Welcome to the Travel Tools forum: find a list of tools here
 

One of the great values of FlyerTalk is discovering the plethora of travel tools that are available to help optimize the travel experience. These can be tools to help find award availability, seat maps with discussion of preferable seats, software to track earned miles and points, and people that provide award booking services. There are often competitive offerings. Some are free. Some are only available by subscription. And some require a per use fee. This forum is a centralized location for frequent flyers to discuss and compare what is available and learn what will help them create a better travel experience.

This forum is also to be an incubator for new products developed by FlyerTalkers. For example, jyflyer has developed AwardFinder. It is currently free; he is seeking feedback. kudroz is developing a tool called dcovery. He might bring it here for review. It’s in our interest to help our fellow FTers develop their tools to make them as useful as possible for us.

This forum is not a marketplace. While we want vendors to participate to answer any and all questions about their products, it is not a place for them to solicit business. The same guidelines relevant to all of FlyerTalk cover this forum. However, a vendor is free to start a thread to explain their travel tool.

These are some of the topics appropriate for discussion here:
• Award booking services
• Airline seat maps
• Mileage tracking
• Car rentals
• Award availability, fare rules and more
• Software for trip organization

We have sister forums for other discussions.

Travel Technology – travel gadgets such as laptops, smartphones, portable gear, portable power, adaptors, how to make your equipment work overseas

Travel Products – from luggage to travel clothes

Online booking and bidding agencies – Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Hotwire, Priceline and the like

Comprehensive Travel Software, Sites, + Tools List -- Please Help Add!
 

In the same vein as the excellent thread Award booking services - a list, I am hoping to create a list of all of the software tools/sites that frequent travelers use to make travel easier. No list can be comprehensive, but aside from blogs and awards booking services, I'm trying to include everything else of value, from the largest booking service to the smallest mapping tool.

The list is alphabetical, and I will update the post as others add links. I've done my best to "categorize" each site/service with a brief label, but please offer other labels if you think these are in error. I'm also totally open to other ways of organizing the list to make it more useful, let me know, even if it's only an aesthetic suggestion! Look forward to your comments. Thanks!!

Airfare.com
Booking service

Airfare Watchdog
Booking service

AwardSpy
Hotel award booking

AwardWallet
Points tracking

Expedia
Booking service

ExpertFlyer
Frequent flyer service

Great Circle Mapper.com
Flight distance mapping

GPS Visualizer
Flight distance mapping

Great Circle Mapper.net
Flight distance mapping

Hotwire
Booking service

Kayak
Booking service

Last Minute Travel
Booking service

Lonely Planet
Travel writing/Travel guides/Forum

Matador Network
Travel writing

Nile Guide
Travel writing

Open Places
Travel writing

Open Flights
Flight distance mapping

Orbitz
Booking service

Oyster
Reviews (hotel)

Priceline
Booking service

Route Graph
Flight distance mapping

Seat Expert
Airline seat plans

Seat Guru
Airline seat plans

Skypicker
Booking service

Skyscanner
Booking service

Stay
City Guides, Reviews

Travefy
Planning (Group)

Travelocity
Booking service

TravelPod
Travel blogging platform

Trip Advisor
Reviews (hotel, trip)

TripIt
Trip organizer

TripTuner
Planning

VirtualTourist
Reviews (hotel, trip)

Where Are You Now
Traveler networking

Yelp
Reviews (restaurant)

I've just done some light housekeeping. I moved the list of tools in the thread into the wiki. I updated the links so that each go to a discussion thread in this forum. I added a couple new tools and I deleted a couple whose owners have closed them. If you have travel tools you use and you don't see a thread for them, please begin one. Explain the tool and why you find it useful. I welcome help in keeping the wiki updated with links to discussion threads for any additional tools.

Carol
Community Director

ITA Software - free

http://matrix.itasoftware.com by google

Identify the lowest fares across all airlines or specific airlines over a one month period.

Thanks, added to wiki with link to discussion thread.

LoungeBuddy - App for knowing what lounges are in an airport and whether you can access them. FT Thread at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...worldwide.html.

This is great input. I've just added three new tools to the wiki above:

AllTheRooms.com
Anxious Flyers
Lounge Buddy

Look in the wiki to easily find the discussion thread for each.

Added today:
airixo
pitot-io

May 12:
pick2pay

ClaimAir - free mobile app that helps air passengers to master their rights and collect flight compensations easily on the go

iOS version is coming soon

Added today:

Weekend Alert

TripCipe trip planning tool
 

I always have trouble planning my trips, but have lately stumbled onto this website TripCipe.com. Its rather new, but it allows you to look at existing trips from other travelers, and the location of certain destinations on a map. Also, you can make your own trip to share with friends and family.

Please add this website to your tools, it works great. http://hostales.com

What an amazing list of websites.

Here are a few more for the list

Flyfar.ca - Great site for cheap flights.

Trivago.ca - my go to site for hotels. It pulls in reviews from other sites

DiscountMyFlights.ca - This site seems new but has a lot of deals and it looks like it pulls in deals from other sites too.

Tripit.com - A great way to keep track of your flights and hotels and activities planned throughout your trip.

iOS / iPhones Travel Apps
 

Hi all
New member here, a bit geek with travel apps / tools...,

Could not find a Top travel Apps for iOS / iPhones in the forums.
I thought I could share the Travel Apps I use, discovered, & favorites,
Let's make this list dynamic, we could edit / add new ones or discuss favorites

My travelling profile would influence the apps I use I guess, but mainly
Miami - NYC frequent
Mia / NYC - London / Paris Monthly
Paris - London frequent w Eurostar.

Native apps I use extensively are Weather, Wallet / Passbook ( E boarding Pass & Train ticket)

Accommodation
Booking.com > Hotels
Airbnb > Peer to peer
Hotel Tonight > Hotel on the last minute
TripAdvisor > Recommendations, Ratings, Hotels booking
Overnight > Just discovered this one, a Last minute room at one's place, like HotelTonight meet Airbnb

Business Expenses Tracking
Concur ( integrates with a lot of apps & tools)

Communications
WhatsApp
Wechat
Skype
Sonetel ( prepay local calls)
Wifi discovery Apps > tried WifiMap & others, not so convincing, 20% connection success rate.

Driving & Itinerary
Google Map > Feels better than Apple Maps
Waze > Gps + traffic alerts

Flights
American > Flights & Miles mgt
Air France > Miles Program mgt
Kayak > Good flight prices
FlightAware > Track flight real time, Gates, Schedule pick up, Notify delays...
LoungeBuddy > Access Lounges , useful when no Airlines or alliance lounges.

Tour & Activities
TimeOut > City Guide, Ticket bookings
HeadOut > Last Minute Tour& Activities
Viator > Tours & Activities

Transport
Uber > Taxi rides
Car2go > City smart cars, pop in, pop out like ZipCar ( they discontinued Miami)

Planification
TripIt > Planification app, don't use it, but seems the best.

What about yours?

Lots of apps to use.

#1 app from our recent trip and will use for all future trips is KAYAK. You just forward your email confirmations to them and it populates in the app.

Even before the issue described below, I loved it and used it often - even though we booked nothing through Kayak.

On the last leg of our trip, we were sitting in the DTW lounge having another glass of wine. Totally oblivious to the time. An alert popped up saying our flight was boarding. Holy crap. We made the flight thanks to this app.