It's not just your suitcase that you should be packing with holiday essentials before you leave for the airport.
Your mobile phone could make or break your plans from the moment you walk out the door.
Here's a guide to some apps you should download the moment you book your tickets.
TripCase
TripCase makes arranging and managing your itinerary as easy as possible.
You can set the app up so it continuously scans your email inbox for hotel bookings, flight tickets, car rentals or anything else that you've planned for your holiday.
It then automatically adds all of the bookings into a timeline in the app, grouped by date and location. It shows you all of the reference numbers for anything you've booked, flight arrival and departure times, it will even show you the best directions to get from the airport to where you're staying. If there's a time or gate change to your flight it will send a notification to your phone and your Apple watch.
Google Translate
This app pretty much blew my mind when I first heard about it.
I was talking to a friend and said how cool it would be if you could take a photo of a sign in a foreign language and it would instantly change it to English.
"You've not seen Google Translate have you?" they said.
Clearly I hadn't as this is just one of the many things that this app allows you to do.
You can point your camera at a menu, a street sign or whatever you like and it will translate it to any of 38 languages.
It also provides text translation between over 100 languages, 59 of those can be translated when you don't have a data connection.
You can also translate bilingual conversations live and save words that you might want to use regularly.
If you have food allergies, this app could save your life when you're ordering food overseas.
I havea an allergy to onion so "Zwiebelallergie" became my most used word when in Germany. It was much easier than trying to explain an onion to a waiter rushed off their feet.
Of course live translation technology is relatively new so it will make mistakes from time to time.
TimeOut
Just as the magazine of the same name did for many years, the Time Out app is your guide to just about every event happening in the city you're visiting.
Time Out's event finder function will give you up-to-date details on theatre shows, concerts, festivals as well as recommending restaurant and cafes within your area.
It also links through to websites where you can buy tickets to shows and will book you an Uber to get you there.
It's basically a 'gig guide' app - but it's a really good one and a must have if you're planning on being social when on holiday.
XE
This app is pretty self-explanatory. It converts currency. What makes it even more handy is that it downloads the latest rates regularly so if you don't have an internet connection, you can still make an accurate conversion.
AccuWeather
Keeping up to date with weather forecasts is a must no matter where you are.
AccuWeather is one of the leading weather apps, especially for what it offers those travelling in the United States.
It provides a minute-by-minute weather forecast for your location for up to two hours as well as warning you if there's something nasty on the way.
It will tell you the temperature and humidity as well as a 'real feel' reading taking into consideration heat, wind and moisture to tell you what sort of temperature it feels like for you exactly where you are.
Uber
Uber is nothing new to us. It's well established in New Zealand. But its simplicity and convenience can't be ignored when you're visiting the bigger cities around the world.
Quite a few cities have flat rate Uber rides to and from airports which means no surprise taxi fare at the end of the trip.
The first thing you'll notice about Uber overseas is that it offers different levels of service.
UberPool is basically a shared taxi. You'll be sharing the car with other for at least part of your ride. It's the cheapest option and sometimes you'll cross paths with some pretty interesting people.
Uber X is essentially what we have here - except not every car will be a Prius.
Uber Black is next level luxury. You'll likely get picked up in a Mustang or some other large, American powerful beast.
What apps do you recommend?
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