T+L's Top Travel Apps 2010

We’ve scoured the virtual aisles of the Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm, and Windows stores for our 53 favorite travel apps.

If you’ve ever tried to find a parking spot in Manhattan, you know just how time-consuming it can be. Instead of rearranging your morning—or, if you’re visiting, your entire itinerary—around the search, you can now rely on Primo Spot, an app that provides you with a 3-D map of nearby parking spots and garages.

What started as an iPhone phenomenon—download an application to perform a special function—has turned into a digital revolution. Today, every traveler knows that carrying an app-loaded phone can transform everything from planning a trip to navigating a new city. In fact, many of us depend on apps so much that we can hardly choose a restaurant without one—near or far from home.

Now, with more than 200,000 titles, the iPhone leads the pack. But its competitors are quickly gaining ground: at press time, Google’s Android Market had about 60,000 programs. BlackBerry is close behind with more than 10,000—and counting. And then there’s the iPad: not a smart phone but a versatile (and glamorous) e-reader poised to take apps even more mainstream.

Though the first travel-focused smart-phone programs were mainly gateways to existing websites or stand-alone guidebooks, today it’s all about location, location, location. Most new titles—from restaurant finders and shopping tools to turn-by-turn navigation programs—use the average smart phone’s built-in GPS to help find nearby points of interest.

One standout is Navigon ($25): it features text-to-speech directions, real-time traffic updates, and interesting spots along your route. Another is Trapster (free), which helps you avoid traffic tickets; it’s not quite a radar detector, but the GPS-enabled system gives you warnings abut speed traps, cameras at intersections, and common police waiting areas—all laid out on a map. There’s also the unfortunately named Sit or Squat (free) for nearby restrooms.

There are also plenty of non-GPS-enabled apps that improve the travel experience—whether you’re just starting to plan your trip or are already on the road. The mobile version of the website TripIt (free), by far the most useful travel planning and management service online, accesses flight, hotel, restaurant, and any other information you’ve entered into the “My Trips” section of the site.

And of course Travel + Leisure is in the app game with our free Weekend Getaway app on the iPhone and our free Packing Checklist app for the BlackBerry (available in Verizon’s VCast store).

Whichever apps you choose to help you in your travels, one thing is clear: the world around you has never been more annotated—or accessible.

Find a flight, hotel, or car rental

With its stripped-down interface, Kayak is easy to use, making it our favorite way to look up airfares, as well as hotel rooms and rental cars. For flights, you can sort your results by price, trip length, and even departure and arrival times using Kayak’s signature sliders. One hitch: you’ll need to upgrade to the Pro version to get first- and business-class fare quotes.

Cost: Free; $1.99 for the Pro version.

Runs On: Android, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile.

Runners-up: TripAssist by Expedia (free; iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch), Travelocity (free; Android, iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch).

Manage your vacation right from your phone

Forward all your travel confirmations to Worldmate and it automatically updates an online profile, keeps track of flight delays and gate changes, and even reminds you to check in on time. You also get weather forecasts, a currency converter, a tip calculator, world clocks, local restaurant and shopping listings (with directions), and the ability to make hotel and flight reservations.

Cost: Free; $14.99 for the Gold version, which gives you faster updates.

Runs On: BlackBerry, iPhone/iPod Touch, Symbian, Windows Mobile.

Stay on top of your trip

The mobile version of the website

Research airline schedules

With the most comprehensive flight database, eSkyGuide from T+L’s parent company, American Express, gives you the full schedule for all flights along a particular route, including ones that are sold out (so you can try for standby). It also identifies the airport nearest to tourist destinations or addresses and offers up-to-the-minute status reports on delays and weather, along with contact information for airlines.

Cost: $4.99.

Runs On: iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch.

Check your flight status

FlightTrack Pro gives you a flight’s departure time, current speed, altitude, location, and odds for an on-time arrival. Most important, you can share flight information with your friends via Twitter, Facebook, or e-mail, which is useful if someone’s coming to pick you up at the airport. Just enter an airline and flight number, choose by route, or simply sync the service with your TripIt itineraries (see above), and Flight Track will send you the latest updates, including gate status and delays.

Cost: $4.99; $9.99 for the Pro version, which adds more real-time information.

Runs On: Android, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch.

Make the most of a layover

No more lugging around heavy carry-ons in unfamiliar airport terminals looking for a healthy snack, newspaper stand, or ATM. Gate Guru lists all the businesses near your gate—along with user ratings, reviews, pictures, and maps—in 100 airports aroun

Get around a city

How do you move from point A to point B in a snap? HopStop maps the route with directions for subway, rail, bus, walking, or taxis (or a combination of transportation methods) in more than 15 cities across the U.S. and Europe.

