3 Essential Apps To Install For Last-Minute Travel Plans

When it comes to traveling to a destination that would require taking a flight or driving a car, it's usually best to iron out your trip details way ahead of time. Of course, many unavoidable circumstances can potentially derail your plans or change them entirely. In case this happens, you have to be fully prepared to switch it up and prepare spur-of-the-moment accommodations so you can still push through with your trip.

Ordinarily, it's actually quite easy to plan your trip using helpful mobile apps. However, if you were unable to do so successfully — whether it's because you procrastinated and ran out of time or you did map out an itinerary but were forced to make last-minute changes — you can still use certain apps and services to make travel modifications under the wire.

If you enjoy traveling, below are three categories of travel apps you ought to have installed on your mobile device that may help you salvage portions of your plans that need altering. Before we get into it, though, let's look at how we went about the app selection process for this roundup.

Apps mentioned and suggested throughout this piece are based on our actual and favorable experience with the apps, as well as professional and customer reviews published online. They are also available for both iPhones and Android mobile devices. While most of our recommendations can be used for multiple purposes that cover all three categories we chose, we highlighted each app in the section we believe to be the most effective based on our testing and recommendations from travel experts online.

When it comes to booking last-minute travel accommodations — whether it's a flight, a hotel stay, or a car rental — flexibility is key to ensure that you get the best deals, considering the time crunch. Be open to switching departure locations, keeping your travel dates open, and be prepared to get on long-haul or late-night flights if needed. If it can be helped, avoid traveling on holidays and weekends and opt for arriving and leaving in the middle of the week instead.

Lastly, feel free to explore more apps. Travel is one of those things where you should do as much research as you can, and doing so using several apps increases your probability of finding a good deal. Having said that, below are our suggestions for essential travel apps you can start with, especially when you're forced to make plans in the eleventh hour.

Airfare is usually one of the more expensive components of any excursion. It's generally best to book flights several months in advance to get them at a cheaper cost. Of course, emergencies and last-minute changes can happen unexpectedly, and these scenarios may create the need to get a new flight so close to your intended departure. In case you didn't buy a re-bookable flight, your flight gets canceled, or you forgot to make arrangements, there are several flight apps you can check out for flight comparisons.

For varied options, we recommend downloading Hopper, Skyscanner, and Southwest. They all work pretty similarly: Navigate to your chosen app's Flights section and type in which airports you'd like to depart from and arrive at, followed by your preferred travel dates. You can sort flight results according to price, duration, and number of stops, among other things. Furthermore, depending on which app you're trying, you can tweak your results even further by picking more specific filters, such as your preferred flight times or airlines, to name a few.

What makes these apps great last-minute travel tools:

• Hopper: Use the app's useful visual guide of which travel days are more affordable than others when you enter travel dates. Once you select dates, the app will tell you if you ought to book your trip ASAP or if you can afford to wait for prices to decrease.
• Skyscanner: Fine-tune your flight search results according to what's cheapest, fastest, most direct, or best overall, considering all factors. Feeling adventurous? Choose "Everywhere" as your destination to see cheap travel options for your selected travel dates.
• Southwest: As long as you're traveling to a location the airline covers, you can get really low fares very easily. You also get to fly with two bags for free.

Another must-have for any frequent traveler are apps for booking accommodations or hotel stays at your destination. One of the most popular options on both the iOS and Android app marketplaces is Hotwire. Much like the flight apps mentioned earlier — some of which also have built-in hotel search features as well — getting started is as easy as choosing a location, check-in and check-out dates, and number of guests and rooms required to start looking through options for places to stay at.

Right off the bat, you are shown suggestions that are heavily discounted, but you can also tap through the many results as they appear on a map, enabling you to choose your preferred area. Narrow down your search by enabling useful filters to only see options offering free breakfast or free parking or only see pet-friendly stays with a certain star rating.

Similarly, you can try out HotelTonight to seek potential accommodation options that are available as soon as the evening of your search. While the app is obviously the most useful for last-minute night-of getaways, you can also use it to look up deals for longer stays. Depending on which area you're looking in, you may be able to unlock app-only deals for hotels that are highly rated, but you only have 15 minutes to book it before the promo elapses.

If you're a travel enthusiast and are thinking of heading somewhere new with no date requirement, TravelZoo has a section for last-minute deals that include hotel stays in exotic and unique locations. Make sure you choose a promo that's bookable in the next month or so if you're itching to vacay, stat. Otherwise, it's a good resource for affordable vacations in the near future.

If you need to rent a vehicle last minute, the best way to do it is by using aggregator apps that compile options from different car rental companies, allowing you to easily compare deals and choose one that works for you. Again, some of the previously mentioned apps for booking flights and hotel stays may have built-in car rental search features, too. You can certainly use those to book a loaner vehicle, but based on personal experience, as well as recommendations by other publications, some of the best options you can start with include Expedia, Kayak, and Priceline.

After you launch your chosen app to try and navigate to the car section, you'll need to enter a location where you want to pick up your rental, preferably an airport if available, just for convenience. Depending on your type of travel, you can set up the same location for drop-off when you're done or assign a different place to return if you're driving to a different city.

Once you've plugged in your travel parameters, you should see a list of potential rentals, and you can click on the ones you want to see the deals in more detail. You can filter results according to your preferred car type, your required seating capacity, and other important factors like free cancellation or unlimited mileage, among others.

Kayak aggregates results from Expedia and Priceline as well, so it ought to be your pick if you only want to use one car rental app. However, the two latter options may also have app-specific deals if you become a member, so they may still be worth a look.