usual filters like budget, rating, meals, facilities, etc., but they also have some more unique filters like room/property accessibility, location ratings, brands, sustainability score, and even if the place is LGBTQ+ friendly depending on the location! The customization options can really help narrow down how many places you need to sift through before finding the perfect one. You are able to choose between staying in a hotel, apartment, villas, vacation homes, resorts, and even hostels. Having too many options can be overwhelming so the ability to significantly narrow down what kind of accommodation you’re looking for can be very helpful and a big time saver. We have found amazing hotels for drastically discounted prices, and the more you book with this site, the more you save!
#3 GetYourGuide for Booking Activities:
Depending on what kind of traveller you are there might be a few different kinds of activities that you’ll be looking for while you’re away. Sometimes you want something exciting and challenging like a hike, or caving, or riding an ATV. Sometimes you might want something more tranquil like a spa, or a museum, or an art exhibit. And sometimes you might be looking for some way to experience the local culture like a cooking class, or a cultural show, or a local guide to take you around the city. Thankfully for you, GetYourGuide has all these types of experiences available to book! GetYourGuide makes it easy to search for activities and experiences available within the city you’re staying in and also allows you to customize what kind of experience you are looking for and the price range you want to stay in. Some experiences might include some of the typical and popular activities available within that city but they also will have some more unique activities that will leave you with some super fun and even silly stories to come home with! The GetYourGuide app is incredibly easy to use, the ratings for activities are usually accurate, and the companies they book with are reliable and great at communicating info with you. We would highly recommend checking out this app the next time you need something to do while travelling!
Another great option for booking local activities is to check with your hotel! They will always have great suggestions for things to do around the city and can easily book tours and experiences for you directly from the hotel. Many times your hotel will also have vouchers and discounts with specific travel companies to help you save money. And you’ll know that the company will be reliable if it’s booked directly through the hotel. The hotel staff are also great at connecting you with local tour guides or tour groups, and will also have maps with restaurant or shopping suggestions to get you started. The only thing to keep in mind is that the tour companies and restaurants linked with the hotel might be more expensive than if you look elsewhere for your activities. If this is not an issue for you it might be nice to connect with the hotel staff and they will surely point you in the right direction!
#4 Omio for Booking Buses and Trains:
If you’re like us and love to city hop during your travels, it is super important to choose reliable companies to book your buses and train trips with. For this type of booking you’ll likely need to find a more local app to download or find a local website if you want to find the best prices and the most reliable options. Within places like Europe, each country or city likely has their own app or website where you can look up and book train/bus trips within that city or country. There are also broader scale apps that will gather bus/train options throughout Europe to provide a faster way of finding potential options. The best one that we use is Omio! Omio is great at sifting through what is available from different travel companies and finding you the best option for your trip between cities and even between countries. The app is easy to use and will show you the fastest route to get where you need to go. You can even book a ferry trip with it! I’ve been using the app whenever I go to Europe for the past few years and have made it to my destination successfully every time! Every place you go is going to have their own options for transportation booking apps and it is very important to research them before you go somewhere. Some sites are far more reliable than others so make sure you read the reviews and take them seriously. Getting stranded somewhere, or not making it to your next destination is not an option. There is always a way to get from point A to B and we certainly want to make sure you make it there!
#5 Airalo for SIM Cards:
There are a couple great ways of getting a SIM card while you’re away to ensure that you always have data available without paying the ridiculous prices set up by your cellphone service provider! One option is to purchase a SIM card locally once you’ve reached your destination, and the other option is to purchase an eSIM. We have tried both options and while both have merit, here are our thoughts on how to decide which option might be best for you!
Purchasing a physical SIM card from the country you are visiting is definitely the cheapest option, and it is relatively easy to inter-change your SIM card once you’ve purchased it. However, you’ll need to change your phone number to a local one and the biggest trick is that you need to find a place to purchase said SIM card. Typically, you can buy one from the airport but this will likely defeat the “cheapness” benefit since airports like to inflate prices. If not from the airport, you’ll have to look around the city and find a place that sells them. This can be done relatively easily but you might be running the chance that you’ll be wandering around a new city without service for a small amount of time. If that doesn’t stress you out this is absolutely the cheapest option for getting reliable cellphone data in another country!
The second option for obtaining cellphone data abroad and is, in my opinion, the easiest and most hassle free option is purchasing an eSIM. Now, this option is definitely a little more expensive, but the peace of mind of knowing you’ll have service immediately after touching down is worth the expense. Like anything there are a multitude of options, but our choice of eSIM provider is through Airalo! Airalo is awesome because you can purchase an eSIM locally (by city or country), regionally (continent and other regions), or they also have a global option where you can buy an eSIM that will connect to cell towers around the world. Once you install the eSIM on your device it is ready to go. Airalo provides easy to follow, step-by-step instructions on how to download and install your chosen eSIM. And once it’s installed, you are good to go! You can buy one for a few days, a week, a month, or even longer, and they have top up options available if you use more data than expected. Lastly, Airalo has an awesome rewards system where the more you use the service you will qualify for cashback that you can use towards your next eSIM. There is no time limit in which you need to use your rewards, so it will be available whenever you choose to do your next trip. Airalo is great at connecting to local towers ensures you always have a strong connection so you won’t risk being stranded anywhere! Both SIM card options are great, it really just depends on what you value most in your travels.
This is not to say that there aren’t many other amazing apps and sites you can use for your own travels, but these happen to be the ones we’ve used the most for a successful years worth of travelling. Finding a useful and reliable booking site is essential when you go on a trip. You don’t want to accidently waste your money or get stuck with sub-par activities and accommodations. We want you to have the most successful, exciting, and worth-while trip possible, and using some of our favourite travel apps will most definitely get you there!
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