For all the ways travel’s evolved over the years, one thing has remained maddeningly steadfast: Moving from one place to another is almost always a hassle. There’s endless room for inconvenience and error, and a journey rarely goes according to plan.
But while there’s not much you can do about the late departures, the surly gate attendants, or the smelly fella somehow always seated right next to you, there are some tech-centric steps you can take to make your next business trip a little less unpleasant.
Android’s travel app selection has really taken off in recent years, and the Google Play Store now boasts an impressive array of genuinely useful titles for the traveling professional. After putting numerous standout candidates to the test, these are the apps I’d recommend stowing on your smartphone and keeping at arm’s reach whenever your work next has you hitting the road or flying the (allegedly) friendly skies.
(All apps are free unless otherwise specified.)
Android travel apps, part 1: Planning and preparing
Organize your packing process
PackPoint is a travel organization genie. You simply tell it where you’re going, when, and what you’ll be doing — and the app generates a detailed checklist of suggested items for your suitcase.
You can add your own items to the list, as needed, and then use it as a guide to make sure you remember everything, every time.
PackPoint takes some of the pain out of packing for a trip.
JR Raphael / IDG
PackPoint is free, with an optional one-time $3 upgrade that removes ads and gives you the ability to create your own custom packing templates. The paid version of the app also integrates with TripIt (more on that in a moment), which means it can import your travel plans automatically and create packing lists before you even ask.
Prepare for local navigation
Yeah, yeah, I know: You’re well aware of Google Maps. But what you might not realize — or maybe have just forgotten — is that with a teensy bit of planning, you can download all the data you need for a trip directly into Maps in advance. That way, you can navigate to your heart’s content, even in areas without strong mobile data signals, and you can avoid burning through mobile data unnecessarily on the road.
Here’s the trick: While you’re still in the comfort of your home or office, open up Maps on your phone and search for the city you’ll be visiting. Tap the city’s name within the search interface, then tap its name a second time when it appears in a panel at the bottom of the screen — or just swipe up on that panel to enlarge it.
From there, tap the More button in the row of options directly beneath the city’s name (and if you don’t see that button right away, try scrolling horizontally along that row to reveal it).
That’ll reveal a pop-up menu with an option to “Download offline map.” Tap that, then tap “Download” on the confirmation screen that appears. Once the download finishes, you’ll be able to access maps and directions within your destination without the need for an active connection.
Repeat as needed for any additional places on your agenda, then rest easy knowing your navigational guide will be there and waiting — no matter what sort of conditions you encounter.
Android travel apps, part 2: Flying
Manage your air travel
TripIt is an all-around air travel management companion, and it’ll make your life easier in some meaningful ways — especially if you do a fair amount of flying.
At its core, TripIt allows you to forward flight itineraries and other travel-related emails to a special address — or, if you want, to grant it direct access to your inbox so it can find and process such emails on its own — and it then extracts all the relevant details and organizes them into clean and easy-to-follow master itineraries.
Where TripIt really shines, though, is with its optional $49-a-year TripIt Pro service (which you can try out via a free 30-day trial). That service gives you real-time flight updates all throughout your trip — often beating notifications by airlines’ own apps, in my experience, as well as updates to the monitors in the terminal.
Once you travel with TripIt — and specifically its TripIt Pro service — you won’t want to fly without it.
JR Raphael / IDG
Beyond that, TripIt Pro makes it dead simple to find alternate flights at any point in your adventure. If a connection is canceled or delayed, all it takes is a couple of taps to see what other flights are available — even down to the specific open seats — on your current airline or on another. That’s helped me stay a step ahead of the gate agent on multiple occasions when late departures have put connecting flights in jeopardy.
TripIt Pro comes with a few other perks, too, such as a two-month free trial of the CLEAR expedited airport access program. But the notifications and alternate flight finder are what really make the app invaluable. And while several other services offer similar sorts of travel planning features, no other app has been as consistently helpful, reliable, and easy to use as TripIt in my real-world travel testing. It’s the gold standard of travel organization and a must-have for any frequent flier or business traveler.
Find the best flights
Forget all the clunky, upsell-infested flight-finding services and instead, open up your Chrome Android browser and navigate to Google Flights. All right — so technically, it isn’t an Android app, but Google’s flight-searching system makes it super-easy to find and book flights across all airlines. You can save or share potential itineraries, monitor flights and get notified by email as soon as a specific fare goes up or down, and then buy your tickets directly with whatever airline (or airlines) you choose.
