Techie traveler, you are interested.
The big moment arrives: it's time to go on vacation . You already have the flights, the hotel and, if you are one of the foresighted, all the reservations for the activities that you have contracted in advance. At this point, many go to the nearest printer to get a stack of papers that will accompany them, better or worse dubbed, on their traveling adventure. However, it is no longer necessary to carry a single leaf when we hit the road. Our mobile phone can save all the necessary information and offers us alternatives to not carry those guides and dictionaries that usually accompany any good traveler.
The first step to banish the paperwork of vacation preparations is end the habit of printing airline tickets , normally one of the first things we acquire when after deciding the destination. Most companies already allow us to take our digitized boarding pass on our phone or other mobile device, so there's no need to nervously search your bag or suitcase at the airport for paper tickets. The phone, almost always present in our pocket, will contain the necessary information to get on the plane. Yes indeed, passport or DNI are still essential to have access , since a digitized copy is invalid (at least for now) .
Forget paper tickets to get on the plane
If we take a train or a bus we can also have our tickets on our mobile. Applications such as PassBook (iOS) or PassWallet (Android) —which allow us to store the digital version of our ticket when we travel by train— or the locator of the purchase that we can store in a PDF when it comes to the bus, they will be everything necessary for us to get on the means of transport that will take us to the long-awaited vacations.
Once the ticket issue has been resolved, the next step will be download all hotel reservations and activities that we have carried out and store them in a specific folder on our smartphone. If we don't want to —or don't know how to— create it, the downloads section will be in charge of keeping all this virtual information that we can access with a simple click. Both upon arrival at the hotel and at the entrance to museums or activities, our telephone will be the necessary pass.
In addition, if we receive any other information in our email that cannot be downloaded directly, such as directions or travel tips about the place we are going, it can be take a screenshot that will be stored in the image gallery to consult it at any time even if there is no connection.
Discover everything your mobile can do for you
NEITHER WRINKLED PLANES NOR HEAVY TRAVEL GUIDES
Our terminal is not only a virtual trunk of receipts and tickets, but can become a substitute for maps and the well-known travel guides that the most clueless tourists continue to buy at the last minute when they arrive at their destination.
Google Maps is the application that is most commonly used when you need to consult a route, and it can continue to be our reference tool during a vacation getaway. If you go to a place where the Internet connection is slow, mobile data is expensive or you can't connect, you can save a Google Maps area on your phone or tablet and use it when you are offline . But beware: the month of download they expire So don't do it too early.
Google Maps... THANK YOU
Citymapper is another possibility to replace the map bought or obtained at the tourist office with a mobile application. Available for most major cities, and for both iOS and Android, it allows you to navigate the maps in offline mode.
Regarding the paper guides, a source of advice on what to visit, which are the essential neighborhoods and which are the best museums, the vast majority of them already have a digital version that we can download and some even have their own app . In fact, many cities have been encouraged to create their own applications pointing out the most outstanding tourist places with the aim of making it easier for travelers to stay in their locality. If you travel through Spain you can use Historias App, with which you will access more than 5,000 stories written by historians and researchers from each city , a whole universe of anecdotes and curiosities.
Other applications, such as Foursquare or TripAdvisor, can also perfectly replace those sections of the guides where the best restaurants and the most popular areas of a city were pointed out.
Discover unique stories in your next destination
When the trip is abroad and the tourist finds himself in the position of communicating in a language other than his own, it is time to resort to the eternal travel dictionaries, those little books that aspire to offer the most essential expressions. These little word relationships , aimed at solving language differences, also have their place on the phone. Now digitally, the traveler will be able to get a quick translation and more or less exact of a word or an expression that can get you out of trouble.
To replace physical dictionaries, Google Translate is one of the most used options. The application allows you to point the camera at a sign and replaces the words in that language, which sometimes seems intelligible, with the translation -sometimes accurate, sometimes not-. However, it is not the only tool available to overcome language barriers. Me No Speak , Bing Translator or Word Lens are other apps that They want us to be able to ask for the bill or find the bathroom without experiencing too many difficulties..
Thanks to our phone, the image of the traveler equipped with a map, a dictionary, bills sticking out of his pocket and several sheets of printed data is a thing of the past. Of course, if a tourist wants to go on vacation without carrying a single piece of paper, he will have to have the mobile always at hand and with battery . For those clueless people who live with their mobile phones turned off or tend to lose them, it may be that certain things on paper —at least return tickets— are still necessary.
The mobile always at hand and with battery