TripWhat — For One-Stop Travel Advice
Travel apps are a dime a dozen — there are as many of them as there are places to vacation. But TripWhat pulls all your plans into one place, and the only app you’ll need for your happy travels.
What’s the App?
TripWhat, available free for iOS, helps you plan, explore and see places around you — whether you’re on the road or in your own backyard. Looking for a place to eat? Or perhaps a cultural attraction or a sports or entertainment event? TripWhat helps you find it.
It’s basically a map and search engine that focuses on travel. But it’s easy to use, especially if you’re good at following instructions that pop up. Just type in the place you want to explore — or let the app pinpoint you via GPS — and it’ll find events, restaurants and attractions within the vicinity. You can also tap on map markers to get more details, including contact info, reviews and directions. Keep swiping until you find what you like. If you want to save an item, add it to your “My Trip” itinerary for later. If you’re looking for a theme, it’ll automatically give suggestions, like “Chicago Breweries” or “Central Park in Detail.”
What’s the advantage of using TripWhat? It draws its data from a variety of sources, like SeatGeek, UrbanSpoon, WikiVoyage and more. It can also pin these on one map, giving you a nice at-a-glance view of what’s going on. The app deftly uses swipes and taps to fit a large amount of information into a simple interface, and overall, it’s pleasant and easy to use.
The problem? When you’re in a well-documented tourist spot, it’s great, giving you suggestions to a plethora of less-known treasures. But if you’re in out-of-the-way places, it yields nothing. That means it might not pick up places to visit and eat when you’re on a tour of local orchards in northern Illinois, for example. It’s also limited to the U.S. and Canada too, so if you travel the world, you’ll want to look elsewhere.
You’ll Want It If…
You’re looking for places to eat and things to do, and want a magic map that gives you points of interest, as well as the reviews, directions and details to help you decide and get there.
It’s Not My Thing — What Else Ya Got?
TripWhat is a good start and a promising idea, but it needs to include even more sources to be truly comprehensive. The map and search is solid, but auto-suggestion isn’t that great — misspelling even a famous attraction leads to a dead-end. Typing in “Metropolitn Museum of Art New York,” for example, comes up blank, so you have be accurate to yield suggestions.
If you don’t want to shuffle through a lot of information on a map, you’ll appreciate a more curated approach to exploring. For that, Tripeze draws on highly regarded travel magazine Travel + Leisure’s expertise. It packages a diverse choice of trips and offers user-submitted and crowd-sourced itineraries as well, which helps to cover places off the beaten track.
Of course, nothing beats Yelp when it comes to great recommendations. Plenty of reviews make Yelp the go-to site for travelers, proving that sometimes you don’t need a lot of sources to plan your trip — just the best one.