Pro tip: If you want to make the app easier to access, tap Chrome’s three-dot menu icon while viewing the website and select “Add to home screen.” That’ll give you a more traditional mobile-app-like icon that can then pull up the tool with a single tap.
One other utility that might be worth keeping handy is Hopper — but there’s a very specific purpose and also an important asterisk involved. Hopper watches flight prices over long periods of time in order to track trends and show you how fares are likely to fluctuate based on when you fly and when you make your purchase. If you’re booking your own travel and either footing the bill yourself or trying to stay within a limited company budget, that knowledge can be incredibly helpful to have.
Hopper’s airfare-tracking system can give you valuable flight price knowledge.
JR Raphael / IDG
But Hopper’s ultimate goal is to get you to book your tickets through its service, and that doesn’t necessarily seem like the most advisable thing to do. User reviews on the Play Store mention difficulty changing itineraries once they’re booked with Hopper and challenges getting through to the company’s customer service.
So what I’d suggest is treating Hopper as a resource and not a ticket-purchasing portal: Use it to research optimal travel dates and purchasing windows, if you need to, and then take the info it gives you and plug it directly into either Google Flights or the appropriate airline’s website to buy the tickets directly from the source — and without the potentially problematic middleman.
Speed up your border entry
If you’re traveling internationally — and have a valid passport from the US or Canada, a US lawful permanent resident card, or a US Visa Waiver Program passport — the Mobile Passport Control app can save you precious time when you enter the US by letting you submit your passport info and customs declaration form ahead of time and then skip the regular line on your way through border patrol.
Despite what its name may suggest, though, the app doesn’t actually replace your passport. You’ll still need to carry that with you. It’s also currently supported only by certain airports, so you’ll want to make sure it’s available wherever you’re flying before you begin.
And not to worry: It’s created by the US Customs and Border Protections agency and 100% official and legit.
Android travel apps, part 3: Driving and public transit
Track your mileage
If you drive your own car for business, MileIQ — formerly owned by Microsoft but now back to being an independent entity — makes it as easy as can be to keep track of all your mileage for later reimbursement.
Once you set up the app on your phone and grant it the various permissions it requires, you don’t have to do a thing: It’ll just automatically detect when you’re driving and then log all your miles in the background. It even uses current IRS-mandated reimbursement rates to calculate what you’re owed.
The app has some interesting advanced options, too, such as the ability to set specific work hours and then ignore any drives that occur outside of those times.
MileIQ is free to use for up to 40 drives per month. For unlimited access, you’ll have to pony up $6 a month or $60 for a full year of service.
Pay less for gas
Why pay top dollar for top-offs when you can drive an extra minute from the highway and save yourself (or your company) some money? GasBuddy gives you the insight you need to find fuel that won’t break the bank: You just open up the app, tap the option to find gas near you, and then either look through a list of nearby gas stations and how much they’re currently charging or switch to a map view to see prices plotted out around your present location.
GasBuddy relies on user reports to provide up-to-date info on gas prices in your area.
JR Raphael / IDG
GasBuddy has a bunch of other features you probably won’t want to mess with, but the app’s price searching ability is worth every penny (particularly since the app is free and thus costs you precisely zero pennies to use).
Activate your highway X-ray
As anyone who’s ever taken a lengthy drive knows, fuel is only one tiny part of the highway exit decision matrix. Which exit you choose on your journey could determine if you end up with a gold mine of interesting options for dining, buying, and other delightful diversions — or if you find you’re facing a metaphorical (and maybe also literal) desert, with nothing of note anywhere around you.
An app called iExit will change the way you think about such choices.
iExit shows you a detailed breakdown of exactly what you’ll find at every exit on every interstate throughout the US, with a complete list of all restaurants, stores, parks, hotels, and other random attractions that are accessible from each exit you’re passing.
The app can use your current location to show you info as it becomes relevant, or you can manually search along any interstate to get an exit-by-exit overview. Either way, it’s completely free to use.
Find parking anywhere
When you’re traveling through a city, SpotHero will save you a substantial amount of time, money, and headaches with finding a place to park.
Just search the app for any specific location or let it scan your current location, and within a matter of seconds, you’ll see a list of available parking in the area — arranged by price, proximity, and even other drivers’ ratings.
Searching for a parking spot is as simple as it gets with SpotHero by your side.
JR Raphael / IDG
You can often book a spot directly within the app, if you want — or you can just use it as a free and easy way to find a place to land.
Become a public transit master
If you’re ditching the car and relying on trains, buses, Ubers and Lyfts, or even bikes, scooters, and plain ol’ walking to get around your destination, Citymapper is the app you need.
