The best iPhone travel apps

The whole business of travel is being made ever easier with the popularity of the iPhone; its simplicity seems to make it a popular choice for those looking to enhance their travelling experience, with users able to look at destinations, research prices, check availability of accommodation and even book their holidays through their handsets.

And with the popularity of its application store soaring, the amount of new apps vying for the 21^st century travellers’ cash is also on the rise. But not all apps are worth the price – and that even includes some of the free ones. So to help you separate the wheat from the chaff we’ve looked at a few of the phone’s most useful apps detailing their key features, value for money and overall usefulness.

Factbook – If you’d like to brush up on a foreign country, or at least appear to be a self-styled expert, then Factbook should be right up your street. Users are presented with a wealth of information on the world’s countries, including geography, people, government, economy, transportation, flag information and even any transnational issues – useful for avoiding any diplomatic incidents on your break!

FactBook is incredibly user friendly, packed with useful content and at only 59p its a bit of a bargain for international travellers, travelling know-it-alls and aspiring pub quiz cheats.

AA Travel Guide – AA Guides have become a national institution, providing UK travellers with great places to stay, things to do and fine dining locations for nearly a century. The Travel Guide app works by finding your location and then presenting a list of the best hotels, restaurants, attractions, pubs, golf courses and campsites nearby. Or if you’re planning a trip elsewhere, you can also search by postcode and location.

Although it costs £4.99 – which is quite pricy in app terms – and the ‘Around Me’ app offers similar content for free, the added reviews and editorial content, not to mention reliability, make the AA Travel Guide a worthy investment for UK travellers.

Tripjournal – this app uses GPS technology to track your movements on holiday. As you continue your journey you can mark waypoints, take photos and make notes. One of the best features of Tripjournal is that after completing your trip you can export the data via email and then open it in Google Earth to track your journey from above. And if you’re feeling particularly uncharitable, you can also upload your travel photos direct to Facebook, which is guaranteed to annoy your friends at home!

Tripjournal is fairly reasonable at £1.79 and is sure to be continually updated with new features and functionality.

Directgov Travel News – this app provides Department of Transport travel updates and info direct to the user’s handset. By breaking down the types of transport and types of delay into categories it makes it easier for the user to find relevant info. However, when starting a new search your only options are broad regions such as ‘Scotland’ and ‘Yorkshire’, and given the amount of delays on the roads anyway, it can make finding specific travel info on the map a bit of a challenge.

But even with a few user issues, Directgov is a free app offering official up-to-date information and therefore well worth a download for iPhone users looking to avoid congestion on their UK break.

Due to the fact that many apps are updated on a regular basis the above information may only be relevant for a short period of time, therefore we recommend checking user reviews on the Apple store (links above). Also keep checking the easycottages.com blog for news and travel app reviews.

Thanks for reading.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 9:18 am and is filed under England, France, Scotland, Wales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.