TECHNOLOGY TO THE RESCUE

By Devika Khosla

Between the planning stage and even after arriving at your holiday destination, there are many moving parts when it comes to taking a family group vacation. Often, the excitement of reuniting with loved ones can be overshadowed by the stress of planning and ensuring that everything goes smoothly.

Apps are an efficient way to keep plans in place before, during and after a family group vacation with a variety of useful information and tools at your fingertips. While travel apps give you the ability to plan and organize your itinerary by allowing you to search and compare prices for flights, hotels and rental cars, there are other apps that help make the planning process easier and more convenient by helping you stay on schedule, track, split expenses, share locations, and create a common cloudbased album to upload photos.

Here are five recommended vacation apps to make things easy for you:

PACKPOINT: Are you one of those who packs everything but the kitchen sink when traveling? A dilemma for many, overpacking and underpacking are predicaments even the most seasoned travelers find themselves experiencing. While it is easier to pack for yourself, when packing for the entire family, knowing what to take and what to leave behind can be difficult. To help make things easier for everyone, PackPoint is a much-needed packing app that helps you organize what you need to pack based on length of travel, weather at your destination and any activities planned during your trip.

GPSMYCITY: If your family reunion is in a city, GPSmyCity is a helpful tool with curated self-guided walking itineraries. Accompanied with audio guides that highlight the sights and landmarks along the way, it can help keep kids engaged as you explore. One of the key features of this app is the option of downloading tours offline, so you even if there is no internet connection, you will still be able to navigate on your own without getting lost.

SPLITWISE: While enjoying yourself on a family group vacation, the last thing you want to do is math. Splitwise is a useful app for a family group traveling together to keep track of shared expenses. It allows users to input the cost of an expense, assign it to one or more people, and then calculates how much each person owes. This can help prevent disagreements about who paid for what during a trip. Additionally, it allows you to create different groups, so you can keep track of expenses on a trip separately from other group expenses. It also has a feature to split expenses equally among the group.

TRIPIT: Avoid travel plans getting lost in translation with TripIt. When planning a family reunion, exchanging text messages and emails can lead to a logistical nightmare. TripIt is a travel organization app that allows users to unify their travel plans by creating an itinerary that includes all of their flight, hotel and car rental information in one place. The app also allows users to share their itinerary with friends and family so everyone is updated. With the feature to receive real-time flight alerts, there is no chance of anyone getting left behind. Home Alone, anyone?

HOPTALE: With everyone taking photos on their phones during a family reunion, it can become a task to manage sharing them. An easy tool to help you process travel photos on your phone and in turn, free up some storage space, Hoptale is a modernized digital travel scrapbook that fits in your pocket. The app allows you to document an entire trip, with photos, maps, itineraries, and a journal section all in one, making it a priceless souvenir to go back to at any time.

Family reunions are meant to be a time of meaningful connections, shared experiences and creation of precious memories with loved ones. Whether your tribe likes nature walks in the great outdoors or are city slickers who want to take in all the sights, there is a travel app for every kind of traveler and group to make your reunion less stressful and more enjoyable. DR