Cost: Free.

Runs On: iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch.

Runners-up: AnyStop (free; Android), MetrO (free; BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile), SubMapsXHD ($1.99; iPad).

Navigate the roads (domestic)

The most easy-to-use of the full GPS navigation apps, Navigon features text-to-speech directions, real-time traffic updates ($24.99 extra), and information about points of interest along your route. Other great features: the ability to set anyone from your address book as your “destination,” easy-to-read maps, and 3-D views complete with road signs.

Cost: $79.99 (North America).

Runs On: iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile.

Navigate the roads (international)

With 28 separately sold packages for regions on every continent but Antarctica, TomTom’s navigational apps are ideal for international travel. The on-screen design includes information like time to destination and time u

Locate a boutique hotel

Use StayHip to see instant listings—and slide shows—of more than 400 boutique hotels in your immediate vicinity or in any location in the world. Just enter a city or click on a destination on a map to find available rooms and rates; bookings can be made right from the phone.

Cost: Free.

Runs On: Android, iPhone/iPod Touch.

Book a last-minute room

Booking.com’s HotelsNearMe gives you real-time availability for accommodations near you, along with the ability to make reservations through the app—perfect when you’re scrambling to find a room after an unexpected overnight flight delay.

Cost: Free.

Runs On: Android, BlackBerry, iPhone/iPod Touch.

Get a traffic report

So you can stay hands-free on the road, Aha Radio reads you the latest GPS-enhanced traffic reports on a pre-entered, customized route, using Clear Channel sources and updates from other drivers. The app also announces news, Facebook and Twitter posts, and points of interest along the way.

Cost: Free.

Runs On: iPhone/iPod Touch.

Score a parking spot

Using your phone’s GPS, Primo Spot provides you with a 3-D map highlighting the rates of the nearest parking garages and the availability of street parking around you. (It can also tell you about nearby bike racks.) It’s available for Boston and New York, with more cities on the way.

Cost: $2.99.

Runs On: Android, iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch.

Avoid tickets

While it isn’t quite a radar detector, the automated voice of GPS-enabled Trapster gives drivers warnings about speed traps, road cameras at intersections, checkpoints, and common police waiting areas—it’s also all laid out on a map.

Cost: Free.

Runs On: Android, BlackBerry, Garmin/TomTom, iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch, Palm WebOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile.

Pick a restaurant

Yelp and Aloqa are great for user-generated restaurant reviews, but one of the best sources remains Zagat to Go. The service displays a map with your location and icons indicating nearby restaurants (as well as hotels, nightlife, and shopping) for 60 U.S. cities and 30 international cities, including Paris and London. Click on the icon and you’ll get the full review, along with the average price of a meal and Zagat’s numeric ratings for food, service, and décor. You can also search using filters, such as “open late” or “trendy.”

Cost: $9.99.

Runs On: Android, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch, Palm, Symbian.

Runners-up: Michelin Guides ($18.99; iPhone), OpenTable (free; Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm, Windows Mobile), Urban Spoon (free; Android, iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch).

Eat at a food truck

While the food-truck trend means great meals on the go, tracking down the actual vehicles can be difficult. Enter RoadStoves, which gives you an up-to-the-minute list of the nearest gourmet food trucks—along with directions to wherever they happen to be located. The service is currently available in Los Angeles and coming to more cities soon.

Cost: $0.99.

Runs On: iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch.

See dishes at nearby restaurants

Check for rain

Not only does WeatherBug give you hour-by-hour forecasts and corresponding satellite views but it also has live camera feeds from 1,600 locations around the country. On Android phones, you can set up weather widgets for specific locations; on BlackBerrys, you can upload forecasts to your calendar, so you’ll know what to wear.

Cost: Free–$0.99; $4.99 for enhanced updates and maps.

Runs On: Android, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch, Palm WebOS, Symbian, Windows Mobile.

Know what to tip

For detailed information on what to give everyone from concierges and waiters to ski instructors and tour guides in 108 countries and regions, there’s Tipping Tips. What’s more, the app advises what to give based on both the standards of the destination and the level of service received. And if you’re dining with a group, the calculator will break down how much each person owes.

Cost: $0.99.

Runs On: iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch.

Find a restroom

Using your GPS location, address, intersection, or zip code, Sit or Squat provides you with the nearest restrooms, along with maps and even candid user ratings and reviews.

