As a backpacker, we know that you need to pack light. We also know that you’re trying to keep your wallet from becoming too light – if it isn’t already.  Lucky for you, there are a lot of awesome, cheap (if not downright free) social travel applications out there that can be uploaded directly to your iPhone or smart phone and enhance your trip without expanding your travel backpack.

Read on to see what creative, cool things can happen when you blend social media with technology and travel:

SocialBooker™

For when you want to book a hostel, or discover what affordable, fun, non-sketchy hostels your friends have checked out, without ever leaving Facebook.

In cooperation with Appnostic, we developed SocialBooker™ for our Facebook Page to make it one step easier for you to book your hostels online the social way. After all, when you’re procrastinating your real-life responsibilities and accidentally get distracted and stuck in the Facebook time warp you might as well do something productive.  Picking and booking the hostels for your next travel adventure counts as being productive, right?  Well, we say close enough, and at least awesome!

Besides its speed and simplicity, the other feature that SocialBooker™ offers exclusively over other hostel-booking portals is that you can easily see what hostels your friends are checking out, what hostels they’ve liked or stayed at, and offer your own feedback for your friends to use as well.

SocialBooker™ is a reward in itself to connect backpackers to cool hostels which will fit your, and your friends,’ needs and promote cultural exchange through the expansion of the international hostelling community.    

Qype and Yelp

For when you’re on your last dollars or euros and need to make sure that the restaurant you spend them on is pretty damn good – or at least the cheapest one!

Social Travel App Yelp - presented by Gomio Hostels

These two sites work as the ultimate power duo, and the behemoths and holy grails of free, local review applications. With Qype being the largest user-generated local review site in Europe, and Yelp boasting over 27 million local reviews more-heavily focused in North America, you have some major travel destinations covered between the two of them.

What we like most about these applications, and why we found them beneficial to include as part of GoDashBoard, is the keyword user-generated local reviews.  When you need to plan the essentials of your trip, we know how important it is to have reliable, honest ratings of hostels, restaurants, bars, and so on from real backpackers and locals like you, not from marketing schemes.  There’s also a large variety in the places on which you can browse reviews – from your traveling fundamentals like food, nightlife, and arts and entertainment, to the businesses you might not ordinary think of like shoe cobblers or barbers, there is always someone, somewhere that has offered their sincere feedback about a location.

Social Travel App Qype - presented by Gomio Hostels

Moreover, we like that these apps connect you to local events. Both offer a tab for Events that shows you what’s happening around the neighborhood on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis.  Nothing is better then being able to catch a seasonal, local festival or show that you wouldn’t otherwise have been able to know about or plan.

Like this post?  Check out more awesome social travel apps in Part I and Part II!