Apps for Travel Buddies
Travelling is fun. Planning can be a challenge. But travelling as a group and keeping everyone happy? That’s a whole new different level! Below we’ve summarised our favourite apps for travel buddies, that will make your journey easier.
Think we forgot one? Leave a comment below!
Categories
1. Money
When it comes to money, we want apps that allow us splitting bills quickly with our travel buddies. Ideally on the spot but also with the best currency conversion.
Splitwise
With Splitwise you can easily keep track of shared expenses, balances, and who owes who. It also lets you organise and split expenses with any group: trips, housemates, friends, and family. It’s super easy to add new expenses. And with their pro version you can even convert currencies, scan receipts and get graphs.
Venmo
Another easy option to split bills with friends. This app works mostly in the United States. Fun fact: it’s owned by PayPal.
It allows you to split bills with a built in calculator. For all the tricks check out their “Venmo like a pro” page.
Splid
A very simple app is Splid and we couldn’t agree more with their tagline: Split bills, not friendships. Right?! It’s free and also solves the currency conversion issue. Bonus: it works offline, too. And there’s no sign-up required.
Simply enter all your expenses and Splid shows you who owes how much to whom.
2. Transportation
We wanted to summarise a few apps for travel buddies to get around a new city. For simple taxi services, we’d recommend apps like Uber. The beauty of Uber is that it offers more than just taxis. Depending on the location you might find speedboats in Croatia and helicopter rides in New York.
We love, that you can share your Uber trip with safety contacts! They can see if you arrived at your location.
Prefer supporting the competitor? Use Lyft instead.
Careem is very popular in Turkey and the Middle East and basically just their version of Uber. It also lets you send and request money for rides from friends.
Bolt (previous Taxify) is more popular in France and Australia. Invite a friend and you both get credit. And the best? The rides are 100% carbon free!
You can also share rides with Uber and Lyft. The European version of carpooling would be BlaBlaCar and it also offers the option of BlaBlaCar buses! We like that all profiles and ratings are checked and IDs are properly verified. So you know who you’re travelling with.
Get lost easily? Make sure to install these two apps – life savers for travel buddies! Google Maps and CityMapper.
Of course you can use just any map, but our top tip is to always remember to download Google maps’ offline for the area you’re travelling to. This way, even if you don’t have data, you can always access your downloaded offline maps and find your way home! You can find it on both Android and iOS.
Getting around like a local
While Google maps also covers public transport, CityMapper tends to be much more accurate. CityMapper is aimed at commuters, so you know you’re getting the best travel advice within a city. The app gives you all the options to get around a city, from car sharing to buses or trains. You’ll be getting around like a true local.
3. Communication
Found a travel buddy speaking your language? Awesome! But even then, sometimes it’s not their or your native language and you’ll find yourself soon scrambling for words.
One of the classics we’d recommend is Google Translate – both Android and iOS. Make sure you download your preferred languages, so that you have offline access to them!
Linguee
A great alternative for just translating some words is Linguee! It not only translates them but also shows them in sentences and different synonyms and usage. Again, make sure to download the offline database. Not the prettiest to be fair, but extremely useful with all its example sentences.
It’s a free messaging and video calling app. You can easily message privately or create group chats. We love especially that you can’t only share a location of where you want to meet butt also your live location so everyone can find each other easily in real time.
International Data Coverage
The age old question of how can I get wifi/data internationally? Have a look at Google’s Project Fi! You can check if your phone would be compatible here. This project is an international cell phone plan offered by Google that works in over 200+ countries and territories. They don’t offer a hotspot device, however, you can tether their phones to your laptop or wireless devices to share your Internet connection.
Their service lets you seamlessly shift from their cellular coverage partners to over four million WiFi hotspots around the world. You are only charged for data received over their cellular network and not when on WiFi networks. You can port your existing phone number over to Project Fi from your existing carrier or get a new number. In the USA, they partner with Sprint, T-Mobile, and U.S. Cellular to provide coverage.
They have different plans to choose from.
4. New Friends
Don’t have travel friends yet to use these apps with, yet? Check out these apps to find potential travel buddies!
Bumble BFF
Did you know Bumble isn’t just a dating app? It also has a “BFF mode” which lets you match with other girls nearby. They’ll be verified just like any other dating app user.
TripGiraffe
On the other hand you have TripGiraffe where you can create a trip and then invite other travellers into it. This is not restricted to females only, though. And there is no app
TravelSisters
If you’re looking for a combo of both, then how about trying our prototype?
We’re a female and invitation only travel community. Every members needs to get verified before they can use our app fully. You can then search for other travellers by filters like distance, interests, languages and more. At the moment we’re just a prototype. That means we’re collecting your feedback on what you want to see build into the fully functioning app. The best of it? The prototype is completely free to use.
Don’t have an invitation? No worries. You can join our waitlist, if you can’t find a friend who’s already in our community.
