How to Plan Your Trip with Free Phone Apps

Making a detailed itinerary for every trip isn't necessary. When I don't want to "plan", I use Free Phone Apps to store all of my travel details, maps and even activity tickets. 

✨Calendar Events 

I love storing travel details in calendar events - here you can add a place and attached documents and URLs. When you book a hotel, the booking will often create a calendar event for you with the address and confirmation. Flight bookings will also have auto generated calendar invites. When you purchase any activity tickets, create a calendar event for your time slot and attach your tickets to the calendar event! 

✨Air Tags

Apples locator tags are easy to pick up a pack of 4 for ~$100 and they are totally worth it! Keep one in your luggage and wallet. If you forget one, your iPhone will let you know. When you have one in your luggage you can also use it to reference where your hotel is while you explore the city. Don't forget to share the air tag locations with your trip emergency contacts too! 

✨Guides
A guide is a collection of locations on your Apple Maps app. While I plan my trip, I load all of my activates and locations into a Guide for that city! Hotels, airports, main transportation hubs and any attractions or restaurants I may want to see on my trip. 

This gives me easy access to a pre-vetted list of things for me to do so I can see what's close by for exploring! This will also stop you from planning to see something to far away. These stay in your Maps app so you can also reference it when sharing your trip with friends and even text it to them.

✨Airline Text
If you are flying on your trip, text yourself (and your emergency contact) your flight number. This will show you your flight in real time! Plus the flights before and after yours on this plane. You can also swipe to the prior flight to see if the flight before yours is delayed. This will also show you the flights status and gate, if available. 

✨Drop a Pin
Save a location that isn't on the map to a phone contact or to a Guide. This is great for remote locations, unmarked businesses and even remembering where you parked your car. 

Enjoy these free Apple travel planning hacks! Happy Travels!