Traveling nationwide for business and making all the flight, hotel and other arrangements myself, I needed help organizing my weekly schedule. I recently read a review explaining the travel apps that the Apple App Store offered, so I decided to check them out. I was pleasantly surprised to see over twenty different travel apps that could assist me with all my travel plans including where to eat, sleep, and even communicate in another language if I needed to.

Airplane travel can be a challenge even when the weather is not an issue, but as iPhone app reviews mentioned the TravelTracker app gives me one touch access to the status of all my flights. All I have to do is enter my itinerary and this travel app does the rest. TravelTracker adds times and dates for each flight, creates a packing list, helps me organize it and tracks my travel expenses. Weather information and delays are posted, and other options are suggested.

The Maps app keeps addresses for hotels, stores and restaurants that I frequent, as well as listing local points of interest. It gives me a satellite view of any area just by tapping a location on my iPhone. There is a GPS system available to take me step by step to any destination in any city I visit.

When my business takes me out of the country two important travel apps to have are: the Currency app and the Lonely Planet Mobile Phrasebooks. The Currency app gives me the exchange rate for the dollar in over ninety different currencies. I can convert a dollar into lire, pounds, or yen just by tapping the screen. This currency app allows me to keep track of how much I am spending in dollars, which can get confusing especially when I'm traveling to more than one country on a specific trip. The Lonely Planet Mobile Phrasebooks on the other hand, gives me the ability to translate words and phrases from English to another language. I am able to say hello in French, Spanish, and German or Japanese easily just by tapping. There are over 350,000 translations and it also has a multi-language slang dictionary.

Usually I entertain when I travel and that's where the LocalEats app plays an important role. This app touches upon restaurants in almost all of the cities I visit. It lists their location and how to contact them. Another great app to use for entertaining is the Zagat To Go ‘09 which gives the names, location and Zagat rating for the top restaurants in most cities. It explains the menu and the type of cuisine they serve. This app also lists the wine selections by vineyard and comments about each restaurant's service, ambiance and price category. Another app that helps me keep track of my expenses is the Tipulator which actually figures the appropriate service tip in any part of the world. This app saves me time and money especially when I am out of the country.

My business trips have gotten easier thanks to advent of iPhone apps. They introduced me to a new world of travel applications which have saved me both time and money. iPhone travel apps have certainly made it easier to go from point A to point B in a more relaxed state of mind and I appreciate and thank the developers for that.