In cities where it’s supported — a limited but reasonably extensive list — Citymapper lets you put in a starting and ending address and then explore the best ways to get from point A to point B using any combination of public transit options.
The app mixes and matches available methods and serves up an impressive menu of possibilities. You can pick the cheapest combo, the fastest path, or choose a specific way you prefer to travel and let Citymapper create a custom itinerary around that.
Citymapper goes above and beyond what Google Maps can do when it comes to public transit planning.
JR Raphael / IDG
Citymapper is free with an optional $1.50-a-month or $10-a-year ad-free upgrade.
Android travel apps, part 4: At your destination
Track your travel expenses
When it comes to more general expense-tracking, Expensify is the app to have in your arsenal. Expensify lets you simply take photos of receipts with your phone — or forward invoices and receipts via email — and it then extracts the relevant details and organizes them into reports. The app is available on the web as well, and it offers direct-export integrations with QuickBooks, Xero, and other accounting services.
Snap a photo of a receipt — or forward it in via email — and then forget about it with Expensify.
JR Raphael / IDG
Expensify costs either $5 or $9 per person per month for businesses, depending on your needs. You can try the app out with a free individual plan, too, though that limits you to just 25 imports per month and lacks many of the service’s advanced expense reporting and integration options.
Find a place to stay on short notice
The next time you find yourself unexpectedly stuck somewhere — be it due to a cancelled flight or a road trip gone awry — don’t panic. Instead, snag the free and easy to use HotelTonight app. HotelTonight searches around your current location to find hotels with open and available rooms, but that’s not all: It also scores you legitimate savings on the rates, by way of an apparent deal wherein hotels let the service sell rooms at a discount in order to fill last-minute vacancies. I spot-checked a handful of the app’s recommendations, and the savings were absolutely real.
HotelTonight provides an easy way to find last-minute rooms at discounted rates.
JR Raphael / IDG
HotelTonight has handy details and ratings for all the hotels it recommends. And once you find something suitable, all it takes is a few taps within the app to book your room and be ready to roll.
Find Wi-Fi anywhere
Why waste money on mobile data when Wi-Fi is all around you and waiting for the taking? Just open WiFi Map to see an interactive map showing available Wi-Fi networks in your area (or any other area you want to search). The app lists out speed information and even provides user-submitted passwords to secured public networks in some instances.
Just note: When you first open WiFi Map, you’ll be pressed to upgrade to a $15-a-year premium subscription. That allows you to eliminate some rather aggressive ads within the app and also gives you the ability to download information in advance for offline viewing. You don’t have to make the upgrade, though (and arguably shouldn’t bother); if you want to use the app for free, just tap the little “x” in the upper-right corner of the screen when the upgrade prompt appears.
Convert and translate anything
For your next border-crossing journey, let XE Currency Converter convert currency for you without the usual headache. Once you tell the app your home country’s currency and select which foreign currencies you want to convert into, all you have to do is type in a dollar amount to get an instant glimpse at the exact equivalent based on up-to-the-minute conversion rates.
And when language translation is what you require, the aptly named Google Translate app is the tool you want. It’s jam-packed with practical features, such as the ability to translate text instantly from an image you capture with your camera and a “conversation mode” that lets you have a (somewhat awkward) back-and-forth dialog, in real time, with someone speaking a different tongue.
Stay fit wherever you go
Who says you have to stay sedentary just because you’re traveling? Skip the underwhelming hotel “exercise facility” and turn to AllTrails to find and navigate popular running, biking, and hiking trails wherever you are instead. The app is free to use, with an optional $36-a-year premium upgrade that gives you a variety of extra features like live sharing, offline-friendly downloading, and an ad-free experience.
(When you first start using the app, you’ll see a full-screen prompt to start a free trial subscription. Just note that you don’t have to do that and can skip over the offer altogether by tapping the “x” in the upper-left corner of the screen.)
If you’d rather get your heart pumping from the privacy of your own room, snag the Nike Training Club app. It’s filled with easy-to-follow workouts, ranging from the intense and Crossfit-reminiscent “Total Body Burnout” to the simple and stretch-oriented “Run Ready Flow.”
The Nike Training Club app has tons of workouts you can do almost anywhere.
JR Raphael / IDG
You can find workouts for practically any amount of time you want — as little as five minutes, even! — and you can browse specifically through “no-equipment workouts,” assuming you don’t carry your entire collection of kettlebells with you every time you travel. And best of all? The app is completely free to use.
The only thing you’ll be missing is an excuse.
This article was originally published in June 2018 and most recently updated in December 2024.