By Leo Stiles
The travel guide and the phrase book have long been the friend of the seasoned traveller and along with the obligatory insect repellent and sun block, they made up the essential travel kit.
With the rise of smartphones and in particular the iPhone, we thought that it was high time that we found out if we could replace much of the traditional kit with a digital equivalent.
The challenge here was to find the apps that would not just improve upon the tools of old, but also cost a few Euros less.
Digital guide books
One of the biggest names in travel guides, Lonely Planet, has got into apps in a huge way by creating a series of city guides that deliver all the in-depth knowledge the publisher is renowned for, with the location awareness and internet support of the iPhone.
There are more than 50 guides in the collection and they cover many of the world’s most popular tourist-attracting cities, such as New York and Bangkok.
The bulk of the app is taken up with the e-book version of the city guide. This is packed with useful sections such as festival and events, spending guides and a brilliant ‘only in’ page which gives you the lowdown on the best things to do in the city that can’t be found anywhere else.
While a phone isn’t exactly the ideal device to read large volumes of text, the app goes a long way to smoothing things out, with concise writing and a handy button to resize the text.
Peppered throughout every page are links to more detailed pages for attractions, places to eat and accommodation, which makes finding new things to see and do a doddle.
Websites are also linked to, something that further enhances the experience as you can read about an attraction, book tickets and then get directions all using a few jabs of your finger.
The outstanding feature of these apps has to be the map which uses the internet and the GPS function of your phone to pinpoint your location and lists all places of note in your immediate vicinity. This is perfect for any of you who find map reading to be a slog and will save you from looking like a little lost tourist every five minutes.
At just €4.99 each, these apps are brilliant value and offer more features and versatility than their printed counterparts which are sometime three times more expensive.
The Lonely Planet City Guide Apps are available from the iTunes App Store.
Fuel
The cost of petrol in Ireland continues to rise and barely a week goes by without some media pundit offering up the opinion that the era of low cost fuel is over.
Whether this is true or not, there is no denying that a Bank Holiday road trip becomes far less appealing when you are scalped at every service station from Kildare to Kinsale.
The Pumps.ie app is a simple and easy-to-use piece of software that uses your phone to get your location and lists the cheapest service stations nearby or on your particular route.
The results can be a little crazy, with one of our searches revealing a difference of up to 12 cent per litre between petrol pumps that were no more than 10 miles apart. If you plan to take a road trip in Ireland, Pumps.ie is one of the most useful and money saving apps in the kit.
Pumps.ie is free and is available from the iTunes App Store.
Public transport
One of the joys of exploring a European city is the effectiveness of public transport networks that often feel like some sort of magical technology when measured against our own pitiful efforts.
Sometimes it’s not all plain sailing, though, with unfamiliarity and language barriers causing irritation when you hop on the Metro in Rome to get to the Coliseum, only to get off on the wrong stop miles from anywhere.
These apps really are no brainers, especially as most of them are free and they will give you the confidence to uses the buses, trams or trains as if you had lived in a city all your life.
The apps usually feature several languages as well as real-time feeds to let you know when the next train will be.
Some of the apps can also let you plan multiple routes and plot your journey stop-by-stop.
These apps are pretty much essential and make exploring any city, no matter how strange, a pleasure. What they won’t do, however, is tell you if there is chewing gum on a seat, so if you sit on something nasty don’t blame your phone.
The official app from the Berlin Metro is free but the Rome version is €0.79. Some of the London Underground apps are free but the more useful ones can cost up to €2.39. All of them are available through the iTunes App Store.
Currency
Knowing what you are spending can be tricky when you are dealing with unfamiliar notes and coins and it is all too easy to be overcharged, particularly with things like taxi fares (which can be notoriously high for tourists).
This can be avoided by installing a currency converter app on your phone. There are a huge variety of them to be found in the app store and many of them are free, including our converter of choice from XE.com.
This particular app is pretty straightforward and gives you the latest rate for any currency. This can then be stored on the phone so you don’t have to be connected to the internet each time you use it.
The XE.com Converter is free and available from the iTunes App Store.
Flights
The ash cloud fiasco that saw our airspace closed earlier this year taught many travellers to be more on the ball when it came to knowing the status of their flight.
Delayed or cancelled flights are not uncommon and happen for reasons far less exotic than a volcanic plume of ash. A delayed flight can mean more than just irritation and can cost you money through additional accommodation fees and, if you miss connecting flights, a whole lot more.
