‘Your Next Vacation’ App Review – It’s Like Being Best Friends With Rick Steves.

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Imagine you are standing in front of a huge world map. You’ve decided for your next trip to let fate and a steady hand decide your trip, so you cock your wrist back and let three darts fly. The first one strikes Boca Raton, Florida, the second lands in the Pacific Ocean and the final dart lands in Siberia, Russia.

Sticking to your commitment to fate, you, unenthusiastically, choose Boca Raton.

After traveling for a few years now, I’m convinced that this idea of throwing caution to the wind when it comes to travel only really works for the wealthy and the blissfully ignorant, and, sadly, I’m neither. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy a little adventure, surprise or discovery in my travels. It’s just that I like to minimize my costs as much as possible, so I try to hedge my bets when picking a new destination.

One of my newest ways of finding new locations for our travels is through Your Next Vacation, an iPhone/iPad/iPod app by Bananarama. Using the app is kind of like standing in front of that world map I mentioned earlier; however, this time the darts are programmed to understand your vacation destination likes and dislikes, so when you throw them there is some rhyme and reason to where they land, just not dumb luck.

After the initial set up with Your Next Vacation, which takes about 5-10 minutes and delves into your favorite destinations, a location you didn’t like and your travel diversity– your favorite beach city, a place of natural beauty that took your breath away, and the most impressive historical city/region you’ve been, the app will start giving you recommendations for your travels. First, it introduces you to 20 places it believes you will love. Next, the app reveals the top five places in the world you must visit. Then, it goes even further recommending five hidden-gem surprise destinations. And finally, the app closes strong with revealing the one place you must visit on every continent.

During this introduction, you’ll be asked to rate places you’ve been that the app has recommended, which helps Your Next Vacation to gain even more information about your likes and dislikes.

Once you complete the introduction, you’ll be on your own to discover new destinations, hidden gems and even places that you may want to avoid. For example, when I search “Places to Avoid” in the United States, I get these 10 destinations: Detroit, Houston, Dallas, Bakersfield, Amarillo, Baltimore, Atlanta, Phoenix, Omaha and Fresno. Honestly, that’s pretty spot on. Except, for Baltimore and Omaha, I’m pretty much all set with these other destinations.

Your Next Vacation is a fun and easy to use travel resource app that has an extensive database of locations and some pretty stunning photos for a lot of the destinations. I really love the concept behind it, especially for finding unique destinations that I may have never thought of on my own. The app reminds me a lot of what I like about Pandora music, which is where I discover most of my new music. In the future, I’d love to see Your Next Vacation implement a way to find out more information about a destination as well as give you information about why the algorithm thinks a certain location may or may not be good for you. For example, Pandora does both of these things really well, and I think that’s what helps separate the music app from the pack of others.

Overall, Your Next Vacation is a great recommendation app for discovering new places to travel. Unless you’ve got some of those special hi-tech darts (if you do, please email me privately) or you’re best friends with Rick Steves, then this is one of the best, easiest and cheapest ($1.99) ways to get personalized travel recommendations from a worldwide database.

For more information about the app, check out Your Next Vacation on iTunes.

*While we received a promotional copy of Your Next Vacation to review, our thoughts and opinions are entirely our own.

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*Please remember all photos on this website, unless otherwise noted, are copyrighted and property of Beers and Beans Travel Website, Nariko’ s Nest Weddings & Bethany Salvon. Please do not use them without my permission. If you do want to use one of them please contact me first because I do love to share and I would be flattered. Thanks!