Originally posted on July 29, 2013 @ 5:15 am
I love to travel. I find new places and new cultures exciting. But I don’t have an unlimited budget, and in order to feed my desire for adventure, I have to make my wallet stretch as much as possible. One of the ways I do this is by using travel apps, especially those that help me find a good hotel at a decent price.
How they work
Travel apps work by essentially bringing all of the available information from a myriad of sites into one place. They tend to offer rates that are lower, because the hotels are trying to sell their rooms at any price rather than leave them empty. This works especially well for people making arrangements at the last minute, or wanting to extend a stay.
Travel apps can also help you broaden your travel horizons. For example, if you’re looking for the bare essentials of traveling (just a bed, a shower, and AC/heating), hostels might be the way to go. The point of traveling is to see the place you’re going, right, not to sleep in luxury.
Others might like to experience resorts and spas that would otherwise be out of their price range. Trying a bed and breakfast is yet another way to experience a new place. More off-beat and home-y.
How to use them
Some apps, like Kayak, work to bring all the travel information you’ll need into one spot. Flights, car rentals, hotels — it’s all there.
You can search for all those things or just one, and it connects up to the magical interwebs and gives you lots of options to choose from. Other apps are more specific: there are programs that help you finding a room tonight, or the app versions of popular websites like Hotels.com.
Just do a quick search in the App Store and download whichever one looks like it would best suit your needs.
With all of these apps designed to help us travel cheaply, you’re likely to save a bundle on hotel stays. But you’re also saving tons of time by not having to open individual websites and try to find the best deals to compare across several site … and we all know that time is money, my friends. So get app’ing and start packing. Happy adventures.
