If Marco Polo Had a Smartphone

When planning a trip, it's not just the budget for the destination that we need to consider. Alongside that, we must think about how to get to that place (plane, train, bus, personal vehicle), accommodation (hotel, hostel, motel, guesthouse, friend or stranger's house), activities we want to do there (from visiting historical sites to eating and shopping), and the return time as well. However, there are other details that we might not think about in the initial planning but come to mind during the trip: wishing we had spent a little more money to reduce our waiting time at airports, or realizing that the distance between airplane seats was so small that we had knee pain by the end of the trip! Or we found out that the cheap hotel we booked was inexpensive due to the poor quality of its rooms or its long distance from the city center! There are many companies whose goal is to improve our travel experience. Alongside older and more well-known companies like Expedia (which provides services such as selling plane tickets, booking hotels, and vehicles) or Hotels.com (which, as the name suggests, finds available rooms in hotels) and TripAdvisor (which gives us information about tourist attractions and activities we can do at our destination), there are many startups trying to offer different services that we might not have even thought about. Zaptravel - free - does for you what travel agencies used to do, for which you had to pay: 'I want to go to Rome for three days and I have this much money!' 'Find me a romantic place to take my fiancé this summer.' 'I don't want an expensive hotel, but I want it to be close to the city center.' You provide this information to Zaptravel, and they find the most suitable place for you, considering your budget, time, and the type of activities you want to do. Now suppose you have no specific time constraints for your trip, but your budget is limited. That is, you know you have five million tomans and you plan to go to China for ten days in September, but the start and end dates of the trip do not matter to you. The website Adisio will determine the best combination of flights and accommodation for you within this budget and a specified one-month time frame. The longer the time frame you give to Adisio, the more likely your trip will become cheaper or of higher quality. If you travel frequently by plane, probably just reaching your destination is no longer the only thing that matters to you, as you spend a lot of time on the plane. You prefer your flight to have Wi-Fi, free food, enough legroom so your knees don't cramp, and the ability to watch TV and movies during the journey. The website Routehappy allows you to know about these airline amenities before purchasing your ticket, so you can buy your ticket with knowledge of the airplane's facilities. With the internet, searching for historical and sightseeing locations in cities has become easier. However, the issue is that in today's metropolises like New York, London, Shanghai, or Rome, many cultural, artistic, sporting, and entertaining events happen daily that you, as a traveler who may not know the language of that country, might not be aware of. Imagine returning from Rome and finding out that during the days you were there, the AS Roma football team hosted Juventus, and you could have gone to watch it! Triposo is a website that informs you of local events and activities in English. Another reason that might make us sigh is finding out that the room we booked for $200 a night months ago is now $150 a night! If our travel budget is limited, that fifty dollars can be very important to us. The Tingo website promises that if you book your hotel through them and this price difference occurs, they will refund you that fifty dollars! Why not? Are you one of those people who gets very anxious until your suitcase comes out of the baggage claim and sweats profusely with the fear that your luggage might be lost along the way or not reach you? Bag2Go or the smart suitcase designed by Airbus for you! A smart suitcase that has GPS in it and allows you to track it moment by moment! Now the only thing left is how, despite all these apps and websites, we don't forget to enjoy the essence of travel!