Our 15 Best Travel Hacks for Smarter, Safer Trips (2026)
Last reviewed: September 2026
After millions of miles and travel through more than 80 countries by air, land, and sea, I’ve changed my mind about what counts as a good ‘travel hack.’
The best travel hacks usually aren’t tricks. They’re the small things you do before or during a trip that save money, remove friction, or keep a minor problem from becoming a major one.
Some I learned through years of work travel. Others came from vacations, road trips, cruises, and long international trips. And a few I learned the unpleasant way. These are the travel hacks I actually use and recommend.
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1. Start International Trips at the State Department Website
Before I get too deep into hotels, restaurants, and things to do, I check the U.S. State Department’s International Travel Checklist and the current advisory for the country I’m visiting.
I’m looking for the travel advisory, entry and visa requirements, passport-validity rules, local laws, health and security issues, and U.S. embassy information. I also recommend the free Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP), which can send embassy and consulate alerts for your destination.
This takes a few minutes and can catch things that are much better discovered at home than at the airline counter.
2. Use a Good Travel Credit Card — and Carry a Backup
A good travel card should do more than earn points. I look for no foreign transaction fees, useful travel protections, good fraud handling, and benefits I’ll actually use.
Cards like Chase Sapphire Preferred, Capital One Venture X, and American Express Platinum are worth comparing, but the right one depends on how you travel. Fees and benefits change frequently, so always check the current terms.
I also carry a second card from a different bank and keep it somewhere else. If your wallet disappears, three cards inside that same wallet are not much of a backup plan.
And remember this rule: when a merchant asks whether you want to pay in dollars or the local currency, choose the local currency. More on that in #13.
3. Set Up Your iPhone Before You Leave Home
Your phone is now your map, boarding pass, camera, translator, airline app, wallet, rideshare tool, and emergency communications device. Set it up before the trip.
We have a separate guide for that: 15 iPhone Travel Hacks to Set Up Before Your Next Trip.
At a minimum, I want Find My working, offline maps downloaded, key reservations available offline, airline apps installed, luggage trackers paired, and security features configured. Much easier to do at home than while standing in an airport fighting bad Wi-Fi.
4. Guard Your Phone — I Learned This One in Brazil
This one is personal. I’ve actually had a phone grabbed from me in Brazil. It happens incredibly quickly.
Don’t leave your phone sitting on an outdoor café table. And don’t stand near the curb staring at Uber with an expensive phone loosely held in one hand.
This isn’t limited to Brazil. London’s Metropolitan Police specifically warns that criminals use bicycles and mopeds to snatch phones, sometimes even riding onto the pavement, and advises people using a phone outside to stand away from the roadside near a wall or building. See the Metropolitan Police phone-snatching guidance.
My habit now is simple: get away from the curb, check what I need, and put the phone away again.
I also like the ClutchLoop retractable anti-theft phone tether. It won’t make a phone impossible to steal, but it makes a quick grab-and-run considerably harder.
5. Verify Your Medical Coverage Before Leaving the Country
‘I have health insurance’ and ‘my insurance works where I’m going’ are not necessarily the same thing.
Before an international trip, I want to know whether emergency treatment abroad is covered, whether I have to pay first and request reimbursement, and whether medical evacuation is included.
The State Department specifically recommends checking your coverage before travel and notes that an air-ambulance evacuation back to the United States can cost from $20,000 to $200,000 depending on the location and medical condition. Their Medicine and Health guidance is a good place to start.
Don’t wait until someone is in a hospital to figure out what ‘out of network’ means.
6. Make Copies of the Things You Really Can’t Replace
I keep electronic copies of important travel documents somewhere I can securely reach them if the originals disappear.
I also leave physical copies at home with a family member. That’s more useful than keeping a photocopy in the same bag as the passport it’s supposed to back up.
I also think about digital recovery. If my phone disappears, can I still access my email, bank, airline account, Apple or Google account, and authenticator apps? A backup that depends entirely on the device you just lost isn’t much of a backup.
7. Put an AirTag in Every Checked Bag
I don’t like checking luggage without a tracker anymore.
An AirTag won’t stop the airline from losing your suitcase, but knowing whether the bag is at your airport, still sitting at the departure airport, or in another city entirely can be extremely useful. For alternatives to AirTag, see our current luggage tracker guide.
I like the four-pack because once you start using them, the extras quickly find homes in another suitcase, backpack, briefcase, or golf bag. See the current Apple AirTag 4-Pack on Amazon.
I also take one quick photo of the suitcase and another of the baggage tag before handing it over. The FAA allows small compliant luggage trackers in checked baggage, although international rules and airline policies can vary; see the FAA PackSafe guidance.
8. Download the Map — and Screenshot What You May Need
Offline maps are one of those things you don’t appreciate until your data connection stops cooperating.
Before leaving reliable Wi-Fi, I download the area and save the hotel, airport, train station, restaurants, and other places I know I’ll need. Then I screenshot the really important stuff.
