Now you're packed and rewards to go! Off to the airport to start your grand adventure. One last item to remember: Digitize everything! Download travel apps to track your itinerary. Do screen shots of your boarding pass that include gate and seat assignments. Convert any documents created on your computer to PDF and email them to yourself AND upload to cloud storage.
Travel apps are awesome and they are a one-stop-shop for your itinerary. Apps like TripIt, Tripcase, Lola and RoadTrippers capture details on your airline, hotel, car rental and in some cases can even make reservations for tours and dining. My favorite is Tripcase. The key factor is that it provided reservation info even when offline. And that is important when you suddenly find yourself in a location with no connection. All current info is stored on your phone, and updates trickle in when you're connected. Even in the middle of Belgium cow country, I was able to retrieve hotel address and map location via the GPS function. A lifesaver!
It also updates me even faster than my United Airlines app for gate and/or flight time changes. Ever sit at AirVino sipping a Merlot, get your bill, head to the gate to find your flight delayed 55mins? I did. And upon return to the bar, all seats had been taken. Dang it Karl! Ever sit at a gate waiting for the flight and as they announce boarding, you realize they are boarding for flight #159 to Nebraska. Your flight#158 to Miami is now a 20 minute cross terminal run? I did. Air travel isn't perfect and these apps help, but one thing they don't do is provide the actual e-ticket for scanning your boarding pass. So there, you may still need to download the airline app that's getting you to your destination. But even still, a minor issue to load another app on the phone, unless of course, you've maxed out storage with downloaded cat videos.
Another digi-tip: Take a screenshot of the mobile boarding pass. I've been rushing through an airport only to get stuck trying to get a signal to bring my pass up. Are you kidding me? No cell signal, so I had to search for wifi, and then navigate the ads and false links. What a pain! Instead, a screenshot works well to get you through TSA and on to the plane.
Most 3rd party itinerary apps have the email load feature, so when you get a confirmation email from your air, hotel, car and other travel aspects, simply forward the email to your app account and it loads into your itinerary. Cool! Now I have one spot for all my reservations and events during my trip. My air reservation, the rental car pickup, the hotel, dining and anything else on my trip are displayed in a nice timeline that displays in chronological order. Much nicer than my calendar.
But just because you've added these items to your app, don't forget to back that up with the original documentation. Sometimes, there are details in the original document that does not transfer over to the app. And when you're standing in the rain in Milan trying to figure out why the hotel doesn't have your reservation, at least stand close enough to pick up their wifi and take a look at your original reservation document saved in the cloud. The cloud that pouring on you now. Ooops, we're at il Parco by Hyatt, not Park Hyatt. Don't blame the cabbie on your poor Italiano accent!
Larger documents, say tour passes or rental agreements made online can be printed out to PDF format, then emailed to your phone. From there, save the attached files and you'll always have full documentation for backup ready even if you don't have a connection to download. I just hope your phone doesn't die before you get to the hotel. Can we say spare battery?
Another overall backup tip: Save all documents to the cloud. And if available, select the make available offline. I do this for the airline, hotel, car rentals, plus any tour correspondence, dinner reservations, subway maps. Anything that you may need to read, back it up, then make it available offline, for that one time you don't have a signal and you're stuck with no contact info for your next steps. I create a folder for each big trip, add all the documents to it. Select them all as "make available off-line". And when the trip is over, just delete the whole thing.
Documents are easy to deal with, but what about foreign languages. Google translate is a cool travel app to have handy. It does manual entry translation, but also verbal, so have the foreign speaker say it, and even visual. This way, you can translate signs and menus. A pretty cool feature to have when you get to your location, and realize that one semester of high school French just ain't cutting it.
