I used ChatGPT to create a daily itinerary for a family trip to Tokyo and it was a success. First, I asked it to give me a list of 10 interesting places and neighborhoods less than 90 minutes by Tokyo. Then I asked it to give me the top ten things to do at each place. I fined tuned the lists by asking ChatGPT to include the best shopping streets in each areas. The lists it generated, which include dining suggestions. I’m going to do this for every trip I take. — MF
Insteading of poring over dozens or hundreds of Tripadvisor reviews of a hotel, copy the Tripadvisor URL of the hotel into this website and it will generate a summary of the general sentiment of the hotel. You can select from different summary styles, like Personal Travel Advisor, Detail Orientated, Sarcastic, or Super Critical. — MF
Vacay’s free AI-travel assistant is a chat bot that answers travel related questions and even generates full itineraries based on your budget and interests. All you do is ask it a question. To test its capabilities, I asked it, "I am interested in modern Japanese design. Describe the top 10 less-well-known stores I should visit in Tokyo and explain why they are worth visiting." The results were impressive, although it seems one store may have been a hallucination. I plan to visit these places on my next trip to Japan. — MF
Use the Soundprint app to measure the noise level in public places and share your findings with other people who appreciate quiet environments. A map shows the decibel measurements of coffee shops, clubs, parks, and restaurants around the world. — MF
The free Google Translate app for phones is still the best bargain in the world. It keeps getting better and better. It will translate between 60 languages, in either text, voice, or most importantly, from images from your camera, so it can translate menus, signs, and instructions just by pointing your phone at them. Really good for foreign scripts. — KK
Wherever I am headed to, I always buy the latest edition of a good guidebook. It’s a cheap bargain compared to the cost of the trip. I use all the brands, RoughGuides, Moon, Brandt, Fodors, and many independents, but by far the consistently best guides are Lonely Planet. Crammed with info, maps, prices, all dutifully updated frequently. I think they do the best job or orientation, organizing, and serving angles of interests, If you go to the Lonely Planet website and look up your destination, they’ll tell you when the next edition is due so you can judge whether you want to wait. — KK
Here’s a cool visualizer of all the places that Anthony Bourdain has visited in his travels on Parts Unknown and No Reservations. I’m traveling to Cairo next month and someone suggested I go where ever Bourdain ate, so I googled and bookmarked places to check out from here. — CD
My husband and I are planning to move out of California in 5 years and have been traveling to other states to check them out. We still haven’t agreed on a place, but I recently discovered this MoveMap which makes things easier. I filtered by my criteria: avoid drought, mountains within an hour, airport within two hours and a lot of sun. What I get back is select counties in Arizona and Colorado and most of Utah — as well as Santa Clara County, which is where I live now. — CD
I often fly in and out of LAX. Uber, Lyft and taxi riders are required to walk or take a shuttle to a lot near the airport to hail a ride. It’s very crowded in the lot and the last time I was there I had to wait over 30 minutes for a Lyft. But I learned in this article that you can take a free hotel or metro shuttle from the airport and hail a ride after you get to the station or hotel. Not only will you save money (no airport surcharge) you probably won’t have to wait as long for a ride. This tip might work at other airports, too. If it does, let us know. — MF
Author Dan Pink has mastered the art of delivering fantastic advice in 2 minutes or less. His latest Pinkcast is his 5 tips for optimizing travel to a foreign city. I concur with these 100% and do them myself. To save you 2 minutes here they are:
Go to the highest point in the city.
Buy a local newspaper.
Ride public transportation.
Go to McDonald’s (Seriously.)
Spend an hour in a grocery store.
But you’ll miss Dan’s humor and his persuasion if you don’t watch his pitch. — KK
You might already know you can enter a flight number in Google and get tracking information. Another easy way to find out when a flight is departing or landing and if it’s on time is to enter it in Mac OS Spotlight. Also, if you send a message with a flight number, you and the recipient can click it and see where the plane is on a map. Here’s more about this handy feature. — MF
Despite the fact that I use Google maps almost everyday for something, I didn’t know about these 5 cool functions built into the system. I wish I had known about how to share locations earlier. The hacks are presented by Steve Dotto on Dottotech channel in this short video. — KK
I just discovered Atlas Obscura has a Gastro Obscura map where you can find unusual restaurants or food museums all over the world. Anyone can contribute an entry — the requirements being that it is an awe-inspiring place or that it preserves lesser known culinary traditions or amazing architecture or decor. Way more interesting that Yelp! — CD
I just returned from visiting my grandmother in Mexico, and aside from my packing cubes which makes my suitcase manageable, this technique of folding all of my outfits together helped me get dressed quickly in the mornings without mulling over what to wear or pulling everything out of their cubes. — CD
So called “resort fees” are a sneaky way for hotels to advertise a low price then tack on an additional charge. Even if you don’t use the hotel pool of fitness center, they’ll add it to your bill. Before booking a hotel, visit Resort Fee Checker to see if it charges a resort fee. The site also has information on the price of breakfast, internet, parking, pets, and other fees. — MF
I haven’t slept in an airport in years, but I can imagine there will be a time when I have to do it again. Sleeping in Airports offers tips for making a night at the airport (intentional or not) as pleasant as possible. The site even provides a list of the best airports to sleep in (Changi Airport, Singapore) and the worst airports to sleep in (Jeddah King Abdulaziz International Airport, Saudi Arabia). — MF
I’ve used Hotwire to book hotel rooms. On the plus side, they have good deals, on the minus side, you don’t know which hotel you are reserving until after you’ve paid the non-refundable fee. But here’s a video on “How ANYONE Can Get 50% Off Hotels” that shows you how to find out which hotel HotWire is offering before you commit. — MF
One reason I like traveling to Japan is that no one there has ever tried to pull a scam on me. Not so in Europe, Mexico, and the United States, where I’ve experienced at least a few of the 40 scams presented in this infographic. A few are obvious, but there are always some surprising scams worth knowing about. Read this list to prepare yourself the next time you travel. — MF
My friend Star Simpson tweeted this useful travel tip: “Not enough people know that Google Maps has an Easter egg. If you type ‘ok maps’ into the search field it will download a map for offline use. Great if you might not have awesome cell reception where you’re going, is now a step on my packing checklist.” (For some reason it doesn’t work for Tokyo.) — MF
A helpful travel tip I received from a foodie friend was to find restaurants by searching hashtags on Instagram. This really comes in handy in places where Yelp recommendations are scarce. I was just traveling through Switzerland and searched for #Genevafood to find thousands of pictures of delicious looking food — most of them tagged with the location. This is great for me because I choose places based on Yelp food pics anyway. I clicked on the images that looked the best to me and then looked up the restaurant and its proximity. Searching hashtags also helped me find pages dedicated to local food. — CD