Don’t leave the country without these travel apps
When it comes to international business trips, there’s a lot more preparation than a quick stop to Sydney or Melbourne. There are so many extra elements to consider for your trip from jetlag to packing to language.
Corporate Traveller’s team is all about making business travel easier for you, and as part of this story we’ve collated the best apps for travel preparation. The content in these apps cover:
- Booking and Planning
- Health and Wellbeing
- Transport and Navigation
- Language
- Converters
Booking & Planning
Heading off on a business trip? There’s a good chance your company uses a corporate travel management service. Luckily if you’re with Corporate Traveller you’ll have access to a suite of booking management apps that you can access on the go.
CT Mobile App
The CT mobile app is Corporate Traveller’s easy to use, mobile app that provides travellers with booking capability, access to itineraries, mobile check-in, weather forecasts and more.
SAM :] App
SAM :] (Smart Assistant for Mobile) is Corporate Traveller’s chatbot, pocket travel assistant, which is coming soon! Sam is chatty, intuitive and powered by the very latest in artificial intelligence. This app is far more than a regular mobile app. Sam is interactive and employs a blend of AI and integrated consultant expertise to keep travellers up to date on everything related to their trips. Whether it’s a flight status, change of gate or traffic jam on the way to the airport. SAM :] is there to help!
Cover-More app
FREE
Keep up to date with Travel Alerts on your journey with the Cover-More Travel Assist app. You can also attach your travel insurance policy in the app so you have access at any time. Need help? The app provides a click to call option to get in touch with the medical assistance team.
PackPoint
FREE
Now that you’ve booked your trip you might want to start packing. PackPoint is a great mobile app available in the App Store or Google Play. It creates a checklist of what to pack based on the length of travel, weather at your destination and activities you have planned. Take the worries out of packing for your trip!
Health & Wellbeing
Let’s face it, those long-haul flights, early wake-ups, or time zone changes can be physically and mentally exhausting. Travel to certain countries can involve higher health risks than back home. We’ve put together a list of health and wellbeing apps to help you on your journey.
TimeShifter
FREE / PAID
TimeShifter is a great jet lag app, designed to help you minimise the impacts of jet lag on your journey and upon return. It’s based on the latest research in sleep and circadian neuroscience. It considers things like sleep, light, caffeine, and melatonin. Enter the dates and times of your flights, including stopovers and the app will provide you with a jet lag plan. The plan details when to sleep, and when to avoid caffeine or embrace caffeine.
The first trip plan is free, before it goes up to $14.99 for a one-off trip and $36.99/year for a subscription. There is an option for businesses, so employees can create the plans at their leisure. It might seem a little pricey but can you really put a price on nailing that business meeting?
Calm
FREE / PAID
From the first-time business traveller to the seasoned traveller, everyone is susceptible to stress and anxiety. Flying can bring out stress in even the calmest person, as can a new and unknown city. Mindfulness or meditation apps can be a way to tackle that stress. Apps like Calm provides a handful of free guided meditations to reduce your anxiety, help you to focus, and to get better sleep. There are more guides in the paid version if you really like the app, but the free versions should get you through.
Transport and Navigation
Ok, let’s talk about transport and the little luxuries. Flights are long and you’re often at the airport well before your flight departure. Here are a few apps to improve your transport journey and navigation.
Lounge Buddy
FREE
Who doesn’t love the little bit of luxury you get with Lounge Access? The Lounge Buddy app lets you plug in your flights, any memberships you have, credit cards etc. Then it tells you which lounges you automatically have access to or can buy access to on your trip. Lounge passes can range from $35USD to $70USD.
FLIO
FREE
Take your airport guidance to the next level with FLIO. Providing information on lounges, similar to Lounge Buddy, but also provides flight tracking and exclusive vouchers and deals to use at airports across the globe.
Waze
FREE
We all know Google Maps is great, but what if there was an even better way of navigating? Even better, it’s actually owned by Google. Google purchased the Israeli mapping services for around $1 billion in 2013. Why? Well, it’s proven to be more up to date with traffic updates thanks to user contributions. Other Waze app users report things they see along their drive to help other drivers. You can report heavy traffic, closed roads, car breakdowns, debris on the road, or even police and speed cameras. Waze factors in the updates from other users when mapping your journey and will re-route if it sees a big obstacle or issues up ahead. You can even check gas or fuel prices nearby to save time and money.
Citymapper
FREE
Touted as the ultimate transport app, if you’re looking to move around a city, this is the app for you. Enter your start location and destination and Citymapper will provide you with a bunch of transport options. Transport options include Metro, Rail, Cycles, Scooters, Taxi, Uber, Lyft and walking (depending on the city). Find the best way to get around quickly and easily.
Language
Now if you’re heading off to a country with an unfamiliar language, there are a few things you do can beforehand to make your trip smoother.
Memrise
FREE
Memrise is a great language app for learning key phrases and words for everyday conversation. There’s a number of languages available with different dialects. The lessons are easy to follow along with, but you’ll need to complete the lesson series and get to your checkpoint before you exit.
Duolingo
FREE
Duolingo is another great language app that makes learning fun. Compared to Memrise it provides more context and grammar so it’s ideal to use both as you’re learning.
Google Translate
FREE
Worst case scenario you always have Google Translate. You can download certain languages to translate offline if you get stuck. There’s also an augmented reality aspect where you can use your phone camera to scan a word and it will translate in real time for you. Definitely a must-have for countries with unfamiliar languages!
Currency and Converters
There are a lot of conversions to consider as you head overseas: time, currency, measurements etc. We’ve collected our top apps to help make your trip planning easy.
Travel Money Oz
FREE
Need to exchange your currency? Travel Money Oz has you covered! With their handy app you can manage your Currency Card, Insurance, Global SIM and/or Itinerary.
CalConvert
FREE
CalConvert includes lots of other conversion tools from measurement to energy, weight, cooking volumes and more. Helpful if you’re heading to one of the three countries that still has the imperial system (thanks America).
Circa
PAID
Circa is a paid app for tracking world time for meetings. It costs $5.99 so you might have to sacrifice your grande latte for one morning. It beautifully visualises the different time zones you need to work across and provides optimal times for meetings. You can select the city you need to track, and input working hours in case you have teams that are early birds.
About Flight Centre Travel Group
The Flight Centre Travel Group is one of the world’s largest travel retailers and corporate travel managers. The company, which is headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, has company-owned leisure and corporate travel business in dozens of countries, spanning Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, Europe, the United Kingdom, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and Asia. ASX listed Flight Centre Travel Group (FLT) also operates the global FCM corporate travel management network, which extends to more than 100 countries through company-owned businesses and independent licensees, along with Corporate Traveller, the flagship business specific to the small-to-medium-sized enterprise sector. For more information, visit fctgl.com.
