While cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, and cheap vacation packages remain a priority to most travelers, emerging technology is making many trips all that more enjoyable.
The guidebook publisher Frommers has come out with a new line of Day by Day digital travel guides that utilize the touchscreen capabilities of the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. Its initial launch covers seven destinations and is a combination pre-trip planner, daily guide, and post trip journal and photo album.
Frommers new digital guides take an itinerary based approach to travel and offer interactive maps, slideshows of destination highlights and five day weather forecasts. Users can bookmark pages, make journal entries, and tap on up to 1,000 links to view hotels, restaurants and other points of interest.
Customers who own both an iPad and iPhone (or iPod touch) can access the guides on multiple devices for a purchase price between $9.99 and $14.99. iPads tend to be more useful when travelers are in their hotel rooms making plans for the next day. Whereas when travelers are out on foot iPhones are handy to use when following itineraries.
Frommers Day by Day series is not the first interactive tablet friendly guide on the market. Lonely Planet introduced five iPad based guides in 2010 and currently offers over 140 iPad compatible options, including destination guides, translation apps, and travel related games.
Frommers has made much of its Day to Day content available offline, empowering travelers to access most of its features without Internet access. Its digital guides can be found via iTunes and the Inkling website. Day by Day digital guides currently are available for Alaska, California, Costa Rica, France, Great Britain, Japan and Spain. www.cheapfares.com