Navigating new locations made straightforward: Important tech devices and apps for travellers

Gone are the times of paper maps and guidebooks, with trendy travellers now counting on trusty tech companions, from devices to apps, as they discover the world.

While bringing a smartphone is a given at the present time, what different tech necessities ought to travellers have sorted out earlier than a vacation?

For Muhammad Mustaqim Rosden, the advertising director of journey firm Tanjak Adventure Tour, the very first thing he recommends is getting the fundamentals dealt with earlier than setting off.

He believes that whereas Malaysians are a few of the savviest travellers, there are nonetheless some blind spots in relation to being totally ready, with frequent errors together with “not downloading the offline map/data, not bringing the right or compatible plugs and over relying on a single device without backups”.

Muhammad Mustaqim gives a tech-y guidelines of kinds that he advises checking out earlier than occurring a visit.

At the highest of his listing is guaranteeing connectivity – be it from roaming by way of a telco supplier, bodily SIM card, eSIM, transportable WiFi, or hotspot performance – relying on the wants of particular person travellers.

According to licensed tour information Diana Lee, going with roaming from a neighborhood Malaysian supplier has an additional advantage over doubtlessly cheaper worldwide roaming companies or SIM playing cards.

Lee says a neighborhood roaming plan might help travellers keep linked and entry web sites they in any other case wouldn’t be capable of, with out counting on a VPN. — Diana Lee

“This is because your Malaysian ­provider will almost always tie up with a few top mobile providers in the country you’re visiting, and you can use their data easily, without having to use a VPN” (Virtual Private Network).

“For example, in China, there’s no access to social media like Facebook or Instagram, but when using a Malaysian provider’s roaming, you can still easily access them,” she says.

When it involves apps, Muhammad Mustaqim provides that travellers ought to concentrate on which apps are generally used for day-to-day duties in different nations, to keep away from being caught off guard and scrambling to put in and set them up on the final minute.

He provides that Google Maps as soon as saved the day when he received misplaced at an airport in Shanghai, serving to him navigate to his particular boarding gate and catch his flight simply in time.

However, the identical journey additionally highlighted the dangers of being unprepared. In China, he says he forgot to obtain a VPN and WeChat earlier than arrival, making his first few days a nightmare since outlets didn’t settle for money, and all his paperwork and reserving confirmations had been saved in WhatsApp.

Muhammad Mustaqim additional warns these seeking to journey cashless to notice that e-wallet acceptance can range significantly between nations.

In nations like Singapore, China, Thailand and Japan, digital funds are handy and broadly supported.

“In Europe, Visa/Mastercard payments are reliable, but e-wallets may not be. With that being said, you should not only carry cash for safety reasons. Bring 20%-30% of your total budget in cash, and the rest just use your e-wallet or Visa/Mastercard.

“For backup, you can always withdraw some cash from a local ATM, but some banks will charge you up to RM50 per withdrawal,” he says.

Packing energy

Seth Lee, a 27-year-old IT govt from Selangor, who steadily travels for work inside the nation, recommends getting a GaN (Gallium Nitride) charger, which is usually able to outputting numerous energy, whereas additionally being lighter and extra compact than bringing separate chargers for a number of units.

“They can be a bit pricey – the one I bought was more than RM100 – but it’s a lot better than having to bring around more than one charger for everything, as that can get quite bulky when packing,” he says.

GaN chargers normally have a number of USB ports and are able to dealing with laptops (supplied they cost over USB-C), smartphones, and different units on the similar time with out bother.

For 27-year-old KL-based finance ­employee Josephine Leong, a visit itinerary planning app like Wanderlog presents ­flexibility. She says that the app’s AI ­options proved useful in planning and readjusting her schedule throughout latest journeys abroad to Singapore and Australia this yr.

It additionally allowed her to plan the trail to take when going between places prematurely, and will even make changes on which landmarks to go to first primarily based on proximity.

Travellers also can think about putting in flight monitoring apps akin to FlightConscious Flight Tracker, JourneyIt: Travel Planner, or Flightradar24 Flight Tracker, together with native ride-hailing apps to get round after arriving at their vacation spot.

Other nice-to-haves can be climate apps like Zoom Earth – Weather Forecast and Clear Outside.

Turning to AI

AI chatbots like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or Gemini also can assist make journeys go smoother.

Muhammad Mustaqim says he makes use of AI for nearly the whole lot whereas travelling – from translating conversations with locals (together with audio), changing ­foreign money charges, planning his itinerary, discovering the closest halal meals, understanding native customs, to taking photos of signboards and translating them into English, and even checking airline rules.

Muhammad Mustaqim advises travellers to verify what apps are generally used of their vacation spot nation earlier than their journey. — Muhammad Mustaqim Rosden

“In a nutshell,” he provides, “I turn to AI first before opening apps like Google Translate, Google Maps, weather apps, or Wise (for currency conversion rates), simply because it’s more convenient. I only use other apps when I need more detailed or specific information.”

Such apps have been a core a part of 29-year-old freelance movement graphic designer and frequent traveller Venese Rengasamy’s journeys abroad.

In 2025, he visited Barcelona and Paris, and used each ChatGPT and DeepL Translate for ­translation.

“I just need to snap a photo of foreign languages, and I have it translated automatically in ChatGPT, while DeepL is if you want to talk to someone in their native language.

“It detects the local language and slang pretty well and translates it for you,” he says.

He additionally makes positive to put in native transit and e-­hailing apps every time a visit entails driving public transportation and shifting between cities.

“I use them to track where the buses and trains are, and buy tickets in advance. You can usually also buy tickets in person at the station, but I would rather skip the queue,” he says, including that digitally bought tickets would then be saved within the app.

Another important throughout Venese’s ­travels have been expense monitoring and organising app Splitwise, which will be particularly useful when travelling in teams.

“I’ve done trips with friends before, and it can be quite troublesome to keep track of who paid for certain meals, and how much we owe each other.

“You can add people to specific expenses, and there’s also the option to manually set how a bill should be split among the group. It’s also nice since there’s support for ­multiple currencies,” he says.

Muhammad Mustaqim additionally advises travellers to make sure all their devices are in working order earlier than the journey. This might be energy banks, chargers, plugs, up to date apps, and gadget cupboard space.

He additional lists guaranteeing ample house on cloud storage companies – akin to iCloud for Apple customers and Google Drive for Android customers – to retailer each paperwork and ­photographs from journeys.