Throughout many of my social media and blog posts, I have mentioned some of the tools and resources I use for my travels. I thought it would be a good idea to have them all in one place. These are useful for the most experienced backpacker to the leisurely traveler to the first-time traveler and in between!

Accommodations/Lodging:

  • Couchsurfing – Meet locals to host you in their home in the city you’re traveling to. Also allows you to meet other travelers nearby to hang out.
  • Booking.com – This site is one of my favorites for booking both hotels, hostels and everything in between. Their selection is pretty comprehensive and what I like is they allow you to reserve rooms a lot of times with free cancellation options, in case plans may change. With
  • Hostelworld.com – As the name implies, this site is focused on hostel listings. Their listings are sometimes more comprehensive compared to Booking. From my experience, I have found that their prices can sometimes be higher than Booking and other accommodation sites.
  • Airbnb – This allows you to rent a room or entire apartment or home from locals in an area. Prices are lot of times more budget friendly compared to hotels and hostels.
  • Kayak – This search aggregator like Google will find listings of accommodations from multiple websites and databases.

Free Camping Across USA and Canada:

I used these two sites during my road trip in September 2017 to find free campsites around the States and Canada:

Volunteering Options Abroad:

  • Workaway – This far by the largest listing site of hosts and volunteers all across the world. Workaway doesn’t arrange volunteer assignments, it is only a system used for volunteers and hosts to send messages and connect. I have only used Workaway.
  • HelpX – Similar to Workaway, in which it connects potential hosts and volunteers around the world. I haven’t personally used this website.

Finding Flights:

Booking flights can be a tricky practice, in regard to finding the cheapest price. Before using any third party booking site, I’d highly recommend booking with airlines directly as they will a lot of times have a lower price than third party sites. These sites below are great for finding which airlines to book with:

  • Kayak – My favourite and most used tool for finding flights. Kayak pulls flights from many different travel booking sites across the web, as an aggregator.
  • Momondo – I use this website in tangent with Kayak to compare prices. Like Kayak it is aggregator for flights across the web. Momondo seems to have a bigger focus for European flights, so I use it especially for traveling through that region.
  • Skyscanner – Another really good flight aggregator.
  • Kiwi.com – This is a third party booking website, like Expedia or Orbitz, for example. With my personal experience with them, they sometimes have some really good deals.

Currency/Exchange Rate:

  • XE Currency App – I use this app constantly to convert a local currency amount to what it would cost in US Dollars. You can choose which currency you want to use, based off where you’re going.

Foreign Languages:

  • Google Translate – This tool is absolutely amazing to use to communicate with locals when you don’t know words or phrases of a language. What’s really handy is you can download language packs so you can use offline! I use this tool daily and have found it invaluable.
  • Duolingo – If you’re trying to learn a new language for travel and maybe just for the fun of learning a new language, I found Duolingo to be great. What is even better, is it is free!

Maps/Navigation Tools:

  • Google Maps – This is my top tool and has helped me many times in getting me to where I need to go. Google gives you the best routes to get to a place, whether it be by car, public transit or by walking. It is preferable to have data with this app, however this app does allow downloading maps for offline use.
  • Maps.me – I love this app as it allows you to download offline maps for the region you’re going to visit. I still prefer Google Maps, but I have used this app quite frequently as well.
  • Rome2Rio – This is a great website/app for finding the best route from one point to another. I just discovered it this year and use it quite frequently in my trip planning before I go to a new place.
  • Wikitravel – Like Wikipedia, this is a site that people write in comprehensive detail about a city and countries (e.g. history, top places to see, dangers, etc.). I use this website every time before I go into a new country.

Communication While Abroad:

  • WhatsApp – This app has been invaluable for allowing me to keep in touch with family and friend while overseas. It works like a phone using your phone number to make free calls and texts over wifi.
  • Facebook Messenger – This app works great to keep in touch with my friends on Facebook.

If there is something you find missing on here, feel free to reach out to me as I would love to add more resources!

Disclaimers: 1) Please note, with some links, they are referral links in which I would receive a credit or monetary kickback from the company for you using their service. There is no additional cost to you. 2) Use all these resources at your own risk, I take no responsibility for results from websites and/or services mentioned.  **Updated last 10/2017