Top 5: Travel Guide Apps for iPhone

One of the best moments for any traveler is the lead-up to leaving, when the money's still in the bank and the world is your oyster. During that pre-vacation high is the best time to load up your iPhone with a few apps that will help you choose what to see and do while you're gone. Here are some of my favorite travel guide apps for the iPhone, smart programs that guide you toward interesting sites, often with maps, photos, and ratings from other travelers included.

5. TripAdvisor Offline City Maps
free
TripAdvisor Offline City Maps pairs maps and suggestions for where to visit, shop, and eat together. You can download offline maps for your cities of choice, too. The app does not automatically install the maps locally (to save space on your iPhone), so just remember to download what you need before you leave an area with a Wi-Fi connection.

4. Tripomatic
free
Tripomatic can help you plan what do to and see on your next trip, and on which days. But you can't save your mapped daily itineraries offline, making it less than ideal when you're actually on the road. If you do use Tripomatic, pair it with an offline map app. Also read PCMag's full review of Tripomatic.

3. Gogobot
free
Gogobot dishes up interesting things to do for any type of traveler across a wide range of cities around the world. It has suggestions for family friendly activities, stuff for outdoorsy people, in addition to the typical shopping/eating/site-seeing agenda. Save these activities to a Gogobot itinerary, and when you pull them up while traveling, you can search for nearby too, such as points of interest, restaurants, and hotels, helping you locate your next stopping point if need to make an unexpected change of plan.

2. Viator
free
Looking to save some money but still do some interesting site-seeing? Viator (free) shows you deals and discounts either nearby or in the place you're going to visit next—provided that location is in Viator's list of potential cities, regions, and countries. It's great for ideas of what to see and do, especially when you're feeling clueless, although the quantity and quality of the deals varies dramatically by place.

1. City Guides, Offline Maps
free
CityGuides, Offline Maps—that's the app's full name, but it's easier to remember as Stay.com's mobile app. Stay.com lets you explore new travel destinations and cobble together a loose itinerary for what you might want to see, do, and eat when you arrive. Thus, the iPhone app largely does the same, while saving much of it for you to use offline. You can plan new trips from the app, as well as import itineraries you've designed on the website. The offline functionality, including maps, make Stay.com's app a superb resource for international travelers. See PCMag's full review of Stay.com's City Guides app.