5 Helpful Travel Apps For Bloggers

Are you a fellow app fan? I bet you are! And when planning a culinary-focused getaway, having the right apps on your phone can help you find the right location and perfect restaurants to please your taste buds.

There are also some fantastic apps to help you find travel-loving friends abroad and a suitable accommodation for your budget.

Here are a few of my favorite apps for travel bloggers and roaming foodies! I have most of these apps on my phone right now, and use them regularly, whether it’s to find nearby hot spots or for my upcoming adventures.

Lonely Planet Guides App

Although I may be biased, I think that LP Guides is one of the best travel apps out there. I know from experience that the editors at Lonely Planet work with knowledgeable locals who are passionate about their city/town, so the content on the Guides app is insightful and helpful. This app tells you basically everything you need to know, making it perfect for travel planning and finding the right hotel, as well as knowing what places to dine at and which sites to see.

Guides also includes a currency converter, phrasebooks, and maps to help you navigate on your upcoming trip.

Trover

If you’re a travel blogger or digital nomad looking for ideas for your upcoming trip, try playing around with Trover. It’s a free app for travelers that allows you to post photos from your travels and also search for travel ideas via hashtags and locations.

Trover also curates several lists around various travel topics, like what’s hot or #foodiefinds. You can curate your own lists ( such as a Bucket List for your travel goals) In addition, they hold travel photography contests on various themes to which you can submit to your own shots.

As a social media network, I’ve found the engagement on Trover to be quite low, but as far as researching travel ideas, it has lots of potential.

Travel Stoke

This new app from Matador Network is a great way to connect with travel bloggers, writers, and photographers from around the world and ask them questions. You can explore what other travelers are doing and add local hot spots you think people would enjoy visiting. This app is extremely helpful when you’ve got a question you just can’t seem to Google the answer to, with regards to your trip.

Feel free to add me on Travel Stoke by searching for Elizabeth Kelsey Bradley ( my name is long, I know). I try my best to answer questions as soon as I can, but if I’m taking to long, feel free to email me. 

Hey! Vina

If you’re planning on spending several weeks/months in a new location and are looking to make new friends, Hey! Vina is a fun app to try out. It helps you find fellow women with shared interests in your area. While this app is somewhat new and doesn’t have a ton of people using it yet, I still found some potential friends to meet up with here in Chiang Mai, so it’s worth trying it!

Bonjournal

Thinking of starting a travel journal? Bonjournal is a beautifully designed ( and free!) travel journal app that lets you share your photos and notes to so travelers can see your adventures.

Related Post: Why you should start a travel journal

Memrise

Fellow polyglot? Whether you’d like to learn the Thai alphabet or speak conversational Japanese, you’ll basically fall in love with Memrise. My husband bought me the pro version of this app for my Birthday, after he saw me using it so often; I’m currently attempting to learn Japanese.

I honestly think Memrise is the best language learning app out there. Native speakers teach you the pronunciation, which makes a big difference when you’re learning a new language as you can pick up the tone much easier that way. This especially goes for tonal languages like Chinese and Thai.

The free version is excellent, so I’d suggest starting with that! My suggestion is to not progress to the next unit/lesson until you really fully know the previous one. I actually do class reviews all the time, even if I’m getting a 100 percent because I want to know the letters/words so well that I won’t forget them. And with my somewhat shoddy memory, this happens easily if I don’t drill what I’m learning often.

I also suggest taking the time to write down all vocab you learn in a foreign writing systems, ie hiragana, hangul, etc. Memrise hasn’t asked me to write on the actual app, which is a shame, so I instead plan to get a notebook and jot down the hiragana I’m learning.

Pinterest

You may associate Pinterest with fashion and DIY ideas, but it’s actually the perfect app for saving travel inspiration and ideas. It’s hands down my favorite social media network ( although it’s technically more of a visual search engine) and I use it to pin/save everything from business articles to hotels I’d like to stay at.

The best way to use Pinterest to plan your next vacation is to start a pin board around a particular theme or destination, ie your upcoming honeymoon in Bali. If you’re a travel blogger, you’ll absolutely want to start sharing your own posts to Pinterest, and are more than welcome to join my group board for travel bloggers.

Steller

Another beautiful visual app that can help you plan your adventures is Steller. This engaged community of photo-savvy storytellers can help you get ideas and travel inspiration, even though the app isn’t devoted entirely to travel.

You can see my various culinary travel guides on Steller app here, as an example of how you can use the app to both plan your trip and showcase your photography & writing.