Why Book Your Vacation on Your Smartphone?

Your smartphone helps you plan your vacation and book it to the last mile. Here’s why you should use it exclusively for your next holiday.

If there is anything that can put a damper on your excitement about a trip, it is the planning part of the trip! There is so much information to get, so much cross-checking required, and so much financial jugglery involved. It is enough to make your head spin – unless you take help from your digital banking app.

Mobile banking has taken off well in the country, with many customers preferring to go the paperless banking route when transacting their money. Banking apps make transferring money and keeping track of expenses really simple. So when you start planning your holiday, here’s what you can do:

Get information. Do your research about the place you want to visit. Look up travel forums, recommendations from people who have recently visited there, reviews for hotels and tourist spots, etc. You can also get in touch with hotels, tour operators and transport companies to get a rate comparison before booking.

Book your tickets. Confirmed flight bookings to and from your country are required for getting visas, so start by booking your flights. Your digital banking app will most certainly have a good deal on flight tickets or booking hotel + flight combos. Look up these deals before you look for suitable flights – that way, you can opt for whichever deal is cheaper.

Book your stay and inter-city travel. It is possible that you might want to travel cross-country on your visit. This entails booking domestic flights, or road/rail transport. Find out the best deals on these, and try to use your reward points or special offer you got form booking tickets through your digital banking app. This will help save money that you can use for shopping and eating out on your trip.

Track your spends. Now that you have booked the broader points of travel, lodging and most of your itinerary, you can take stock of how much you spent on the trip before you leave. Your mobile banking app will have an expense tracker that will have noted all your expenses thus far. You will need the expense tracker while you get forex, pay for shopping and eating, etc. You can also get an account statement in a few seconds on your mobile phone screen, so that you can study the various expense heads.

If you need to cancel…In the event that you need to cancel your trip, pull up the expense sheet and start contacting all the service providers to cancel your bookings. You will not get a full refund, but you can claim as much of your money as possible on flights and other bookings. Most service providers will retain a processing fee before refunding your money.