Planning a trip once meant visiting a travel agent, carrying an intimidating stack of guidebooks, or spending hours hopping between browser tabs. Luckily for us, today, some of the best travel tech is already built into our phones, while cameras, apps, earbuds and smart glasses can elevate your experience and help you settle in once you’ve reached your destination.
While tech can’t magically make every journey cheap, simple, or universally accessible, it still lowers some of the barriers that can make unfamiliar places feel overwhelming – whether those involve language, different abilites, complicated planning, or simply not knowing what to expect.
With that said, here’s how some of the best travel tech can make your next trip even more memorable.
Sounds like a plan
Using AI makes for a very useful starting point if you know you want to get away but haven’t worked out much beyond that. You can give ChatGPT, Gemini, or another AI assistant a budget, a departure airport, a list of interests, and a few non-negotiable requirements, then ask it to suggest destinations or assemble a provisional itinerary.
This becomes even more useful when you provide proper context. Tell it you’re travelling with two young children, don’t want to walk more than a few miles each day, need vegetarian restaurants, and would rather avoid changing hotels, and it can shape its suggestions around those constraints. Google is also weaving AI into its existing travel services. Its Flight Deals tool, for example, lets you describe the type of trip you want before showing suitable options.
Naturally, while AI can make a blank-page stage far less intimidating, it shouldn’t be treated as an infallible travel agent. You might still come across recommendations for restaurants that have closed, underestimated journey times, or outdated information. Use one to create and refine the plan, then verify opening hours, prices, bookings, visa requirements etc. with the relevant official sources.
Found in translation
Translation apps are understandably indispensable when you find yourself in unfamiliar lands. Google Translate and Apple Translate can handle typed and spoken conversations, while camera translation lets you point a phone at a sign, menu, or ticket machine and see translated text on screen. Supported languages can also be downloaded for offline use, although not every feature works without a connection.
Wearables are making this all feel even more natural. Apple’s Live Translation, for example, works with compatible AirPods headphones and earbuds, when paired with a compatible Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone. Translated speech can play through the headphones, while the wearer’s response can be displayed in the other person’s language on the iPhone.
In the Android corner, Samsung’s Galaxy Buds4 and Buds4 Pro also support its Interpreter and Live Translate features when paired with compatible Galaxy devices. The connected phone handles the translation, but the result can be heard through the earbuds rather than requiring you to stare at a screen.
Elsewhere, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses offer an even more natural example – Live Translation can interpret conversations in supported languages through their open-ear speakers, without needing to isolate yourself from your surroundings with earbuds – particularly reassuring if you’re in unfamiliar territory and don’t want to look obviously confused or lost.
Better yet, the cameras, combined with Meta AI, can analyse visible text, allowing you to look at a museum label, menu, or sign, before asking the glasses to verbally translate them into your preferred language. It’s a shame, then, that a few bad apples are ruining their reputation, but don’t let that stop you from taking advantage of the tools they offer.
Tech makes travel more accessible
If you haven’t discovered the wonders of Google Maps and Citymapper by now, then I’m not sure what to tell you. They’ve saved me countless times in locations all over the world, letting me navigate brand new cities like a local – something that my non-existent sense of direction would never let me do on my own.
Beyond traditional navigation tech, there are also more meaningful advances to help people with specific access needs. Google Maps can, for example, prioritise wheelchair-accessible public transport and, where the information is available, flag accessible entrances, seating, toilets and parking.
Some newer tools also pick up where conventional maps struggle. Waymap uses a phone’s motion sensors to guide people through supported stations and venues, including indoor areas where GPS becomes unreliable. Elsewhere, NaviLens takes a different approach, using colourful codes installed around participating locations. Its app can spot them from a distance and provide spoken directions, translated information, and live transport updates.
Planning ahead is getting easier, too. AccessNow offers more detailed accessibility information for hotels, restaurants and other places, rather than relying on a vague “accessible” label. And for blind and low-vision travellers, Be My Eyes can connect you to a sighted volunteer over video when you need help with a sign, ticket machine, or unfamiliar hotel room.
Keep tabs on your luggage
Even if your trip’s gone smoothly, there’s always the fear of a baggage carousel missing your precious cargo at the other end. Put an AirTag or compatible Android tracker in your suitcase, though, and you can see whether it made the flight, remained at the departure airport or ended up somewhere else entirely. It won’t magically teleport it back to you, but at least you can direct your anger in a specific direction, and can even help the airline find it.
Apple’s Share Item Location feature, for example, lets you temporarily share an AirTag or other Find My accessory’s location with authorised staff at participating airlines. Apple says more than 50 airlines accept these links, which expire after seven days, stop working when the item is recovered and can be disabled by the owner at any time.
Google also introduced a similar Find Hub feature for Android earlier this year. Travellers can generate a secure link for a compatible tracker and submit it through a participating airline’s baggage-recovery process. More than 10 airlines supported the feature at launch, with links expiring after seven days or when the tracker is reunited with its owner.
So with all that said, no, tech can’t actually guarantee a smooth journey, or a safe and enjoyable trip. Batteries die, connections disappear, AI makes mistakes, and no app can repair a broken lift or retrieve a suitcase. What the best travel tech can do, though, is give you better information, fewer nasty surprises, and more control along the way. That, I think you’ll agree, is a damn sight better than nothing.
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