Trip the flight fantastic with Worldmate

It’s perhaps a little late in the season to be talking about travel apps for Nokia Lumia. Like me, your summer holidays have probably been and gone already. But discovering one of the best travel apps ever in the Windows Phone Marketplace isn’t something that can wait until next summer!
The app to install is Worldmate. It’s a service that’s been around for quite a while, on almost every computing and mobile platform, and one I remember fondly from my Nokia N8.

If you haven’t used it before, Worldmate is a seriously clever piece of technology that combines the best of web services and mobile apps.

The way it works is that you simply forward your flight and hotel booking confirmation emails to trips@worldmate.com. Their servers parse those emails (completely accurately, I should add) and look up the extra details you’ll need, and then push it all back out to your mobile app.

The result is a complete and accurate itinerary for your trips right on your mobile phone. So you can dispense with the need for lots of messy pieces of paper in your suitcase pocket that you end up scrabbling through at every stage of your journey.

It will add extra smartphone goodness to your plans, too, allowing you to do things like click on your hotel to give them a call, or bring up a map to guide you in safely.

This being 2012, the app is firmly integrated with Facebook, so you can tell all your friends when and where you’re flying and staying. That part is optional, thankfully, so if bragging about your travel plans goes against the grain, then you’re totally entitled to keep them secret.

It will also tell you which of your friends are making similar trips so you can arrange to meet up if you want.

It should be said that the Windows Phone version of this app isn’t quite as mature as the Symbian version. It hasn’t got the bells and whistles like world clocks, currency converter and weather forecasts. I’d imagine these will come in due course: version one of the app only came out in June.

But on the other hand, I don’t believe there’s any version of this app that’s quite so beautifully designed. It’s not overly graphical but is superbly legible – exactly what you need when you’re checking what time your flight leaves.

Worldmate is free and can be downloaded here.