Cost: Free.

Runs On: Android, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch.

Stay healthy

An essential part of your digital first-aid kit,

Get unlimited Wi-Fi access

Sign up with Boingo Mobile Wi-Fi, and you’ll have unlimited access to thousands of partnering Wi-Fi hot spots in more than 70 countries around the globe.

Cost: Free, plus $7.95 per month service charge.

Runs On: Android, BlackBerry, iPhone/iPod Touch, Nokia, Symbian, Windows Mobile.

Find nearby hot spots

JiWire’s Wi-Fi Finder online database gives you mapped listings of the nearest free and paid Wi-Fi areas in your vicinity. Click on an icon to find out how much the network costs and how to get there.

Cost: Free.

Runs On: Android, iPhone/iPod Touch.

Call home

Want to save money on your calls? Traveler standby Skype sends phone calls over Wi-Fi, so you don’t have to turn on your data roaming service. The service offers free calls to other Skype users and reduced-rate calls (along the lines of 2.1 cents a minute from Europe, or less) to regular phones.

Cost: Free.

Runs On: Android, BlackBerry (Verizon), iPhone/iPod Touch.

Runner-up: Line2, a similar app for Android and iPhone that lets you make unlimited international calls for $14.95 a month.

Record your findings

How do you remember a great bottle of wine that you tried in Burgundy last summer? Or the perfect little sandal-maker in Positano? Just take a picture—or text or audio note—and upload it to Evernote, a service accessible from your phone or any Web-connected computer. Searching among your notes is easy: you can look under tags, text, and even words that are embedded in images.

Cost: Free; $45 per year for the premium version, which includes extra memory and more features.

Runs On: Android, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch, Palm WebOS, Windows Mobile.

Share your travels

Trip Journal, which will track your route using GPS, lets you record your travels on the go through text, pictures, and video and share them with friends and family on social networks.

Cost: $0.99.

Runs On: Android, iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch.

Google your world

Like Wikitude, Google Goggles uses your phone’s camera to annotate the world around you—but it goes a step further. Take a picture of foreign-language text and it’ll give a translation; photograph a wine bottle and it’ll give you links to product information. It also offers Yelp-like information about restaurants and other points of interest in the area.

Cost: Free.

Runs On: Android.

Travel with your pet

Mo’s Nose is the canine equivalent of Y

Lonely Planet Phrasebooks

These interactive versions of Lonely Planet’s print books offer quick reference to more than 600 key travel phrases, which are delivered to you via text (with phonetic spellings) or audio recording.

Best For: First-time visitors. The app, which covers 10 major language groups, makes coming up with the right words easy.

Cost: $9.99.

Runs On: Android, iPhone.

Jibbigo

Speak an English phrase into your iPhone’s mic and Jibbigo recites the translation in Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, or even Iraqi Arabic. Unlike many other translation apps, it doesn’t require a (potentially costly) data connection.

Best For: Foreign-language neophytes. If you’re too nervous to say the words, Jibbigo will do it for you!

Cost: $24.99–$27.99.

Runs On: iPhone.

Lingopal 44

Get text or voice versions of travel phrases in 44 languages (from Afrikaans and Icelandic to Korean and Mandarin). Phrases are divided into categories, including directions, business, emergencies, and banks.

Best For: Immersion travelers who will make use of the far-flung languages and tutorials on how to both flirt and insult in local parlance.

Cost: $9.99.

Runs On: iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch.

iTranslate

Type in a phrase, and this app

Hipstamatic

Automatically give pictures taken with your cell phone that vintage, 1970’s-era Instamatic look. This whimsical photo-enhancement app comes with a choice of six virtual lenses, eight films, and six flashes to transform your images with a grainy, faded aesthetic that makes for distinctive Facebook updates and multimedia messages or e-mails right from your phone.

Cost: $1.99.

Runs On: iPhone.

SodaSnap

Turn any photo on your iPhone into a virtual postcard (complete with text greeting) that you can post on Facebook or Twitter or share via e-mail. The SodaSnap+ premium version lets you resize and make basic edits on your cards, plus you can pick from a variety of fonts for the text box.

Cost: Free–$2.99.

Runs On: iPad, iPhone.

CameraBag

This photo-processing app lets you apply classic effects to images taken using your camera with just a few clicks and finger swipes. Some of the iconic camera looks include 1962 (high-contrast black-and-white), Instant (looks like a Polaroid shot, complete with borders), and Helga (faded colors from a trendy square-format camera).

Cost: $1.99–$2.99.

Runs On: iPad, iPhone.