Yuvraj Wadhwani
Vacations are fun, but sometimes vacation planning is not. The following websites can help you take the stress out of vacation planning and focus instead on having a fun trip.
Lonely Planet: For Inspiration and Detailed Travel Guides
Lonely Planet started as a magazine in the ’70s and has transitioned into a travel publication adored by travelers across the globe. It features extensive travel guides for exotic locations throughout the globe, covering culture, food, locations, and more.
It’s the go-to website for checking out interesting places you might want to visit. Pick a continent, country, state, province, or city and find great videos and articles about what it’s like to travel there.
Google: For Initial Trip Planning
If you’re in your initial days of vacation planning, Google Flights can help you plan the destination on a budget. Its map overview lets you see flights from your location to nearby airports along with prices. It’s an easy and efficient way to look for places to travel when on a budget.
TripAdvisor: For More Intensive Trip Planning
TripAdvisor is a one-stop shop for everything travel related: flights, hotels, rentals, local attractions, and restaurants.
While the deal hunting aspect of TripAdvisor is good, other apps have a slight advantage. What sets TripAdvisor apart, though, is its collection of millions of reviews of every location imaginable you can think of. The reviews are detailed, useful, and contributed by people who have actually visited the place.
Users also upload a lot of real-world pictures of their travel which can help you figure out whether a location is actually good or just advertised well.
Roadtrippers: For Traveling by Car
If you prefer to pack up your car and hit the road, then Roadtrippers is the website for you. It helps you plan your road trips and highlights all the beautiful places that you can see on the route. You can also see multiple routes between two places and compare them to find the best one.
Their Trip Planner feature lets you create your own route by highlighting places on a map. You can even invite your friends to edit the route together while you plan your vacation.
Flight Aware: For Watching Your Flights
So you’ve decided where to go and even bought tickets. Now it’s the day of travel, and you just found out that your flight has been delayed, twice!
To avoid headaches like these from affecting your vacation, you can use Flight Aware, which reports flight delays, gate swaps, and even changes to your arrival time. You can also use Flight Aware to avoid flights that have frequent delays or even pick up friends and family from the airport.
