Top 10 travel technology essentials

Top 10 travel technology essentials

Shaun and I are going to be away for a few days next week, and thought we'd do a top 10 list on the subject of travel.

In days gone by travel was a necessity. You couldn't do business with someone unless you'd looked them in the eye, or had someone you trusted do it for you. And, despite the best efforts of the videoconferencing industry and the environmental lobby, this remains essentially true today.

For consumers too the range of technology that you take on a trip has grown steadily, and more and more people are taking at least something to keep up with the email.

So nearly two decades of travelling experience have gone into creating this list. May your travels be light and your delays few.

Honourable Mention: Reviews sites
Iain Thomson: Few people are as gobby about life's misfortunes as disgruntled travellers, and they love to spread the word.

In 10 years of travelling for meetings and conferences I've had some lousy hotel rooms, including a favourite in Cannes where you could touch three walls simultaneously while lying on the bed and the shower head was fixed over the toilet.

Nowadays, this is less common thanks to the plethora of reviews sites out there. The internet has given the travel moaners an outlet and my, have they used it. Some hotels and areas have thousands of reviews and skimming these can give you a good idea of what to avoid, and what to accept. Many also leave helpful tips that can be a godsend.

The volume of responses to such sites is huge and, while phoney posts are not uncommon, where traffic is high enough it's difficult to astroturf away your problems.

Shaun Nichols: Two words should be enough to sell anyone on review sites: food poisoning. When in an unfamiliar city, one can often have a very hard time telling which restaurants might be hidden gems and which can lead to a night of agony.

A year or so ago Iain moved out to San Francisco to take over the US office. One of the first things he did was pull up Yelp and put together a list of local cafés that were worth eating at. I was very impressed at his resourcefulness, and a little jealous at all the wasted money and gastric discomfort I'd encountered by having to sort through the really bad places.

Since then, I have made it a point to check out review sites of whatever city I will be visiting. Not only is it a good way to avoid the really bad joints, it's a great way to find the hidden gems.

Honourable mention: E-books
Shaun Nichols: I was never a huge fan of e-book devices. One book is usually enough. Some of my family members, however, can go through an entire novel in a single night and when travelling their suitcases are significantly weighed down by a good load of books.

Travelling is one of the really good uses for e-book devices. Rather than managing bulky novels, people can simply load up their tablets with books and save both packing space and wear and tear on the back and shoulders.

Additionally, there are more and more magazine and newspaper publishers looking to e-book services. Being able to pack up a novel and the daily newspaper and a magazine on a single reader device can be a great convenience (and a good way to keep people from knowing that you secretly love to read celebrity gossip mags.)

Iain Thomson: I too am still not entirely convinced by the e-book argument. There's a lot to be said about the feel of a well thumbed favourite book.

But the key to successful travel is to go as light as possible, and having a broad selection of reading material in one device is a powerful argument in the e-book reader's favour. However, I remain unconvinced in the need for a separate reader.

You can read e-books on a wide variety of devices and the standard readers are about the bulkiness in width as a hardback book. The same book can fit perfectly easily on a media player or large screen mobile phone, which has the portability of a paperback. So yes, if you read a lot it may be worth it.