Rock Your Traveling Experience with These 6 Apps
As a tour manager, you’re on the road or in the air on a seemingly constant basis. If you’re not booking gigs for your band, you’re flying across the country or around the world with your awesome group of musicians.
At High Road, we want to help make your travelling experience as painless as possible. That’s why we decided to create a list of some of the best apps for frequent flyers, riders, and drivers - some of which we use ourselves!
Being on-the-go a lot doesn’t have to be hard! Check out the advantages that these six apps offer and take the stress out of your busy work schedule.
TripIt
Managing travel plans has never been easier! TripIt allows users to view all of their travel plans in one easy-to-access directory.
We use TripIt frequently when making our travel plans. TripIt enables users to forward email confirmations you receive from purchasing airline tickets, hotel reservations, and more, directly to the app. The app offers a wide variety of other features as well, including schedule creation, importing information to your calendar, and plan coordination to allow you to keep your team, and band, on the same page.
Additionally, the app allows you to store important information, documents, and contacts within the app for one-stop, easy access to all of the information you may need at your home away from home.
There are two versions of the TripIt app - a free download as well as a paid, premium subscription. The premium subscription, TripIt Pro - only $0.99 - allows you to make immediate changes to your travel plans, such as when those frustrating flight delays and gate changes happen.
TripIt is highly rated by The New York Times, Forbes, and CNET.Inc as one of the top mobile applications available for frequent travellers.
Master Tour Mobile
Collaboration, scheduling, and notifying your band of critical information has never been easier with Master Tour Mobile, the mobile app companion of Master Tour Desktop. With this app, your team will stay up-to-date on all of the vital information (including concert logistics!) they need to know, the band will know exactly where their next performance is located, and you will have saved a significant amount of time and money in the process!
Master Tour Mobile and Desktop applications remove the need for printed materials, according to one happy, well-known user, Paul Chanon - Tour Manager of the Zac Brown Band. And they’re not the only well-established band loving the app! Big names like Chickenfoot and Neko Case are also huge fans.
Some of the great features that many of these bands and managers enjoy includes instant access to your group’s travel details as well as the ability instantly book hotel reservations for your gang. Moreover, you can also track tour dates, venues, promoters, and even guest and ticket sales in impressive detail.
To learn more about Master Tour Mobile, or to download it to your iPhone, iPad, or Android device, head over to iTunes or the Google Play store.
And hey, while it's not an app - our Day Sheet for Tour Managers is also a super helpful tool. You can download it free here - Day Sheet for Tour Managers.
Gas Buddy
Need to fill up the tank in your tour bus? Gas Buddy helps you easily locate and compare gas stations in the area you are visiting so you can fill up your tank without spending an arm and a leg.
Gas Buddy allows you to search their directory of gas stations based on city and zip code searches as well as lets you report new low prices that you discover on your own. And, when you help the Gas Buddy team by reporting your new low-price discoveries, you can earn points and awards - saving you even more money on future fill-ups. Additionally, the developers have thrown in another sweet feature - allowing users to enter sweepstakes to earn $100 in free gas every day.
Are you feeling lucky?
If you’re not using Gas Buddy to find the cheapest gas in your area - chances are, you’re spending way too much!
Gas Buddy is a free download and only reports gas prices within the United States and Canada. Visit the Google Play store or iTunes and start saving today!
Gigbeat - Concerts
Designed mainly for music-loving fans, Gigbeat - Concerts can provide several unique benefits to tour managers throughout the country.
When scheduling music tours and booking hotels and venues, have you ever wondered what artists are performing or what music festival is happening in that area? Who is on tour, where and how does it affect our attendees? Gigbeat offers a unique solution to this troubling issue many managers face!
The Gigbeat - Concert Android app allows you to search for bands scheduled to perform in any city throughout the country. Track multiple cities and venues, get instant notifications of newly posted tour dates and let your fans know when their favorite artists have arrived at the venue by “checking-in” on Foursquare, which is also sync-able with Gigbeat.
Gigbeat is compatible to sync with several other online accounts and apps including Last.fm, Rdio, and Songkick. To learn more about the other impressive features available or to download the free Gigbeat - Concerts app, click here. (Sorry Apple users - this one is only available for Android devices.)
Expedia
Now, I’m sure you are well aware of Expedia - one of the biggest resources online to find and book hotels, flights, and vehicles - but did you know that they also have a mobile app?
They do! This can make any tour manager’s life so much easier by allowing you to reserve airline tickets and hotel room visits. And, when you book your rooms through the mobile app, you can save even more money with their mobile-exclusive special offers and deals. Moreover, you can earn Expedia+ points with every purchase, plus the app keeps you up-to-date on flight cancellations and delays, hotel check-ins and -outs and the ability to share your travel plans and itinerary through email and text messages with your team and the entire band.
To learn more about the many other features, benefits, and money-saving offers visit the Expedia website and of course downloards are also available through the Google Play store.
Your Band
You work all day managing your band - have you ever dreamed of being in one?
All work and no play is never healthy. This is why we would like to wrap up this post on a fun note and introduce you to the Your Band Android app! Bring your dreams of music stardom to life without ever needing to identify a single music note or worrying about breaking glass with your not-so-perfect voice!
Your Band is a free-to-play, free-to-install multiplayer mobile app game available on most Android devices that allows you to live out your rockstar dream anywhere, anytime! The game features a practice, single, and multiplayer modes to let you decide whether to rock out with a group, as a solo artist, or simply practice your new debut. Plus, you can compete against others for top position on the leaderboard.
Your Band can be played while connected to any Wi-Fi connection, and there’s also an “offline” mode to enable you to play even when you’re out of wireless range. New songs are added to the list regularly to bring you a fresh new set of tunes to mimic and jam to.
To begin your journey to stardom, head over to the Google Play store.
All work and no play does make for a boring tour manager. These apps will help any tour manager stay on task and maybe even allow for some down time to live out your own dreams of stardom!
Rock on!