Once again, your iPhone can come to rescue in the form of the Flight Track Pro app. Of all the apps in our digital travel kit, Flight Track Pro is the most expensive but thankfully, it’s worth it.
The app is a marvel of real-time information and has access to the flight information of 1,400 airlines and 4,000 airports. It can accurately predict the arrival of a plane to the nearest minute and updates according to the latest air traffic information; it even has a map that positions the plane on a global map.
For those of you who might have connecting flights, the app can manage multiple services and predict with accuracy if they are going to match up or if you are going to be eating a lot of airport food. A couple of nice touches are the weather reports service and the notes section for things like booking and seat numbers.
For once this is a high priced app that is worth every cent and is an essential addition to our digital travel kit
Flight Track Pro costs €7.99 and is available from the iTunes App Store.
Accommodation
Accommodation tends to be booked at the same time as flights but having an app to provide you with alternatives can be very handy, particularly if you turn up at your hotel and discover that the porters all resemble serial killers and the room smells like five day old socks. If you find yourself in this situation then a change of room and a firmly locked door may be all you think you can do about it.
The Hostel World app can rescue you here by allowing you browse hostels in just about every location worldwide and get an up to date room price and availability in seconds. All hostels listed in the app have details on their facilities along with photos, customer reviews and a general rating.
You can then specify your dates and the number of people staying and the app will generate a price that includes things like booking fees and service charges. Finally if you are happy with the price you can pay using a credit card without leaving the app.
Just like most good travel apps, Hostel World is location aware so you can easy track down a nearby alternative and find it quickly with the help of Google Maps (which the app links to).
For those of you who prefer something a little more upmarket, there are a number of hotel apps out there, but none that offer the level of excellence that can be found in this one.
Hostel World is free and is available from the iTunes App Store.
Languages
Contrary to popular belief, speaking slowly or loudly does not aid the listener if they have no command of the English language. In fact, all that you will get for your efforts will be a glimpse of that special dirty look that they reserve for ignorant foreigner types.
The language barrier can be the most difficult part of your holiday and the use of phrase books can only make thing worse as you frantically flick through the pages while in the queue for the train tickets only to arrive at the booth with a mangled version of “two tickets to Madrid, pleaseâ€.
Apps to solve this particular problem have a variety of features to ease your linguistic pain. A good choice here is the iSpeak series which offer full translation for all the most common phrases you will need.
To aid your pronunciation there is an audio option that will save your blushes when asking where the toilet is and the app even connects to Google’s translation services for more unusual or complex phrases, all of which can be saved to the app’s database for future use.
Lonely Planet has a variety of language apps but they lack the versatility offered by the custom phrases included in iSpeak.
iSpeak apps cost €1.59 in the iTunes App Store and are available in 9 languages with more to follow in the future.
The Hidden Cost
The complete digital travel kit comes in at €15.36. The cost of buying a Lonely Planet city guide and a phrasebook will cost in the region of €24, give or take one or two quid, depending on where you buy them. This gives the digital versions a clear victory as you get much more for your money than just the basics.
Unfortunately, this victory is not absolute because most of the apps listed here work best with an internet connection and if used indiscriminately, can send your mobile bill sky high with data roaming charges.
O2 and Vodafone both offer the iPhone on bill pay and both operators have data roaming packages available to their customers.
O2 charge €4.98 for a daily use of 50mb within Europe, which should just about cover you if you don’t use your phone to watch video or stream music. If you go over this limit then you will be subject to a charge of €4.98 per Mb.
Anyone going further abroad will be subject to €9.95 for the same daily limit and the same for every Mb you use over this limit.
Vodafone’s offer is a little better with their Vodafone Europe package. An upfront cost of €49 gives you a month -long limit of 10Gb. Unless you are an internet junkie then you won’t even come close to this limit. The down side is that this package only covers 13 European countries.
Outside of this, Vodafone offer the Connect roaming package that cost €14.52 for Europe and €30.25 for the rest of the world. This is the daily cost with a download limit of 500Mb and any usage outside of this will incur a charge of €1.21 per Mb for Europe and €6.05 per Mb for the rest of the world.
There is no doubt about it, using data roaming is expensive. But you can be smart by downloading a free Wi-Fi app which will list all of the free Wi-Fi spots in your area. Many European cities offer free Wi-Fi hotspots, as do most hotels and cafes and if you make the most of them, it is unlikely that you will have to use data roaming at all.
