Planning a Trip is as Much Fun as the Trip Itself with Wanderlog
Gone are the days of buying multiple travel books and a large map to plan the ultimate vacation. Introducing Wanderlog - a free travel app for planning!
With the app, you create an itinerary, organize all flight, hotel, and car rental reservations in one place, budget all costs, and research destinations and activities - while viewing locations on an adjacent map! It will even calculate the time and distance between places and stops.
Resources and Guides
There is a plethora of resources, like travel guides from Viator, TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet, or even from other travelers. It reveals the top rated hotels, restaurants and attractions, so you know all the best spots to stay and dine anywhere in the world. You will find detailed maps of cities and parks and travel itineraries from other travelers.
When places are added to your itinerary, key information like opening hours, the address, phone number, website, a description and a picture are included. This makes it super convenient if you have to call the hotel or the restaurant from your phone for instance while en route.
Itinerary Creation
The searched places to stay or things to do are easily added to your trip - either in a list by category or by day. Each day is color-coded to quickly see the places that are tied to that day on the map so it’s easy to visualize each day on the adjacent map with the colored pins. For instance, all of the places you are planning to visit on Saturday, August 26, have red pins, and those on Sunday, August 27 have blue pins.
When the items are added to each day’s itinerary, the app will calculate the distance and the travel time between them, showing exactly where each is located on the map. I love how easy it is to reorganize the itinerary to minimize travel time between places and find the best route.
Budgeting and Cost Tracking
All costs are easily tracked on the app - either by day or by category. A budget can be set, and it even has a built-in currency converter when traveling abroad. Traveling with others is no problem since costs can be split to see who owes who.
Collaboration and Information Sharing
I recently began planning a trip to the Netherlands. We are going with friends, and this app certainly came in handy. I invited my trip mates by sharing a link to the itinerary. Each of us was able to add potential places to visit, and we could collaborate in real-time. We each uploaded our individual flight and hotel reservations so all confirmation numbers could be seen by all parties.
The itinerary can be shared with emergency contacts as well, so that those at home can see where you are at any given time.
Travel Documentation
For me, the absolute best feature of the app is the storage and organization of all travel documents. In the old days, I would print the airline and hotel reservations, car rental confirmation, and the google maps for my trip and carry all of those documents in a folder. This app makes that folder obsolete.
Confirmation emails from airlines or hotels are forwarded to the app and appear on the itinerary seamlessly. Everything you need is kept in one place on your phone - your airline reservation number, hotel confirmation, attraction addresses and e-tickets, and restaurant information. Since google maps is integrated, even your driving directions are included. No more printing documents and lugging around a folder of information.
This app is super easy to use, intuitive, and saves so much planning time.
There are many features on the free version of the app, but for only $50 per year, you can purchase the pro version. With it, you can access the information offline when you don’t have access to the internet, upload and attach an unlimited number of documents, and optimize your route.
All in all, planning a trip with Wanderlog has never been easier, more stress-free, and more organized! I highly recommend it. Here is a good, three-minute video providing an overview of the app in case you’re still not convinced.