Four Of Our Favourite Travel Planning Tools

It has been years since we engaged with a travel agent to book our travel.

The last time we did so, we received a stack of gift vouchers because we found the same flights on-line for a cheaper price than the agent could offer.

After that incident, we decided to back ourselves and manage all of our own travel bookings.

We use all the on-line tools you’d be familiar with – like TripAdvisor and booking.com – as well as our preferred airline websites.

But we also have a few other travel planning tools and sites that we regularly use to plan and manage our trips – all of which we’re more than happy to share.

1. TripIt. We use the free version of the app TripIt to help plan our itineraries and keep track of where we need to be when. We still keep paper copies of everything (we’re a bit old fashioned like that) , but using the TripIt itinerary allows us to quickly and easily check things like train and flight times.
2. Paris Métro App. Easier than carrying a Métro map around with you, this app makes easy work of planning your travel around Paris. We use a free version, but there is paid version (from a different developer) that looks interesting. Just search ‘Paris Metro app’ to see your options. While I’m thinking of the Paris Métro, we sometimes to choose to book our tickets via ParisInfo and have them to delivered to us before we leave Australia. That way, we know we are right to jump on the Métro the moment we arrive in Paris
3. SNCF website. We book the bulk of French train travel through this site. It’s easy to follow and for most trips we can print our tickets at home. If we can’t find the tickets we are looking for on SNCF we will use the Deutsche Bahn website which is also very user friendly.
4. Seat Guru. All international flights from Melbourne automatically qualify as long, long, long haul. And even when you are travelling in economy (which we always seem to do) you want to be as comfortable as possible. This is where Seat Guru comes in very handy. This website allows you to check out reviews of seats before you select them. It is very handy for trying helping to decide if you want to shell out additional dollars for an a exit row seat.

Do you have any favourite travel planning tools or sites? Be sure to share them in the comments below.

Until next time – au revoir.