This has helped me multiple times in South Korea and Thailand. Showing a driver the hotel name and address on my screen was much easier than trying to explain it. Even better: save the hotel name and address in the local language.
Sometimes a screenshot is the most useful travel technology you have.
9. Decide How Your Phone Will Work Overseas Before You Land
Figure out your cellular plan before the trip. That may mean your U.S. carrier’s international plan, a local SIM, an eSIM, or some combination.
eSIMs are fantastic, but think about what happens if the phone itself disappears. If your bank verification, email authentication, password manager, reservations, and eSIM all live on one device, one theft can create several problems at once.
Build some redundancy.
10. Let Google Watch Airfares for You
Once I know roughly where and when I want to travel, I use Google Flights and turn on price tracking.
Let Google watch the fare instead of checking the same route every morning. You can track a route or specific flight, compare alternate dates, and receive alerts when prices change significantly. Google explains the feature in its price-tracking help page.
Much more useful than internet folklore about clearing cookies or buying flights at exactly the right hour on Tuesday.
11. Get Global Entry if You Travel Internationally Regularly
If international travel is a regular part of your life, Global Entry is one of those things that makes coming home noticeably easier. It provides expedited U.S. entry for pre-approved travelers and includes TSA PreCheck eligibility.
Before paying, check your credit-card benefits because several travel cards reimburse the application fee.
And if you don’t have Global Entry, look at Mobile Passport Control, the free official CBP app for eligible travelers at participating locations. Not glamorous. Very useful.
12. Credit Card, ID, Medicine and a Pair of Underwear
I tell my family this all the time:
Credit card. ID. Medicine. A pair of underwear.
If I have those four things, I can deal with almost everything else later. Clothing can be replaced. Toiletries can be bought. A suitcase can eventually catch up with you.
The difficult or impossible things to replace stay with me: passport or ID, medication, wallet, phone, glasses, essential chargers, and enough clothing to get through the first day.
Medication especially should never be somewhere you can’t reach it. For temperature-sensitive prescriptions, see our guides to traveling with refrigerated medications, TSA-friendly ice packs, and cooler bags for air travel.
13. Never Let the Terminal Convert the Currency for You
A restaurant, hotel, store, or ATM asks: Would you like to be charged in U.S. dollars?
I almost always say no. Choose the local currency and let your bank or card network handle the conversion.
What you’re being offered is usually Dynamic Currency Conversion, or DCC. Visa notes that the home-currency option can include an exchange-rate markup and advises travelers who want to avoid that markup to decline the conversion and pay in local currency. See Visa’s DCC guidance.
I have personally seen the merchant’s dollar conversion be more than 20% worse. That’s not a rounding error.
Same rule at many foreign ATMs: decline the ATM’s conversion and request the withdrawal in local currency.
14. Use Packing Cubes — They’re Cheap and Make a Huge Difference
I’ve used packing cubes extensively, including packing four weeks of gear into a single backpack for an Amazon expedition. That pretty much converted me.
They don’t make anything lighter, but they let you organize and find things without exploding the entire contents of your bag every time you need a shirt. They’re especially useful when you’re moving frequently instead of unpacking in one hotel for a week.
For a durable established travel brand, look at Eagle Creek Pack-It Reveal cubes. For a simpler budget option, Amazon Basics packing cubes are inexpensive and straightforward.
The four-weeks-in-one-backpack Amazon trip deserves its own article. For this one, the point is simpler: packing cubes make living out of a bag dramatically less irritating.
15. Build One Travel-Tech Kit and Leave It Packed
One of the easiest ways to forget something is to rebuild your charging kit before every trip. I prefer one small pouch that mostly stays packed.
A compact USB-C charger: the Anker 735 (Nano II) 65W charger is an established three-port option that can replace several individual charging bricks.
A good international adapter: the Anker Nano Travel Adapter is compact, works with common plug types in many countries, and has multiple USB ports. Important: a plug adapter is not necessarily a voltage converter.
A reliable power bank: I like the Anker Nano 10K 45W power bank with retractable USB-C cable. The built-in cable is one less thing to lose.
Then add a few short charging cables for the devices you actually travel with. Power banks and spare lithium batteries belong in your carry-on, not checked baggage; the FAA PackSafe battery guidance has the current limits and rules.
The goal isn’t to build an electronics store in your backpack. It’s to have one little pouch you can grab without thinking about it.
The Best Travel Hacks Remove Problems Before They Happen
The best travel hacks aren’t really tricks. They remove decisions and problems before you have to deal with them.
A downloaded map means I’m not looking for Wi-Fi. An AirTag means I have a clue where my suitcase went. A backup credit card means a frozen account isn’t a crisis. A screenshot means I can show a driver where I’m going. Packing cubes mean I’m not excavating a backpack looking for underwear.
And keeping my credit card, ID, medication, and a pair of underwear with me means a delayed suitcase is mostly an inconvenience.
Do the boring stuff before the trip. Then get there, put the phone away, and enjoy the world.
