My Digital Carry-On

While no app can replace the excitement of getting lost in a new city or the awkwardness of trying to mime your way through a language barrier, I use AI tools to make travel experiences smoother and smarter.

Here are a few of my favorites that have a current spot in my digital carry-on:

1. ChatGPT

An obvious choice in the list. It’s a fantastic travel assistant. Want the best places for street photography in Prague? Need to rewrite a professional email while jetlagged? Where can I get the best coffee in Delhi? (The answer is Perch.)

How I use it:

• Obvious use case: I can find local food experiences beyond the tourist areas (“Where would grandmothers eat in Amman?”). Remember when we used to buy Fodor’s and Lonely Planet guides and lug them around? This is those on steroids with the added benefit of the entire internet.

• As we continue to improve our pre-departure activities, I can draft cultural orientation notes for students easily to integrate later.

• On that note, I can also ask it to simulate intercultural dilemmas for pre-departure training.

Bonus: Voice mode offers the benefit of hands-free use while walking or paying attention to traffic.

2. Evernote

I am a huge fan of Evernote and use it to organize just about everything. I keep separate Spaces for entire projects, organized by folder. I draft emails, reports, or letters. I have my calendar connected so I can simply log in to Evernote and see my day with meetings and to-do lists. I use their templates for meeting agendas. I create a Space by conference and take session notes, and then I save any PDF handouts or slides. I plan travel and stay organized using the Spaces feature, and even use it as a journal. Everything stays in the cloud so I can pick up on my phone right where I left off on my computer. The AI features in Evernote can summarize documents or emails, paraphrase, fix typos, and translate.

3. Google Lens

With Google Lens’ AI search integration, a cool feature is to use my phone camera to identify food, read signs, or translate menus, and now, with generative AI, it offers fuller context and suggestions.

Example:
Take a photo of a dish in a Seoul market. Google Lens can now tell me the name, ingredients, and recommend nearby restaurants that serve variations. Magic!

4. iTranslate Converse

As much as we’d like to, we don’t always speak the local language(s). iTranslate Converse makes real-time communication more natural, especially for conversational moments when Google Translate feels clunky.

5. Hopper

For complex itineraries or budget-conscious travelers, Hopper’s predictive pricing model helps me track trends and know when to book or wait. Its AI-based alerts can also notify me of visa or entry changes which is especially helpful when managing group travel.

6. DeepL Write and Grammarly

When traveling, we are often pulling double-duty. Work doesn’t stop back home, and days are often long and tiring when we’re traveling, from recruitment events to study abroad duties. When I’m tired and prepping a report or a presentation late at night, I find these tools very helpful. DeepL is especially good for non-English native phrasing and nuance if I’m collaborating with colleagues abroad.

Honorable Mentions:

• TripIt + ChatGPT plug-in: Organize your travel plans and then ask ChatGPT to optimize your itinerary.

• AI-enhanced journaling apps (like Journey): Reflect on intercultural growth and emotional adaptation while you travel. If you aren’t tied to a paper journal, this is a great way to keep your thoughts together and easily pick them up across all your devices.

• Canva AI: For creating visual storytelling on the go.

• Notion: I’ve just started getting into Notion, and I gotta say, it is really cool. Notion has incredible templates, easy to use and codeable databases, and you can connect a calendar and have AI transcribe your meeting audio and summarize meetings. If you have a team set up in Notion, you can use AI features to pull information about certain topics (like a website redesign or planning an event) from Slack or other apps you can connect. I dare say it could supplant Evernote as my go-to organizer app based on the customization and more complex databases in Notion.

AI doesn’t replace human connection and the valuable discomfort of travel, but it can clear the logistical noise so I can be more present in the moment. Isn’t that the whole point?

If you're a fellow educator or traveler, what AI tools are making your journeys better? I’d love to test them out.