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Travel Etiquette: Best Travel Apps for Your Next Trip

02 Sep 2014 By: Diane Gottsman

When it comes to apps, trying to find the best one for your travel needs can end up making you feel overwhelmed. Bidding on a hotel room? Holding out on the cheapest gas for your rental? Need someone to create your itinerary? There’s an app for that, and the best part is they’re free! Here are a few suggestions you may find helpful…

Plan Trips

Organize your travel plans all in one place by simply forwarding your travel confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com and TripIt creates a detailed daily itinerary for your trip. If you’re on the road for work, Concur is the best app for business travelers that makes expense reporting and keeping track of receipts easy on the go.

Find Places

TripAdvisor, which ranks #1 for travel planning, is a great tool when finding places to stay. You’ll find thorough and fair customer reviews as well as tips on which sights are worth seeing or skipping. FastFood is helpful when trying to find a place to eat anywhere. And on the off-chance that you’d rather stay in while on vacation, GrubHub is just the thing for food delivery and takeout.

Make Reservations

OpenTable allows you to make restaurant reservations in the US, Canada, Mexico and Europe, while accumulating points to earn gift certificates to use for date nights. Booking.com, known for being fast and finding suitable accommodations at the lowest prices, is the top app for hotel booking worldwide. Kayak is a beast of a travel engine, serving up everything from hotel, flight, car search and booking to flight tracking and itinerary management.

Save Money

If you’re looking to save money, Priceline is a quick way to lock in the best prices as it tells you winning bids for hotels, flight, and cars. BestParking has the most accurate data for the cheapest and most convenient parking facilities. So much so that they back their claim with a $5 Starbucks gift card if they give you inaccurate information. GasBuddy quickly finds the best gasoline prices nearby so you won’t have to empty your wallet at the pump. Want in on deals for cocktails and appetizers? Happy Hours shows all the food and drink specials going on near you.

GPS Navigation

Waze is probably the best navigation app out there. Just by having the app open, a community of drivers contributes real-time traffic info while it serves as a GPS voice-guided navigation. But when it comes to turn-by-turn navigation for driving, biking or walking domestically and abroad, GoogleMaps still reigns supreme.

While no technology is perfect, these apps keep travel issues to a minimum. They’re available for iPhone, Android, and Windows phones. So load up your smartphone with a few of these helpful tools and you’ll find yourself saving a lot more time and money to relax, rejuvenate, and really enjoy the journey, wherever you are.

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Diane Gottsman

Diane Gottsman is a national etiquette expert and modern manners professional, sought out industry leader, television personality, accomplished speaker, Huffington Post blogger, author, and the owner of The Protocol School of Texas, a company specializing in executive leadership and etiquette training. Diane is routinely quoted in national and international media including The New York Times, The BBC, CNN, Bloomberg Business Week, Kiplinger, Huffington Post Canada, U.S. News and World Report, and Forbes. She is the resident etiquette expert for two popular morning talk shows, SA Living and Good Day Austin. She has been seen on The TODAY Show, HLN Headline News, WGN Chicago, and CBS Sunday Morning. Her clients range from university students to Fortune 500 companies and her workshops cover topics ranging from tattoos in the workplace to technology at the dinner table and the proper use of social media.