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The Wonder of Tech is pleased to welcome Kayla Matthews as a guest author. She writes about her favorite tech tools for travel.
Part of going on vacation means disconnecting from the stresses in your life and not bogging down your days with things like catching up on email or texting co-workers.
That doesn’t mean you need to disconnect from all technology, however. In fact, there are many tech tools and apps you can use to complement your vacation and make it even better.
If you want to make this year’s vacation the best yet, these five tools can help.
Here are my five favorite travel tech tools:
Viator
Viator offers insider deals on hidden local treasures and famous attractions alike, and lets you skip long lines using the mobile vouchers offered by the app. This free iOS and Android app is like a discount-finder combined with a local travel guide.
Viator is owned by parent company TripAdvisor and has been named one of National Geographic’s “Favorite On-The-Road Apps.”
This video shows how Viator works:
Just search near your current location – wherever that is – and get suggestions for the best things to do in the area. Not totally sold on an activity? You can watch videos of tours and attractions before you commit.
Viator is available free for
Hopper
The first thing you need to do when going on vacation is book your trip. There are plenty of travel apps that can help with this, but Hopper for both Android and iOS aims to save you as much money as possible.
This app predicts the best and cheapest time to fly and purchase tickets and alerts you when the price of your desired flight drops. Its developers say its users save an average of $50 per flight.
In addition to helping you book your flight, Hopper gives personalized recommendations on trips you may be interested in.
The more money you save when planning your trip, the more you’ll have to spend during your vacation, and the Hopper app is an easy way to do that.
Links to the free Hopper app are available at the Hopper website.
Chipolo
There are lots of Bluetooth tracking devices and apps on the market, but Chipolo is among the best for making sure you don’t lose things such as your luggage or wallet.
This video shows how Chipolo works:
Simply attach the small disk to the item you’d like to track, whether it’s your checked luggage, your carry-on, keys, or anything else. Using the device’s Android or iOS app, you can make the device ring a 100-decibel melody if you’re within Bluetooth range.
If you’re not within range and your item is completely lost, the app uses a map to show you where you were last in range, and it can also alert you when another Chipolo user is within range of your device.
Chipolo is available from the Chipolo website, beginning at $24 for one disk. Discounts are available if you buy multiple disks.
Google Translate
If you’re heading on vacation to a country where a different language is spoken, translation apps such as Google Translate can be vital.
Google Translate is largely an online service, but, as a savvy traveler, you can download languages directly to your device so you can translate while offline.
=> See, Google Translate — How to Download Language to Use Offline
Another benefit to downloading languages is being able to translate things such as menus or signage using your device’s camera. This feature supports nearly 30 languages, including Spanish, French, German, Chinese and Russian.
Google Translate is available free for:
Luggage Scale
There’s nothing more deflating than packing for your vacation, only to arrive at the airport and get hit with extra fees because your luggage is overweight. One way to overcome that is to weigh your luggage at home before you set out for the airport. But what if you’re traveling and don’t have a scale handy?
There are a number of handy digital luggage scales on the market, but one of the best is from Victorinox, the company behind Swiss Army gear. Their luggage scale features a large screen that’s easy to read, and weighs luggage up to 110 pounds or 50 kilograms.
Be a smarter traveler and enjoy your vacation more by avoiding those pesky airline fees.
This digital luggage scale is available at the Victorinox website for $40 or at Amazon, currently on sale for $32.
Your Thoughts
Do you use tech tools when you travel? Have you used any of these tech tools? Which tech tools do you use when you travel?
Share your thoughts in the Comments section below!
Kayla Matthews is a tech blogger, contributing to leading tech websites around the Internet. To read more posts from Kayla, check out her personal tech blog, Productivity Bytes.
* Travel image courtesy of Slava Bowman via Creative Commons and Unsplash
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Hi Carolyn,
We have used ToursByLocals.com several times for great professional guides who specialize in small party tours. They can cover an entire city (e.g. most recently Lisbon for us) or special sites or museums. The website gives multiple guides, photos, client comments, typical tours, and calendar of availability.
A valuable resource.
Hi Lee, Thanks for the great suggestion about your favorite travel website. That’s a wonderful idea to have locals give tours, who better to do tours than locals?
Happy travels, Lee.
Thanks for the suggestion, Lee! I’ll have to check this out sometime. ^_^
Hello Kayla,
Nice to see you here on Carolyn’s site 🙂
Great help over here. Indeed vacations are must and it need to plan out well before setting it on a roll.
We need to check all the things before going out to some other place. Hotels, transportation everything need to be managed so
that one can enjoy their vacations to the fullest.
I am amazed to see Chipolo, such a worthy device to get. I always tend to loose my keys. This would be relief to get it.
Thanks for the share.
Shantanu.
Thanks, Shantanu! And if you like, Chipolo, there are a lot of other similar gadgets out there too! Another one I really like is called “Tile.” Could be worth looking into.
Thanks for reading!