As world travelers, we often get asked about the travel planning tools and resources we use. Gone are the days when we’d go to AAA and request a TripTik or go to the library and check out books for our next destination.
We’ve compiled this list of the tools we use most regularly and why we think they are the best ones. We hope that you find them helpful as you begin planning your next Bucket List travel adventure!
Tours & Activity Tools
When you go on vacation or travel, you’re there to see and do new experiences, right? So how do you find the best ones? There are several great travel planning tools to help you research and decide what to do. These are our 5 favorite ones:
- Viator – With over 300,000 experiences, classes, and guided tours, Viator has something for everyone. It’s my favorite because it offers maximum flexibility – You can cancel most tours up to 24 hours before departure, and many of their programs have a “Reserve now, Pay later” option.
- Get Your Guide – This tool also offers thousands of choices for activities, guided tours and classes, including many niche offerings that you can’t find anywhere else.
- Trip Advisor – This resource offers both paid activities and info about free places you can go such as parks and monuments. It’s great for getting an overview of an area, but not as helpful for actually booking activities and tours.
- GuruWalk and Freetour.com – offer free, guided walking tours in major cities. Perfect for getting an overview and “lay of the land” when you first arrive in a new city. At the end of the tour, tip the guide whatever you feel they deserve.
Accommodations & Lodging Tools
- Booking.com is my go-to platform for finding affordable lodging. It has the greatest flexibility in terms of cancellation, I can pay much closer to our stay instead when I book, and it offers tons of filter options (see below).
And now that we’ve reached the top level of the Genius Loyalty Program, we get discounted pricing and free breakfast at some places.
Kari’s Travel Tip: Always read the details before you book. Not all properties offer free cancellation or delayed payment options.
- Airbnb is my next go-to source if I can’t find what I want on Booking.com. Depending on the location, sometimes Airbnb is priced a lot higher than Booking, but in some places, even with all their fees, their costs come out quite a bit lower.
- VRBO or Hotels.com are my back ups if the other platforms come up empty.
Flight Tools
- Google Flights is what I use to research the best airfare, times and connections. Then we go to the airline’s website to actually book. Our criteria includes length of flights, length of layovers, and what time will we arrive/depart.
The only thing I dislike about Google Flights is that it does not include baggage fees in the calculation. So you have to research that separately to see what’s included.
Kari’s Travel Tip: Try to depart the USA on a major airline such as United or Delta. Even if you eventually use smaller regional airlines to travel across the world, you get the benefits of a more generous luggage weight limit and partner sharing.
- SkyScanner is another popular tool that many people like. It usually gives similar results to Google Flights since they are all tapping into the same airline systems.
Rental Cars & Navigation Tools
In some destinations, we rent a car to do more exploring.
- RentalCars.com is what we use to find the best pricing for the type of car we want from a broad selection of providers. You can filter the cars down to the type, size and type of transmission you want.
- DiscoverCars.com is another popular car search tool. I find it a bit clunky to use, but for lots of people, it’s their go-to source.
- Turo allows you to rent directly from private car owners using the Turo app. It is available in the US, Canada and Australia. We used it in Vancouver and $aved a ton!
- Local Facebook Groups are also good for finding private parties that will rent you their personal car. We did that in Costa Rica. Just vet the person carefully!
Kari’s Travel Tip: ALWAYS read the fine print about the auto insurance being offered vs. what is required. It’s not always included when you’re shopping online for pricing. Rental companies will go to great lengths to upsell you expensive insurance options.
It’s also important to know what your at-home auto insurance covers vs. what your credit card covers. And then decide what risks you are comfortable taking.
Navigation Tools
Once we’ve picked up our rental car, Google Maps is our preferred navigation tool.
Kari’s Travel Tip: Don’t forget to enter your destination (and stops) and hit Start before you leave the WiFi of your accommodation. After that, you should be able to navigate just fine, even if there is not good cellular signal in remote areas.
A lot of people prefer Waze over Google Maps, but we get annoyed when it re-routes us dozens of times between point A and point B.
Ride Share Apps
When we don’t have a rental car, we rely on ride share apps to get to places beyond a walkable distance or where the trains and buses don’t go.
- Uber – we used Uber in Panama City to get to various parks and attractions, including the Panama Canal.
- Grab – a ride share app used in SE Asia that is super affordable. We used it a lot in Thailand and Vietnam.
- Bolt – The main ride share app we used in Portugal.
Other Transportation Tools
When trying to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B, there are some great tools that will help you figure it out, whether it’s walking, driving, taking a train, bus or flight.
- 12Go – This super helpful website lets you find and book transportation options from Point A to Point B in Southeast Asia and Australia. Whether it’s buses, taxis, trains, water transportation, flights and more.
In this example from Bangkok to Chiang Mai in Thailand, there are 166 different options, including trains, buses, flights and taxis. On the web or in the App, you can filter by transportation type, price, time of day, duration of trip and more.
- Rome2Rio is another website that lets you search for transportation options and it covers a broader range of destinations, including Europe, the US, Canada, Central and South America and more.
- Google Maps also offers assistance for finding bus and train routes. We used it in Munich to get from downtown out to the BMW and Olympic Park venues on the train. We also used it to take the city bus to various destinations.
We couldn’t book our tickets on the app, but it told us which route to take and what time it was leaving each station/stop.
