A quick roundup of some practical tools to help you plan better trips, save quite a bit of money, and make the most of your time.
1. For research:
Losviajeros
A Spanish-language online community of tourists and travellers, with forums and travel diaries covering virtually every corner of the world. Very useful for finding recommendations and asking for advice when planning your routes.
Tripadvisor
A reviews and recommendations service — primarily in English, though with Spanish contributions and some translations too. Particularly useful for finding good restaurants and attractions.
MAEC
The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Worth checking the "Travel Recommendations" for each country before you go, especially when heading outside the developed world — visa requirements, vaccination advice, passport info, and risk zones (though in my view those last ones should be taken with a pinch of salt, as they tend to exaggerate).
2. For accommodation:
Couchsurfing
CouchSurfing is an international non-profit network connecting travellers with locals around the world. The best way to meet people and foster genuine cultural exchange.
Through the concept of global hospitality, anyone can be a host or a guest — dramatically cutting the cost of travel and exponentially increasing your connection with the places you visit.
Hostelworld
The most comprehensive hostel search engine, with the largest number of affiliated hostels worldwide. Since they charge a small commission on each booking, it can be worth using it just to shortlist hostels, then booking directly through the hostel's own website to avoid that extra charge.
3. For getting around:
Hitchwiki
The Wikipedia of hitchhiking. Information — mostly in English — on how and where to hitch from one city to another. The coverage of European countries is pretty thorough.
Skyscanner
A flight search aggregator — in my opinion the best one out there. It lets you search across wide date ranges, even over a whole year to get a sense of which seasons are cheapest. You can also search for flights to "any destination" from anywhere, which is great for discovering cheap routes with lesser-known airlines.
Low-cost airline route maps
These let you see which connections each budget airline operates, making it much easier to plan trips — low-cost carriers are often poorly integrated into the big flight search engines.
Ryanair's route map, Wizzair's (visible on the homepage), or Easyjet's.
4. For sharing, communicating, and staying organised:
Trip maps
There's a huge range of tools for tracking your travels and marking, remembering, and sharing the places you've been.
– Tripadvisor's map: My favourite for pinning the cities I've visited, sharing favourite spots with friends, and giving recommendations to anyone who asks about places I've already been.
– Travellerspoint map: Lets you map out complete routes — really useful for showing upcoming trips with the full itinerary.
Check-ins on location-based social networks
Foursquare, Facebook Places, Gowalla, and others can get you discounts at certain businesses. If you add the people you meet on the road, they also make it much easier to bump into acquaintances all over the world.
Facebook
No need to reinvent the wheel here. The social network — adding the people you meet as you travel lets you stay connected with all of them, which can be genuinely useful down the road.
Google Translate
Far from perfect, but it'll get you out of trouble on many occasions — especially in places where English isn't widely spoken and information is only available in the local language.
Google Calendar
The most cross-device-friendly calendar out there. The best way to organise potential bookings and transport, and have everything to hand from anywhere.
Skype
For international calls and SMS in certain countries. You need an internet connection, but you'll thank yourself when you see what you'd have spent otherwise.
5. For keeping your things safe:
Dropbox
Really useful for keeping backup copies of all your personal documents, tickets, and everything else — so if you lose them, you can print a copy from anywhere with internet access (and a printer). Syncs with almost any device.
Flickr
If you take a lot of photos, you'll need a backup solution for them. Flickr pro accounts ($24.95 per year) give you unlimited storage for photos at their original resolution. For heavy users it works out much cheaper than renting cloud storage for the same purpose, and it also lets you manage and display your photos easily.