Summer's Best Travel Apps

Summertime means hot weather, increased gas prices and the height of vacation season. Everyone loves to have a fun and relaxing vacation, but let’s face it: Navigating uncharted territory can be more stressful than staying home. But with today’s technology and abundance of smartphones, enjoying an amazing vacation is–literally–just a few clicks away. Here are six easy apps that will help make your trip convenient and fun.

Organizations

Tripit (iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry)
The hassle of printing and organizing email confirmations for travel plans can be wasted time and stress. The Tripit app provides peace of mind by consolidating all of your confirmations in one place. When you receive a confirmation email from anywhere you book, just forward the email to [email protected]. Tripit then will take all of your travel information and make an itinerary right on your smartphone.

Restaurants

OpenTable (iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry)
While you’re busy exploring a new city, this allows you to make restaurant reservations quickly and easily from your phone. Once you see a restaurant that piques your interest, this app only requires you to choose a date, time and party size before placing your reservation. OpenTable also narrows users’ restaurant search by cuisine, price or neighborhood if you need help deciding where to stop in.

Urbanspoon (iOS, Andriod, Windows, Blackberry)
If you can never decide on where to eat, Urbanspoon is for you. Just by shaking your phone, this app will settle on a good nearby restaurant. If you’re not satisfied with the choice, you can keep shaking your phone until you find a restaurant that you would like to try. Urbanspoon also allows for users to read and post diner reviews, browse ratings from newspapers and bloggers and check table availability.

Entertainment

Yelp (iOS, Android)
Yelp is the perfect app to truly experience the city you’re visiting. Yelp allows for users to search for places to eat, drink, shop, relax and have fun. It provides reviews from locals and allows users to find deals from local businesses.

Meetup (iOS, Android)
Meetup is a great app to explore activities tailored for your interests. Meetup allows users to browse from hundreds of existing Meetup groups in the local area, with activities that vary from sports activities to learning a new language to sightseeing. Not satisfied? You can even organize your own.

Goby (iOS and Android)
Goby constantly updates with cool things to do in the local area, all personalized for your interests, with more than 350 categories and millions of activities. Goby allows for users to either sync their Facebook “likes” or input their interests manually, and provides automatic notifications about upcoming events.

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