Saturday, March 27, 2010

Useful iPhone Apps for New Zealand travel

These are the useful apps i found on the appstore. Some of the apps can also be used for other destinations and most of all these are mostly free.

AucklandNZ - great app to find attraction around Auckland

Kayak - search hotel, flights, cars - also used for other destinations

ispeedy - search flights, hotels, cars - also used for other destinations

TomTom NZ - cost $100 but if you're going to spend a lot of time on the road, this will be definetly handle.

All these apps will be very handy, as we will be looking for hotels, and attractions around NZ. Some of these apps will require internet access as the data is stored on a server and not on the phone itself. I will post my review of the useful apps once i finished the trip. Make sure you get a prepaid mobile data plan if you have a iphone, otherwise some of these apps are useless, unless you can get free wifi access.

Update:
After using some of these apps, I can tell you that TOMTOM was definetly the best app to use. We drove about 3500km around New Zealand, and without it, we might have driven more, looking or asking for directions.

Kayak was also excellent at looking for hotels. We drove approx 250-350 km per day and stopping at place of interests and also for the usual lunch and toilet break. There are lots of great hotel and city guides available free at the tourist info kiosk or shops but they seem to only have boutique, small or local chain hotels and motels. We used them for about 4 days into the trip and some of the small hotels along the way was charging double for what the big chains like Accore was charging. I stop using the guide books and started using Kayak on the iphone again and it was great to find the bigger hotel chain charging less than what the local or smaller hotels or motels was charging.
I dont mind supporting the local business but not when the cost are 50 to 100% more expensive, especially when they then charge you extra for milk or don't even provide it.

New Zealand Spot-on is also a great app which lists the districts of North and South Island and then you can view the activities and attraction available in the area. This app is free and very handy especially if you're stuck on what to do with some spare time.

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