Social travel is a hot area for innovation in social media as many startups launch services to make travel planning more efficient and effective by incorporating social networking.

In the process, they’re disrupting the established travel industry, including trip planners, travel agencies, and rental services. Even first-generation social travel sites like TripAdvisor, with its millions of user-generated travel reviews, face increased competition from travel social networks that have popped up in more recent years.

Here are a few noteworthy social travel sites and apps that help you plan trips while connecting with other travelers, local experts, and tour guides.

Sunshinemartin / Wikimedia Commons


What We Like

  • Sample itineraries to plan long drives and flights.

  • Offers highly personalized advice.

  • Map with destinations included with answers.

Trippy is an online service for planning trips that revolves around a community of destination-specific experts. It helps people seek travel tips from residents of various locations and others who have traveled to places they’re considering. Trippy also offers itinerary-planning tools to help you lay out your travel by plane or map out a road trip.

The website launched in 2011 and isn’t the most visually interesting, but it offers several helpful travel-planning features with vetted advice from real people.

What We Like

  • Guides for over 80 cities.

  • iOS and Android mobile app.

  • Opportunity for spotters to meet in person.

Spotted by Locals is a community of local experts or “spotters” who love and write about the ins and outs of their respective cities. Aimed at reducing over-tourism, this site focuses less on top tourist destinations and more on the hidden gems real people appreciate.

While Spotted by Locals lacks a forum for asking questions, the social component includes getting to know more about the spotters writing about your desired locations, including their social handles, personal anecdotes, and photos. You can travel like a local by subscribing for full 80+ city guides, but the Android or iOS app will help you bookmark sites you want to visit and will be handy when you’re planning or on foot.

What We Like

  • Connect with people from over 190 countries.

  • Find a travel friend for specific destinations.

  • Itinerary planning tools.

What We Don’t Like

  • Limited connections without a subscription.

  • Users report receiving lots of marketing content.

  • Chatting function can be buggy.

Get a Friend for Life (GAFFL) is a social travel networking site that’s all about connecting solo travelers, creating friendships, and potentially saving money along the way. Available for both Android and iOS, this app has a network of travelers in over 190 countries.

You can search by destination, itinerary, or categories such as solo trips for women or senior buddies. GAFFL also offers a trip planner tool to help users create trips and find buddies to meet up with. Whichever search method you choose to find or create a trip, the in-app chat feature lets you connect with others to see if you’d like to go together, and to coordinate meeting. Some features sit behind a paywall, but the app is free to download and use.

If you’re interested in connecting with local tour guides for your next trip, Withlocals provides this service. Like Spotted by Locals, Withlocals consists of a network of expert guides who live in and know their cities like the backs of their hands.

Users can use the Android or iOS app to search tours in various locales, by tour guide, or ask local experts questions. The main draw is the option to create highly customized tours off the beaten path. Like any app or trip-planning service, the real experience depends on how specific you are when requesting a tour and the guide you connect with.

What We Like

  • Find experiences near you or in a destination city.

  • Plan a trip with the help of a host.

  • Online travel experiences available too.

Airbnb is a major innovative player in online rentals that lets people book space in other people’s homes. It lets users create profiles and show their reviews of places they’ve rented and stayed. Launched in 2008, Airbnb had hundreds of thousands of listings in a couple of hundred countries by 2012.

In addition to searching for bookings, you can plan a trip with a host virtually, search for local experiences happening near you when you arrive, or book tours ahead of time. If you’re doing a staycation, Airbnb also has a library of online experiences from hosts and guides around the world. Airbnb has both iPhone and Android mobile apps.

What Is Social Travel?

Social travel refers to information-sharing about travel. Some services include a website and mobile app and let you tap into your existing social networks for travel advice and communicate with other travelers you’ve never met via the sites’ social travel network.

Some focus on bookings and rentals, but more are about discovery and sharing tools and aim to be your travelogue.

FAQ

  • Which apps should I download before traveling?

    Before leaving for your destination, ensure you’ll have data access and your favorite map app downloaded so you can always rely on it to get around. Map apps like Google Maps also offer reviews of local restaurants and businesses, which could be helpful on the fly. Apps like Spotted by Locals, Yelp, and Trip Advisor can also be useful for reading reviews of area destinations.

  • Can Google Translate be used offline?

    Yes, and we cover it all in our How to Use Google Translate Offline article. You need to download each language you want to use before you’re without internet access, so plan ahead.