So most of my life I have spent studying at schools, getting my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and in order to visit 50+ countries, I had to save money every now and then.
So far my best travel investment was my first smartphone – my now defunct iPhone 4 that unveiled me this crazy world of apps. Indeed, looking for reasonable airfares via Skyscanner or cheaper accommodation via HotelsCombined had suddenly become faster and easier and thus had saved me quite a bit of money.
But most of us know those two applications and hence this article is not about them. I was lucky enough to stumble upon the following three extremely helpful apps, which I was surprised to learn very few people know about.
App N. 1: MAPS.ME
The best offline maps with navigation feature
Why is MAPS.ME so much better than Google Maps? The latter one is basically useless without mobile data connection. And in the majority of situations using data roaming on a foreign trip would end up being your worst financial decision ever. MAPS.ME works completely offline, you just need to download the map of the region you want to travel to in advance.
Why is this app better than many other competing offline map apps? Compared to Ulmon CityMaps2Go, MAPS.ME is free and has a very handy built-in navigation feature. It can work as a car / bicycle GPS and what’s even more decent, it can be a great GPS for hiking, since it knows very many trails.
On my recent trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina I was able to hike from downtown Sarajevo to the one of the world’s coolest abandoned places – the 1986 Sarajevo Olympic Bobsleigh Track. Below are some pictures from that trip. Needless is it to say that without this app I wouldn’t be able to find my way through those Bosnian forests and hills.
There is a detailed map of every city and every street of any world’s country (North Korea too, if you were wondering) and it also knows the location of local sights, restaurants, ATM’s, grocery stores and etc.
How did MAPS.ME help me save money? Well, on a foreign trip time quite literally means money, because we spend so many dollars on our plane tickets and hotel stay and we only have that many hours before we have to catch our plane home. And always knowing where you have to go, always being able to find the nearest grocery store or McDonald’s is a great time / money saver.
App N. 2: TheFork
Discounted restaurant reservations
There are two ways on saving money on food during the trip: one can either cut on the experience by eating only in cheap, mostly fast-food joints or one can benefit from using the modern marketing campaigns of mid- and upscale restaurants.
Here is what I mean: there is an app backed by TripAdvisor called TheFork which allows you to make discounted restaurant reservations. So for instance if a restaurant feels a need to attract more customers, it would publish a TheFork campaign where guests can book a table and receive a -30% discount on all the food from the menu (sometimes the discount gets as high as -50%).
Very simple to use, has a ton of participating restaurants in Western Europe, not so much in Eastern Europe and North America.
Indeed the best feature is the in-built restaurant’s rating scale similar to TripAdvisor’s, so one can check what other guests have to say about the restaurant before booking a table there.
I use TheFork very often, have saved quite a chunk of money using it. My biggest deal was saving around 100 Euros on a marbled steak dinner for four in Barcelona.
App N. 3: GoEuro
Compares prices for trains, buses & flights in Europe
If one has travelled around Europe, than one knows that public transportation is extremely well-developed here. There are very many bus, train and airline companies that compete with each other for customers and thus constantly publish deals.
In my opinion, the best way to search all possible means of transportation between two destinations and find the cheapest one would be to use the GoEuro app. It compares prices and time of travel between buses, trains and flights.
And you would be surprised what kind of results this app can show! So for the sake of the argument, let’s say you want to go from Budapest to Berlin on October 7th. The most common assumption would be that bus would indeed be the cheapest. Let’s run a search through GoEuro.
As it appears you would’ve saved 22 Euros by taking a flight instead of a bus. Not even mentioning the amount of precious hours saved.In general as it appears, when you start comparing prices, trains tend to me the most frequent losers. Check for instance the results for London – Glasgow search on similar dates.
Trains fall badly behind regarding price compared to buses and regarding both time and money compared to planes. So as you see, it’s a very handy app indeed, recommended.
CONCLUSION
Using the abovementioned three apps will make your next trip both cheaper and more enjoyable. That I am sure of because I have been using them myself for a while and so far they have proved themselves to be nothing less than very helpful.
So my name is Kirill, I am new here. I am a young econometrician from Germany who still isn’t sure what he likes more: Economics or travelling.
While studying for my degrees I have visited 50+ countries. I do travelling the smart way and I feel that I have a lot more useful information that I would like to share with the community.
I would very much like to know that my experience is helping somebody, therefore I would be very grateful if you would share this article among your friends and ask me questions in the comments.
All the best,
Kirill
a.k.a. Kir-B on Steemit