

Whether you travel frequently and need to kill time between airports or you're taking a trip abroad, the Travel Channel's Layover Guide for iPhone and iPad aims to make traveling more enjoyable and less stressful. Layover Guide features most of the more prominent airports in the world and gives you things to do in the cities around them. We aren't just talking about the main attractions everyone knows about, but local pubs, five star restaurants, and things that aren't as well known.

If you're traveling soon and would like to fill your to-do list with spots to check out, Layover Guide can help.

Once you launch Layover Guide, you'll be taken to the main menu where you can swipe between places of interest. They're all represented with airport codes such as LHR for London Heathrow, ORD for O'hare in Chicago, and so on. You can tap on any place and a guide will begin to download. There will also be an option to download all guides, which is what we'd recommend doing while you're on WiFi. Since the guides can sometimes include video and many larger files, it could take quite a while over a cellular network and eat quite a bit of data.

After you've downloaded the guide of your choice, or all of them for that matter, you can now launch it from the main menu. You'll see a video at the top that gives a brief overview of that city. Underneath that you'll have some options that will be the same for each city. The layovers section will give you a great list of places to check out. You can choose from the Travel's Channels host Tony's picks or view all spots within the navigation at the top. Tapping on a spot or transit system will give you directions, hours where applicable, price range, and other information including the phone number.

The other information provided about a city area around airports will involve getting there, do's and don'ts, and inspiration. The inspiration section is particularly interesting and includes some quotes as well as a playlist tab that will integrate iTunes to show you music that is either popular in that area or influenced by it. Tapping on any of them routes you directly to the iTunes store in order to buy.

The good

  • Great information about local places you may not find elsewhere
  • Nice layout that's easy to navigate
  • Since everything is downloaded natively, no need to use data in order to access information when abroad
  • Most major airports are covered

The bad

  • Currently not sized correctly for the iPhone 5
  • The do's and don'ts section is pretty skimpy, it'd be nice to see more tips added in an update

The bottom line

If you plan on traveling soon, Layover Guide by the Travel Channel will make a great companion. While most other apps just give general directions or information, The Layover takes it one step further by incorporating tips and information that only locals would typically know. That combined with the fact that it shows you distances from airports make it great for liesure and for quick stops between flights.
