My Favorite Travel Tools Of 2024

Our world keeps changing and in a lot of ways that’s a good thing 🙂 . I continue to be amazed by new free tools I find online that help make my travel easier. Some of these have launched recently and some have been around for a while and I just had no idea.

I’ve talked in the past about travel tools that help me live my full-time nomad life in the posts below:

• My Favorite Nomad Travel Tools Of 2022
• My Favorite Nomad Travel Tools Of 2023
• Nomad Tech Necessities: A Peek Inside The Bag Of A Full-Time Traveler
• How I Choose And Book My Flights

But every year I learn about new ones so today I’m here to talk about my favorite tools I’ve discovered in 2024. Let’s get into it!

Google Hotel Search

I’ve mentioned Google Flights a bunch of times on this blog before. It’s my favorite place to go to see all my flight options, including multi-city options.

I also enjoy their Google Explore feature that gives general information on what it would cost to fly anywhere from one location, so if I don’t have set plans, I can see what’s available and basically throw a dart at a map 🙂 .

Well there’s another section of Google that I’ve been using lately: Hotels! I suspect the reason it’s taken me so long to use this feature is because I rarely stay in hotels, much preferring to slow travel in Airbnbs for months at a time.

• How I Choose Great Airbnb Stays: A Peek Inside A Full-Time Nomad’s Travel Planner

However, I have needed to look up hotels for a few travel plans recently, and found this comprehensive search engine very helpful. It’s the best search tool I’ve found for hotels based on the amount of filters and customization. It helps me find exactly the hotel amenities I want.

This search tool has also been helpful when I have to find a hotel quickly while on the go because of my latest travel debacle:

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Trainline

I’ve mentioned that I’m finally heading back to Europe this fall. Part of that trip involved booking trains for tight schedules that we had. After having lived there for 6 months, I know that booking trains in advance is not usually necessary because they’re way more frequent than in the US and basically better in every way.

However, we were on a timeline 🙂 . So I wanted to book a few of our trains that had to be at a specific time and will book the rest on the day we walk up to the train station (how wild and spontaneous of my neurotic self 😉 ) .

But when I looked into buying train tickets online from the US, I encountered a few problems. Understandably there are many train companies across multiple countries and not all of their websites had an English translation option or worked well with Google Translate. Their UI was also often confusing to me. So I had trouble comparing each of them to figure out the best times and prices before I pressed the buy button.

That’s where Trainline came in. I discovered that they’re an aggregate site for booking trains across Europe. I couldn’t book until 24 weeks before the trip, but I then used them to easily compare prices and even book trains across two countries. I was then sent the tickets from the actual Swiss and Italian train companies and was good to go.

I suspect I paid more for the convenience of doing this all on one site so that’s not ideal, but it was way easier than the difficult time I was having on the individual rail sites, so I’m happy to eat that cost.

However, one thing I didn’t like was that the seat preference section on Trainline doesn’t make sense. I was buying tickets for multiple people and it asked for 1 seat preference, so I said “window” and then saw they assigned us seats that were both at windows, but several seats apart so we’re not sitting together.

I’m going to see if that’s something we can fix later, but I’m currently frustrated by it 🙂 . I’ll update y’all on how that goes after this trip is underway and also if I encounter any issues with booking through Trainline like the challenges we have not booking directly with airlines and hotels in the US.

FlightsFrom

I don’t remember how I stumbled onto this website, but it’s sensational! It shows all flights from a specific airport, or between destinations. As in specific flight numbers, but also more generally how many flights are between locations each day and which days of the week they happen.

This has been really helpful when I’m contingency planning so I know how many flights to my destination are set to depart after mine.

This site was also a HUGE help recently when a family members’ international flight was canceled at the last minute. They called me and with FlightFrom, I was easily able to see how many flights there were to that destination per day and what the exact flight numbers were so they could tell the customer service agent and get on a flight ASAP.

I also used my beloved GetHuman.com that I’ve mentioned in another nomad tools post, to figure out the US number for the Irish company Aer Lingus’ US customer service. Unfortunately despite all that, the call center didn’t help them so they went up to the airline’s counter at the airport and got on a flight based on information I found with FlightsFrom. Woohoo!

Today Weather App

I mentioned my new obsession with this weather app in a monthly recap, but in case you missed that, here’s what happened.

I have an Android phone and I became frustrated with the default (Google) weather app. It doesn’t have the specificity or customization options I wanted. So I went to Reddit to see what weather apps people love, downloaded a bunch of them to try out, and then easily found my favorite: Today Weather.

It’s clean and super customizable and it includes specifics I like, such as UV by hour and air quality. You can also create awesome widgets and there’s an option to get daily weather updates as well as real-time rain alerts so you have time to find shelter or an umbrella. Perfection 🙂 .

My previous favorite weather app was Dark Sky, which was mentioned in a previous nomad tools post. However, Apple bought them and integrated it into their Apple weather app, which I have on my MacBook, but not on my Android since it’s only on Apple devices. So Today Weather to the rescue! I’ve been using it for about 6 months now and I still absolutely love it.

WeatherSpark

I’m always looking for new ways to learn about overall weather patterns since I move every month and climate can vary a lot based on a variety of factors. Recently on my search, I found WeatherSpark. It has amazing, specific weather information by city.

Once you select a specific city, it has all different kinds of interactable charts and information about the climate there throughout the year. I also love that it’s very visual with colorful infographics that help me more quickly scan and understand when I should visit a city to be comfortable:

WeatherSpark also has many more charts further down a city’s page, that shows more information about each of the layers shown in the above overview graph including specific temperatures.

Where And When

So it was awesome to find other ways to learn about the weather in specific cities, but what if I haven’t decided where I want to go? Enter Where And When.

This website helps you figure out where you should go based on the weather and also when you should go to specific places. It’s a different way to look at this kind of info that especially helps me since I’m always chasing sunshine and am flexible about where I can go and when. They even have helpful infographics for cities and even countries so you get an idea of when is most comfortable to visit.

Conclusion

And those are my favorite nomad tools that I’ve discovered lately! They’ve already made my nomad life more efficient and awesome, and I hope they’re helpful as you embark on your next adventure!

What are your favorite travel tools?