No doubt about it. Traveling for business requires a lot of you. You must juggle your itinerary, get from there to there, and work with your colleagues while you’re on the road. Fortunately, a bunch of new mobile apps exists that make life on the road much easier for the business traveler. Here are five of the most useful ones.
- Google Translate
One of the downsides of traveling to a foreign country is the language barrier. However, Google Translate can help you navigate around the language differences. Just log into the app and put the text into the box. If you know the language you’re reading, click on that tab. Otherwise, let Google Translate figure out the language for you. It’s a handy app to have in countries where more than one language is routinely spoken.
- Google Docs
Speaking of Google… It’s just a fact of life that when you’re traveling on business, you’re going to be doing business (and sharing documents) with your co-workers in another town or country. That’s where Google Docs (or Google Drive) comes in. This program allows you to work on shared documents even if your co-workers are in an office in Berlin and you’re in a California limousine on your way to the airport. Even better, these documents are stored in the cloud. You don’t have to worry about carrying them around once you’re done.
- AroundMe
Wouldn’t it be something if you could travel in a strange city and know exactly where everything is – like being a resident of that place? With the AroundMe app, you can! Use it to find services like the local hospital or a branch for your bank. Look for places to eat or gas stations, too. Once you locate these items, use the app to get directions.
- TripIt
Once of the most frustrating aspects of traveling to multiple places is keeping all your travel plans in one place. Maybe you’ve carried a notebook or a day planner in the past to keep track of this. These methods aren’t the most convenient, however.
The good news is that now you have TripIt, an app that keeps track of all of your travel plans. Once you sign up and sign in, you can create new plans for each of your trips. Each time you add plans to that trip, like making a hotel reservation or hiring a car service in LA, you add that to your trip. The app then makes you an itinerary of hotel, car, flight, and restaurant reservations that you can read on your mobile phone.
- Postagram
Want to send a postcard to your kids while you’re on the road? What if you don’t have time to actually look for the postcard, write it out, and then send it? No problem. Postagram can help. Basically, you take a picture, which then becomes the graphic for your postcard. Write a short note and then send it off. Your kids will get their postcard in the mail in a couple of days, without you ever having to go to the post office for stamps or to drop it into the mailbox.
Conclusion
Travel apps can do a number of things for you while you travel. As a business traveler, these apps help you work remotely with co-workers, send postcards to loved ones, and even keep track of your fights and car service. Best of all, they reside on your mobile phone, which means that your trip can be relatively paperless.
