Our tried and true travel planning tools
These are our favorite resources for booking a complicated family trip or just a quick weekend away.
These resource are what we personally use- to plan our family travel, and keep this blog running. From booking flights to booking hotels, to hosting a website, here are the best family travel planning resources, as well as the best blogging tools.
If you’re looking for our best recommendations for travel gear and travel-themed gifts, you’ll find those in Family Travel Gear.
The below links may contain affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. All our recommendations are our own and are in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.
Travel Insurance
SafetyWing– You need travel insurance, especially in this new age of cancellations, changes, and border closures. Safety Wing offers the best rates I’ve found for covering our family of four for long-term travel.
You don’t need to list every country you are traveling to, so you don’t need to worry if your plans change. You can set your insurance to renew each month until you stop it. They also offer more comprehensive medical insurance for digital nomads.
Get a SafetyWing Insurance Quote
Booking Flights
Skyscanner– Skyscanner has an amazing feature where your destination can be “Everywhere” and it will show you flights from your home airport (or wherever you are looking to fly from) sorted by price. Click into any location and you can see a calendar of the best prices.
They also let you select an entire country as your destination, so you can see in one search which city is cheapest to fly into from your location. I love this feature! They also include a lot of smaller airlines that don’t appear on other search engines.
Once you’ve found your flight, Skyscanner forwards you to the airline to book directly- so it there’s any problems, you won’t need to deal with a middleman, or end up with funny flight credits that are hard to use.
Transportation
Welcome Pickups– Schedule an airport pick up to have a driver meet you at the airport, help you with your bags, provide car seats, and take you to your hotel with no extra thinking or navigating required. We’ve found Welcome Pickups to be reliable and easy to use. Perfect for those after long haul flights when you know you’ll be too tired to navigate buses or metros.
Discover Cars– This is a great place to check prices on rental cars, all around the world. Includes the US, Mexico, and a ton of other countries from New Zealand to Turkey.
They show you all the major companies and make it really easy to see what is included in your rental, and what is optional. No surprise fees! Bonus: they have Free Cancellation if your plans change.
SpotHero Parking– Ever found looking for parking in a major city stressful? Or found parking and then realized that the garage a block down was cheaper? You need SpotHero!
SpotHero lets you compare prices, then book parking ahead of time in major US cities, and even at US Airports. This is especially helpful in places where parking is tight like New York City, San Francisco, and Portland.
We love this for pre-booking parking in New York in particular, where garage price vary widely. If you arrive at the garage and they are full, call SpotHero and they will find you a spot nearby at no additional charge.
Bookaway– This is a great service for finding buses, trains, and even private transfers. The best part of this service is the free cancellation. We find that many times bus and train tickets are non-refundable through other booking sites, and we all know how fast plans can change!
We found this site especially helpful in Mexico where a lot of the bus companies don’t accept US credit cards on their sites.
Car Seat Resources: Skyscanner has pulled together a graphic of car seat rules so you can check each country you are traveling to, and make sure you know the laws. When traveling longer-term, you’ll have to decide how your personal comfort level aligns with the laws (or lack thereof).
For younger kids (4 and under), the WayB Pico travel car seat folds up nicely, and at 8 pounds is as light as you will find. For older kids, consider travel car seats like the Ride Safer Travel Vest (ages 3+), or the Bubblebum booster and Hiccapop booster car seats for ages 4+ and up to 100 pounds.
Hotels and Accommodation
Booking.com– I love that Booking allows you to build up status points (they call them “Genius Levels”) that don’t expire. I find that Booking often has the best prices on hotels in the US, though I always double-check through the hotel’s direct site when possible.
I also like the Booking app- it’s easy to use, and will alert me if I have a conflicting reservation. When changing my hotel reservation it gives me the option of automatically canceling the older overlapping reservation.
City Tours and Group Tours
Viator– This tour booking company is owned by TripAdvisor and has a massive catalog of available tours. They do a great job showing the exact itinerary of what you are booking, so you know how long you’ll stop at each location. Their customer service is great, I’ve had to modify trips and they are very easy to work with.
GetYourGuide– For day trips or tours around specific cities I always check GetYourGuide. My favorite part of this service is that they list the actual tour operator. I can search for reviews, and just feel more comfortable knowing who I’ll be dealing with on the ground.
G Adventures– For a tour of a week or longer, G Adventures is the first place I’d look. I went on their small group tour around Jordan which included Petra and had a terrific time. I met several travelers who have used G Adventures around the world and always had a good experience.
They also have tours specifically for families- these family tours are generally for families with kids ages 6 and up. There are some really cool options here, from Thailand to the Galapagos Islands.
Budgeting and Logistics
Airalo eSIM– These digital eSIMs can be loaded into your mobile phone before your trip, just activate when you land. No guessing at pricing, no standing at line to get a SIM when you land. Hit the ground ready to go. Choose a SIM plan that covers one country or a whole region, making more complicated trips easy.
Use our referral code to save a few dollars on your plan: WAKER7901
Tripit– This free app puts all of your travel reservations and confirmation numbers in one easy-to-read itinerary on your phone. You either allow it to scan your inbox or forward confirmation emails to the app. You can have multiple travelers assigned to any trip.
This has been a really useful app- when planning our lengthy cross country road trip, it helps me double-check that my hotel reservations are all lined up (and not overlapping). You can also add activities or tours. You can even attach pdfs to specific plans, which is great for things like bus tickets. Highly recommend!
National Park Service App– This free app includes all sorts of information about all the National parks including maps, calendars, and amenities. You can mark certain parks as favorites, and download the info for any park to use it offline. We used this for the free driving tour of Gettsyburg National Park.
From parking to fuel, or where to find the nearest restroom, this is a must-have when exploring the US National Parks!
Wise– This is a great service for transferring money around the world. You can also hold accounts in different currencies if you prefer. We use this to pay deposits for larger tours (safaris, jungle tours), as well as between our US and Portuguese bank accounts. Of course, make sure you are dealing with reputable companies, as you can not dispute the transaction later the way you can with a credit card.
Remitly– A second option on the wire transfer scene. Their fees can be lower than Wise, so check them out. The unfortunately don’t work with our specific bank in Portugal which limits their use to us. We have successfully used them in Malaysia.
YNAB– This stands for “You Need A Budget”. If you don’t have budgeting software, you should try this product. We have been using YNAB for years and totally rely on it. The first step to making smart financial decisions is knowing exactly how you currently spend your money.
Blogging Tools & Resources
SiteGround– I host my blog through SiteGround and have been pleased with their service. They are a great entry-level host. I especially like that I can easily access database and theme files without using a separate FTP.
Kit– I manage my email subscriptions and opt-in offers through Kit (used to be ConvertKit). I find it very intuitive and easy to manage. I love the easy design features for opt-ins. You do need to use the paid version to set up Welcome Sequences and other automations.
Affilimate– this online software tracks where your affiliate sales are coming from and pulls all of your various affiliate programs (mostly) into one dashboard. One of its greatest features is a heatmap of each post. Highly recommend.