In this blog, I'm going to write about some apps I have on my iPhone I frequently use when I travel. All of the apps in this post are completely free to download, and are all compatible with both iOS and Android. I'd just like to point these apps out because they have been very helpful for me on my journeys, especially when visiting places I am unfamiliar with. So here are 10 best travel apps according to me. Enjoy!

Of course, Airbnb has become an absolute phenomenon in renting short-term living quarters. This app is definitely one of my favourites and is my go to travel app when I'm going to a city or country that I've visited multiple times in the past where I'm looking for new experiences, or if the hotel rates in the area I'm staying in are too expensive. Airbnb is a hospitality service hosting app that lets users find a home they'd like to stay in for a couple of days, that includes all sorts of homes such as houses, cottages, apartments, bungalows, mansions, homestays, hostels, etc, for a relatively cheaper rate per night compared to the average hotel, depending on the service you're taking. This app is suitable for people who are travelling on a budget, where if you only need a place to crash at night you can share a living quarter with multiple people for a cheaper price. But it's also an app a lot of people who go on lavish holidays enjoy too, thanks to the option to be able to rent a whole house or mansion, varying from simple and cozy to extravagant and luxurious. It's very unique, and I think every traveler should have this app for safe keeping.

The Hotel Tonight app has been a literal life saver for me. This is the app for emergency situations like when your flight gets delayed overnight, or if you have a 12 hour layover, or if you just want to get a great deal on a hotel room. Nonetheless, this app will save you from all the hassle of paying overpriced hotel rates or crashing airport benches. It lets you book a hotel room in under a minute, and it partners with a lot of hotels to offer promotions on room rates and discounted empty rooms. It's an easy bargain with this app, where they don't rarely offer sales up to 70% off the original price tag, so you could be spending the night in a 5-star hotel for a 3-star hotel room rate. Amazing!

App In The Air is a travel app that promotes itself as a "personal flying assistant" because of its ability to manage a little bit of your trip/flight. Not to mention the app is super fun because it keeps track of the mileage, routes, and your rankings among friends to display a map of your travel history and habits. It's also very useful, where it gives you the feature to remind you with a notification when you have a flight while also providing an option to upload a boarding pass. When you have an upcoming trip, the app will show you a card on your homepage where it will display all of your essential information about your trip including the boarding, takeoff and landing, flight duration, transit time, and airport navigation. This option also includes information about the airport terminal, check-in counter, gates (including an updated notification if a gate change occurs), and baggage claim belt. The app also provides the ability to track delays and changes to your itinerary and notify you when that happens too.

XE Currency is a pretty self explanatory foreign exchange app. This handy app that lets you convert any currency to a foreign currency while providing live proprietary exchange rates and historical charts. And it also has a neat feature where it has the ability to store the last updated rates so it even works without an internet connection. I also think XE Currency is better than the online google currency exchange tool because it's more precise and gives live currency updates to the minute. I use this app a lot on my travels when I'm buying something and I need to know how much it costs in USD or Rupiah.

Hitlist is a third party online airline ticket booking app, similar to Expedia, Kayak, Skyscanner, etc. I book 90% of my flights on Hitlist, where the other 10% are at the airline's own website or if I just happen to stumble upon a really amazing deal on another third party site that I can't possibly turn down. Otherwise, Hitlist it the main third party ticketing site I use. It's reliable and easy, and at the same time provides great flexibility, so it's a great app for booking last minute flights. It's kind of like Hotel Tonight, but the airplane version. And based on my evaluation, Hitlist is also by far the app that offers the best and cheapest flights where it has tons of promotions every time. Although a few people have said that they've been scammed by Hitlist, I myself have never experienced this. From what I've heard, the way the app works to provide the best deals is that it uses it's own revenue to subsidise airfares to make them cheaper, while also constantly scanning the web for the great deals, so it will probably be very inexpensive compared to the original ticket price offered on the airline's website. But as a result of the cheaper fare, a lot of luxuries you get when buying a ticket at it's normal fare is sacrificed, such as the option to choose your own seat, good departure times and short transit durations. Overall, it's an awesome app, but I don't recommend this app for travellers who are not adaptable to some changes to their itinerary.

Zomato is an app that you use to find dining areas in the specific city you're currently in. This includes restaurants, bars, cafés, and clubs. It's a search and discovery app similar to Yelp or Foursquare, minus the social media aspect. The app is very helpful wether you're at home or abroad, where it will give you the best suggestions on eateries in your current area that are already hand-picked by the locals who also have the Zomato app. You can also search for a place and it will provide information on the venue that you seek, including the menu, phone number, address, and opening hours. It also offers an online reservation option for some restaurants with the booking selection, not to mention the app also looks really good at the same time. I personally prefer this app over Foursquare or Yelp, because of the fact that it's simpler and a bit less cluttered.

SeatGuru by TripAdvisor is an online airline seat consultant app which helps travellers pick the best seat on a specific airline of that they have chosen to fly with. I know some people say that this app is completely unnecessary, but it really is a tool if you want to get the best choice of seating available on your flight. The SeatGuru app and its airplane seating plans accommodates dozens of airlines around the world, complete with real reviews from passengers who used the app. If your seat is missing a window or too near to the lavatories, this is the perfect app for you.

Tripit is an online planner app that lets you access all of your travel itineraries through one compiled master itinerary. The way the app works is that you simply forward all of your ticket or booking confirmation emails to Tripit, where it will then transform those emails you've sent into a compilation of all of them, which is called the master itinerary. You can send your hotel, flight, car rental, and restaurant confirmation emails to Tripit and access all of your trips in one place, whenever and wherever, even when your offline, whether through the mobile app (which gives you 24/7 access) or website. It's a detailed, daily itinerary with important dates, times, and confirmation numbers, plus directions, maps, weather, and more. They offer upgrades to the Pro version for USD 49 a year, which is completely unnecessary considering the free version is already as good and compatible minus some very minor setbacks. It's a suitable app for organized travellers like me and also for people who want to decrease the amount of redundant struggles on their trip.

I use Google Maps considering it's the most reliable and widely recognized maps app, so of course it never fails to provide easy navigation anywhere in the world whether you choose to travel by foot, car, bike, bus, or train. And plus it offers an offline downloadable maps feature which is live saving when I don't have internet access in a foreign country. Trust me, there hasn't been a single app out there that can compete and be as sophisticated and dependable as Google Maps. It really is the best navigation app out there, and I'll just leave it to that.

Last but not least, there's Duolingo. It's a user-friendly language learning platform that lets you learn the basics of a foreign language in a short amount of time. It really comes in handy if you have little to no knowledge of a language of a country you're planning to visit. As of June 2018, they offer 28 different prominent language courses you can take for absolutely no money at all. You can learn a language before a trip easily the night before, or even on the airplane, where you'll be able to the basics of the language in no time. It's good to not be completely blind about a foreign language, especially when you're travelling alone or without anyone who can speak the language at all, and I think Duolingo is the perfect app to do exactly that.