Essential travel App's for your Campervan trip

Our roundup of some of the best travel apps for you trip

In the past decade, mobile app usage has exploded and by the end of 2020 there were about 3.5 billion smartphone users worldwide and an estimated 1.4 billion smartphones were sold in that year alone.

Powering this new generation of smartphones are 'Software applications' or Apps for short. There are estimated to be as many as 2.5 million apps available across all platforms.

Here are a few dedicated to travel that we think you will find useful:

Waze is the ideal road trip route planner utilizing social interaction. It allows the community to decide which routes are best to take. This happens through users reporting nearby collisions, police radar and traffic jams, so that you can safely avoid these routes in favor of arriving on time. It gets even better, as Waze also reports on the petrol prices at different stations. Thus, whether you’re looking to save money or time, Waze has got you covered.

Google Maps  is a fantastic route planner, allowing users to find directions through driving, public transportation, walking or biking. The beauty is the app's versatility, not only in route planning but in searching for amenities wherever you are or plan to go. Destinations can be saved for future reference and notes added if ever you want to revisit a top destination.

Roadtrippers is a journey planner in your pocket. It can help you find restaurants, national parks and other scenic points of interest.

It lets you plan your journey and add stops along the way. You can share this plan with others through the app, allowing them to give you feedback or tips. You can sync the trip plan across multiple devices for easy reference, and in case a phone runs out of battery!

When embarking on a road trip, and enjoying the open road of the highway, it can be hard to know what amenities are available at what stop. Time is of the essence, and you want to be sure that the petrol station won’t be insanely priced, or that the restaurant on the road sign isn’t the vegetarian-unfriendly KFC. This is where iExit comes in, it provides you with all the information of amenities available at upcoming exits of major highways. This includes restaurants, petrol stations, grocery stores, hospitals, hotels and more. The app locates you on the highway and show the amenities closest to you and how far each exit is. Then, for each service you can see how far you have to travel off your route, which is the biggest improvement on the vague highway signs. You can also use this app prior to your trip, to plan which stops you’ll take on the different highways you’ll be travelling on.

A common ailment of the modern day road trip is parking, finding a spot is hard enough, but finding one that won’t destroy your wallet is even harder. That is where ParkMe comes in. It helps you find available parking near you, giving you directions not only to the street but up to the available lot. It’ll show you the rate for the spot, so you never have to walk around searching for a paymeter or wondering if you’ll come back to a surprise fine. It also has a great function that allows you to set a parking timer, which helps you avoid overstaying, overpaying or getting a ticket. And you can even pay for the parking using the app!

AllTrails is a great app for finding walking, cycling, and running trails, or a range of other activities from canoeing to fly fishing! It also allows you to view trails that are wheelchair accessible, or dog or child-friendly. Trails can be sorted by difficulty, length, rating and more, and you can view and follow detailed maps.

This may be quite an obvious one, but I don’t know if you realise the full extent of the functions of the Spotify app. You can either use Spotify free, with ad’s and needing wifi, or pay a small monthly subscription to get premium. This subscription can be split between a “Family”, which is up to 6 people. With premium you have uninterrupted music and can download the songs when you have internet, so that when you’re out you can listen to any of your downloaded music. A fun extra with Spotify are their playlists, which appeal to a variety of different genres and moods. They also have hundreds of podcast series, which are up to date and offer a wide selection. It is one of the best travel apps as it reduces the needs for other apps or internet, as why download a podcast app to pay for when you can combine it with everyday music? I strongly recommend downloading it and enjoying fresh tunes or tales as you drive along that highway.

Sun seeker. This app has a great many potential uses. From knowing where shadows are going to fall at different  times for photography, to figuring out the best place to camp for morning sun, or planning your beach trip for the perfect time.

Shows either a flat compass view, or an augmented reality view with the solar path, the position at each hour, sunrise and sunset times, and much more.

This app isn’t free unfortunately, but well worth the cost for those who require it.

For your ease and convenience the standard VW stereo units in Bella,

Coco and Harley have been upgraded to work with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.