The essential guide to apps for winter business travel
One peek outside your hotel window down at the leaf-strewn outdoor pool on a December morning is all it takes to remind yourself that not all business trips are created equally. Business travel in the winter months may force you to be more reliant on cars — taxis, ride-hailing, rental or otherwise — even for short jaunts you would walk in warmer months. And while security and organizational concerns remain all year long, weather can be particularly problematic in winter months, often impacting power, internet, traffic and air travel. With all of those concerns in mind, here are a few apps we rely on in the winter months when traveling for work:
Dark Sky : App Store | First thing's first on this here trip; you're going to need to know the weather. Back at home where you know the ins and outs of the local climate, broad strokes will do, but when you're on the road in the winter months, Dark Sky's hyperlocal weather reports could mean the difference between getting snowed in at the hotel and knowing when to call it a day a few hours early to beat winter storm traffic.
TripIt : App Store & Google Play | Concur's "one ring to rule them all" master itinerary app is still one of the best in the business. After registering, TripIt reads through your various hotel, airline, and rental car emails and beyond, and points you in the right direction one day at a time. Google Calendar and Outlook sync beautifully with the app, ensuring that all of your travel information ends up in all of the right places.
Onavo : Multiple apps for iOS & Android | Onavo offers a full suite of services via its various apps that provide tools like data usage monitoring or filtering out unnecessary high-resolution photos to preserve your battery life. But we like Onavo's Protect app best of all for business travel, seeing as how it can sniff out malicious websites or alert you when you're connected to unsecured Wi-Fi networks so that your company's confidential information doesn't end up splashed across the internet before you even return home from your trip.
Google Maps: App Store & Google Play | With the latest update, Google Maps now offers full offline support, ensuring that you'll find your way back to the hotel even when your boss sends you way out into the boonies where cell signals can be scarce. Winter storms also have a nasty habit of knocking out power and internet, but if you're all charged up, this offline app will still get the job done.
Uber : App Store & Google Play | This one may either seem like a no-brainer or more trouble than it's worth, depending on the last time you tried to submit an Uber receipt for reimbursement from the company finance department. But after launching Business Profiles in November, Uber is seriously easy to use for work now. The app's upgrade supports multiple profiles — for business and pleasure — and allows you to assign different credit cards to each. And the company now provides business users with monthly reports and invoices, ensuring you never have to hand in a short novel worth of individual receipts again.
Plowz and Mowz : App Store & Google Play | Those of you foregoing a hotel stay for an Airbnb whole home rental for that weeklong regional conference in Milwaukee may find yourself in need of a path out to the rental car in the aftermath of a snowstorm. Tap this app for on-demand snow plowing when the going gets tough...and snowy.