Anyone who has gone on a trip in the past year probably has a horror story. Cancelled flights have abounded. Customer service wait times with airlines can be hours long. In some places, the costs of rental cars and plane tickets have become astronomical.

So nearly three years into Covid-19, travellers still need to take a modified approach to planning their getaways. The most important timesaving tech travel tip right now is to avoid apps and websites that book through a third party, even though they can save you money. That’s because if something goes wrong with your flight or hotel room, a middleman is yet another party to deal with, which could lead to even more hours wasted on hold.

“Go direct,” said Brian Kelly, founder of The Points Guy blog. “The more people you put in the way, the more complicated it gets.”

In an era when everyone is trying to save a buck, it is still possible to score a good deal on a plane ticket without booking through a third-party agency. The key is to use services that track each airline’s ticket costs and set up alerts for price drops.

Kelly’s tool of choice is Google Flights. He plugs in travel dates and destinations and then toggles on the option to track prices and receive updates as soon as the airfare plummets. Then he buys the tickets directly through the airline.

The next step is to maximise comfort on the plane by getting the best cheap seats. SeatGuru lets you plug in your flight numbers to review an aircraft’s seating chart. It highlights information about the seats, including those with extra legroom and those with limited recline or overhead storage.

To monitor flight status, web tools such as FlightAware and Flightradar24 give up-to-date information on an aircraft’s precise location and insights into an airline’s track record for on-time arrivals and delays.

In the early stages of the pandemic, travellers had to peruse travel and tourism websites to learn about the thicket of coronavirus restrictions and requirements for their destination. Now there’s a shortcut.

Henry Harteveldt, founder of Atmosphere Research Group, a travel analysis firm in San Francisco, US, uses JoinSherpa.com.

If you’re flying to Chile in South America from San Francisco, for example, the site loads a list of health documents and quarantine requirements to enter the country, as well as the documents needed to get back to the US.

Juggling travel documents and itineraries can still be a hassle because we have to carry more information than we used to. I use several tools to keep my itinerary and health documents tidy.

My favourite for organising itineraries is TripIt. It can scan your inbox for itineraries, hotel bookings and car rental reservations, and then compile that information into an all-in-one itinerary. I have a separate email account just for trip itineraries. After booking a flight, a car rental or a hotel, I forward the confirmation emails to that account. Then TripIt automatically scans that inbox and updates my timelines.

For health documents, I always carry two digital forms of my vaccine records just in case there’s confusion. The first is the digital QR code provided by California’s Department of Public Health, which I store in my phone’s wallet app. The other is a photograph of the physical vaccine card, which I save inside a notes app to make it easy to find later.

Airport staffing shortages and surging demand for air travel have driven a spike in incidents of lost luggage. That makes wireless trackers, such as Tile and Apple’s AirTag, especially useful. These are miniature beacons that can be slipped into a piece of luggage and, in the event that a bag or suitcase is lost, the Tile or Find My app on a smartphone can be opened to pull up the tracker’s approximate location on a map. Even if your luggage isn’t lost, a tracker can offer peace of mind.

To manage hotel reservations, just make sure to download the hotel’s app, if it has one. Many large brands let you check in via the app, and the sooner you do, the sooner your room will be ready. If you forget to check in and you show up many hours late because of a flight delay, the hotel may give away your reservation, Kelly said.

NYTNS