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Whether you travel frequently or seldom, make sure you extract the maximum value from your trip by leveraging the useful tools that are right at your disposal.
Smart Traveler
2 Tips to Ensure a Positive Travel Experience
2 Tips for Ensuring a Positive Travel Experience
Traveling can be an amazing adventure, yet it often has the potential to become overwhelming. Do you want to know the best tips to guarantee a positive travel experience?
Traveling is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Witnessing the world, learning about diverse cultures, meeting new people, and exploring new places are just some of the highlights. As wonderful as traveling is, planning for it can be stressful and exhausting. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way, as there are things you can do and tools you can utilize to ensure a remarkable experience.
Follow our 2 tips to ensure you have a positive travel experience.
1. Prepare for Your Trip in the Right Manner
The first step in planning any trip is, of course, purchasing your tickets, whether they are for planes, trains, or boats. Once that’s taken care of, it’s time to start planning. Any experienced traveler will tell you that you can never plan too much. From packing your bags, deciding on places to visit, activities to do, and accommodations to stay in, planning ahead is your secret weapon.
One of the best aspects of going on a trip is the excitement that builds up to it. This is why planning the trip can be so enjoyable, but it can also be intimidating. With so many blogs online and recommendations from friends and family, it’s almost impossible to decide on activities. To assist you, use Google Trips or Tripit. They are two of the most popular trip planning apps, and both are available for iOS and Android. You can use Google Trips to obtain activity suggestions and customizable day plans. The app helps you discover popular attractions around your destination and allows you to read reviews and ratings from other travelers to ensure it’s suitable for you. One of the best features of Google Trips is that it works even when you don’t have internet access, like when you’ve just landed and haven’t inserted a new SIM card into your phone yet. Tripit is similar in that it helps you plan your trip, but what’s more, it creates an itinerary for you. The San Francisco-based company provides travelers with a master itinerary for every trip they take by automatically transforming their emails, such as car and hotel confirmations, and compiling them into one neat plan. It helps ensure all your plans are in one place so you can find what you need when you need it. Even better, because it’s cloud-based, you can access it from any device.
If you’re overwhelmed and just don’t know where to start when it comes to packing, turn to PackPoint. It’s an app that functions as a packing list builder. It tells you what you need to pack based on the length of your travel plans and any activities you plan to engage in during your trip. Just enter the city you’re planning to travel to, your departure date, and the number of days you’ll be staying there, and you’re all set. The app even takes into account whether it’s a business or leisure trip, clothes appropriate for the weather, and whether an umbrella will be needed according to the forecast. PackPoint was featured as one of Apple’s “Best New Apps” and was mentioned in The Washington Post, LA Times, and Lifehacker. The app ensures you never reach that point where you’re sitting on the plane and regret forgetting your comb.
Aside from packing and planning your activities, another aspect of your trip that you’ll want to plan in advance is accommodation. Airbnb has become extremely popular as it allows you to stay with locals and get a feel for the area. Airbnb is also usually more affordable than hotels. All you have to do is go onto Airbnb’s website or app, enter your destination and dates, and click search. From there, you’ll be able to browse through possible places, read reviews, and book if applicable. If you prefer the hotel atmosphere, give Hotel Tonight a try. The company offers great last-minute hotel deals. You can search by city, attractions, nearby hotels, or on a map. Before finalizing, you can read ratings, reviews, and see photos from other people who have stayed there before. Hotel Tonight is also extremely popular among users due to its excellent 24/7 customer support. Need help or a refund? The support team will sort you out in no time.
2. Travel Comfortably
Once you’ve completed the planning part of your trip, the real fun begins – the actual traveling. When traveling, it’s crucial to be comfortable. When we talk about comfort, we mean cozy plane clothes, noise-canceling headphones, and mouthwatering snacks. But comfort can be taken a step further by making smart decisions at the airport. A favorite app among frequent travelers is LoungeBuddy. The company allows you to purchase worldwide airport lounge access starting at only $25, which gives you access to lounges in places like London, Singapore, and Dubai. You can even purchase access on the day of your travel to ensure you are as comfortable as possible. The best way to use LoungeBuddy is to download its iOS app, which tells you the lounges you have access to and their locations.
It’s also essential to be comfortable when traveling from one place to another. Of course, the top choice here is a private ride service like Uber, which takes you from door to door without the need to exchange money, but you can also use an app such as Citymapper. Citymapper is the ultimate transport app that helps you plan your routes on the go. View maps, search for bus lines, review walking routes, and even get directions from point A to B, all on your phone.