Technology and Data Tools
Oh my goodness! We Americans are certainly dependent on our tech gear, aren’t we? Bill and I try to unplug as much as we can while traveling, but there are just some things that require a connection to keep us on the go. Here are some of our favorites:
- Airalo eSims – in our travels all around the world, I have used an Airalo eSim to keep my phone connected to data when WiFi is not available. Easy to use, easy to top-off if I run out. They offer both country specific eSims or regional eSims which work great if you are covering more than one country in the same area.
- Amazon Fire Stick – The Fire Stick allows us to watch shows on our streaming subscriptions without logging-in on the TV itself. We plug the Firestick into the TV at our accommodation, connect to the local WiFi and we are good to go!
- Nord VPN – we use this program on each of our devices to connect to a US Based server. This allows us to watch American TV shows or news channels, even if we’re in Italy or Costa Rica. We purchase an annual subscription to Nord.
Communication Tools
Being able to communicate is KEY when you are traveling. People in different parts of the world use different tools and different languages than we do in the US. Here are some our favorites:
- WhatsApp – while Americans text, talk and do video calls on their phones, the rest of the world (including Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa and Central/South America) does all those tasks on WhatsApp.
Kari’s Travel Tip: Download WhatsApp before your trip and learn how it works. It’s how you will communicate with your drivers, guides, accommodation hosts, and lots of other travelers you meet.
When sharing your number, don’t forget to include the +1 in front of your area code. You can also create a QR code on WhatsApp for others to scan.
WhatsApp uses your US phone number, but it only works with others also using the app. I also have WhatsApp on my laptop so I can use it there instead of my phone.
As long as you are on WiFi or using your eSim data, you won’t incur expensive international roaming costs from your US Based phone provider. - Google Translate – I love this tool and rely on it heavily when we travel. In stores, I use it to ask questions like “Where are the onions?” or “Do you have hamburger?” I just type or speak it, and then show the translation to the store employee.
Even better is the camera feature! You take a picture of a food label, a menu, or cooking instructions, and it instantly translates the text for you.
Other Cool Travel Planning Tools We Use
- Xe – this app is our go to Currency Converter. It quickly allows you to convert both ways and is straight forward to use. It’s available in the Apple Play and Google Play stores.
- TooGoodToGo – the goal of this app is to prevent food waste. Restaurants, hotels, bakeries and grocery stores offer their extra food items at a great discount, rather than putting them in a landfill.
You don’t know what you’re getting until you go pick up your order. Sometimes you get a bounty of food that you can eat for days. Sometimes you get an assortment of weird and crazy foods you never would have tried before. TooGoodToGo is currently available in Europe, the USA, Canada and Melbourne, Australia.
- Best Time to Visit South America – If you are planning a trip to South America, this website details the best months of the year to visit various destinations based on the weather, crowds, holidays and other factors.
Conclusion: Our Favorite Travel Planning Tools
In reading about our go-to travel planning tools, I hope you found some new resources to help you with your own trip planning! If you ever have questions about where to look, don’t hesitate to reach out!
Bonus Material: My Filters on Booking.com
Several people have asked what filters I use to narrow down my choices on Booking.com. These are based on the style of travel that Bill and I prefer. Your criteria might be very different, depending on location, length of stay and what’s important to you.
We generally stay in locations for 1-3 weeks at a time so we like to have a kitchen for preparing meals and a living room area where we can relax at the end of the day. If we are only staying somewhere for a few days, then our criteria is different as we can get by without a couch or kitchen.
I automatically start with the following criteria:
- Only show available properties
- Free cancellation
- Private Bathroom
- Very Good: 8+ (if there are too many results, then I move this to Wonderful: 9+)
- Free Wifi
- Bed Size – I check the boxes for both Queen and King
- Refrigerator – we have medicines that must be chilled so we always need a fridge
Next,
- Price – once I have a general idea of the pricing for the area, then I’ll put in our price range criteria.
- Parking if we will have a rental car (read carefully though because this might mean on-street parking, paid parking or parking that is several blocks away)
- Air conditioning if the weather will be hot
- Flat Screen TV – we like a smart TV so we can use our Amazon Firestick
For longer stays, some nice to haves are:
- Kitchen/Kitchenette
- Washing Machine
- Upper floors accessible by elevator
- Barbecue Grill
- A second bathroom
- An outdoor space
- A dining table to eat at
Things I CAN’T filter for:
For these factors, I learn by looking closely at the photos, the map and reading ALL of the reviews for the last year.
- Is there a Couch / Living Room area that is separate from the bedroom?
- Are there nightstands next to the bed for my glasses, book, water, tissues?
- How well stocked is the kitchen with cooking tools?
- Are the beds comfortable?
- How close is the nearest bus/train station?
- How far is the nearest grocery store?
More Travel Planning Tools & Resources
Here are some more posts with helpful travel planning tools and tips. If you’d like to receive emails when I’ve posted new content to the site, please complete the short form above.
- How I Travel with Medications – 7 Important Tips from Someone Who’s Done it
- Driving on the Left Side of the Road – 10 Things to Know
- How to Create a Stunning Travel Photo Wall at Home
- What to Pack for an African Safari [+ What to Leave at Home]
- New Zealand Facts & Travel Tips – everything you need to know about the currency, time zone, driving, language, drinking water and more
- Australia Facts & Travel Tips
- Austria Facts & Travel Tips
- Costa Rica Facts & Travel Tips
- Germany Facts & Travel Tips
- Italy Facts & Travel Tips
- Ireland Facts & Travel Tips
- Panama Facts & Travel Tips
- Portugal Facts & Travel Tips
- Switzerland Facts & Travel Tips
- Thailand Facts & Travel Tips
- Tanzania Facts & Travel Tips