We use apps for practically everything – to connect with people, to avoid people, to get work done, to do anything but work, to pass time and sometimes to save some. So why not use them to make your travel blues a little…well… less blue. If you aren’t already dependent on travel apps to plan your personal or business trips, here’s where you can start.

Skyscanner A one-stop app that gives you the absolute best price available in the world wide web on flight tickets/ It aggregates flight fares from a bunch of Web sites and lists them for you so you can choose the cheapest one. It also tells you if you’ll spend less if choose a different airport in the same city or a neighbouring one. If you have a vacation in mind in say December, you can look at the fares for the entire month and choose the cheapest dates. It’s awesome that way!

WordLens Despite all the practice beforehand, most of us would get tongue-tied trying to speak a local language while travelling. And reading it is a different matter altogether. Here’s where WordLens comes handy. Point your camera at a French menu or an Italian signboard and the app will translate the phrases for you as accurately as possible.

The absolute best part is that you need not be connected to the internet while trying to translate words. You can also look up translations by typing them in or clicking on a word.

XE Currency What started off as a pretty reliable Web site for exchange rate information has been converted into an equally reliable app. In the free version, you can keep track of up to 10 different currencies simultaneously. It also has an offline mode that gives you access to the last updated rates and convert prices for you when you need it offline.

Hotel Tonight If don’t take obsessive-compulsive pleasure in pre-planning every detail of your trip, this one’s for you. Hotel Tonight is dedicated to late-minute bookers. The app refreshes the list of available hotel rooms in a specific city with massive discounts on the original price. There are some shortcomings though. First, you can book only up to five nights with the app. You can look up at hotel room only after a specific time every day. Yesterday’s deals won’t show up on the app.

And for now, the apps lists (tons of) places only in the most popular cities of North America, Central America, South America and Europe. The rest of the world gets nothing!

Tinder Considering you’ve managed to get the cheapest tickets and a great hotel room at your favourite destination, you might want to take it up a notch.

In case you have nothing better to do, Tinder lets you view singles in the place you’re currently in. It uses your phone’s co-ordinates to look for people within a certain radius.

Based on whether you like them or not (you can do so by swiping on people’s mug shots), and whether they like you back or not, your trip could get a lot more interesting than you might have planned for!

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