Make Business Travel More Productive Using Your iPhone or iPad
Business travel can be stressful; can make it difficult to stay in the loop with what's happening at the office; and can require you to remain productive while working out of a hotel room, café, or another unfamiliar workspace. The good news is that your Apple iPhone or iPad can be used to help you stay productive, organized, and well connected when you're on a business trip, especially if you're traveling abroad.
Before leaving on your next business trip, visit the App Store to acquire a handful of apps that will enhance your mobile device's functionality while you're traveling. Sure, your iPhone is a powerful phone for making and receiving calls, but it can also be an extremely useful business tool.
Apps to Help You Plan Your Trip
Your Apple mobile device can be a useful tool for planning a trip. Using the Safari web browser, you can access popular travel-related websites like Travelocity.com, Hotwire.com, Priceline.com, Orbitz.com, and Kayak.com to help you find and book discounted airfares, hotels, rental cars, and complete travel packages.
However, some of these travel sites also have custom-designed iPhone/iPad apps that make navigating around these services and booking travel easier. Travelocity and Priceline, for example, have their own apps. Many of the airlines, hotel chains, and rental car companies also have their own custom apps, offered for free from the App Store.
To help you manage your itinerary; track flights in real time; obtain extended weather forecasts for where you're traveling to; and to be alerted instantly of flight delays, cancellations, gate changes, or other potential flight or weather-related problems, the very best app for frequent business travelers is FlightTrack Pro ($9.99,), which is available for the iPhone and iPad.
FlightTrack Pro (shown in Figure 1) works seamlessly with the TripIt.com online service, and can manage multiple travel itineraries simultaneously. It also maintains current data about all the major airlines, commercial flights, and airports globally.
Also from the App Store, you'll find apps to help you create and maintain a packing list for your checked luggage; more easily manage your various airline frequent flier accounts; obtain accurate extended weather forecasts for any city in the world; and obtain timely, accurate, and impartial reviews of hotels, motels, resorts and restaurants. For researching where to stay, for example, the free TripAdvisor app is ideal.