Travelling all the time? There’s an app to keep you on track!

In days gone by, when people might travel only a couple of times a year, keeping track of all the travel arrangements was simple.

One way of finding your way: a tattoo of the world on your back. Image by Denise Krebs / CC BY 2.0

Now, when frequent travellers might have half a dozen trips planned between work and pleasure, keeping on top of every airline reservation and hotel booking can become a chore.

That’s where trip organising apps come in, gathering all the times, dates and locations in one place easily accessible on your phone or laptop.

The best known of them is TripIt, a personal assistant to which you simply forward all your flight and hotel booking emails.

It can understand confirmation emails from tens of thousands of travel booking sites including major airlines, rental car companies, railways, and airport shuttles. Even restaurant reservations can be added to the travel list. TripIt then turns all of those emails into a manageable itinerary that can be viewed on any device, whether online or offline.

New apps record travel rather than marking a calendar. Image by Dafne Cholet / CC BY 2.0

The free version of the app organises all travel in one place, lets travellers edit their plans, syncs it with their calendars and can be shared with other people, whether family, friends or colleagues. A paid version is also available, which has add-ons including real-time flight alerts, refund notifications and an option to keep track of frequent flier miles or other reward points.

WorldMate does many of the same things whilst offering a useful price alert feature and counter offers for hotel room bookings. It automatically reviews hotel bookings and if your room gets cheaper, or a nearby similar hotel is offering a special deal, it will let you know.

Time and currency converters are also built into the app along with an ingenious function that cross-references with LinkedIn and Facebook to alert you if a friend or connection happens to be in the same place as you while overseas.

Roadtrippers is a little different, and caters for travellers who want to take off without much in the way of a specific plan.

It just asks you to key in a starting point and a destination, and offers an impromptu itinerary of what stop-offs are worth making on the way.