Tip: QR codes, tickets, and cloud storage

I just saved all mine in a folder in files on my iPhone and iPad. As a backup I also emailed everything to my travel companion as attachments to one email with the subject line "tickets".

Most of my airline tickets (and some train tickets) can be saved to Apple Wallet, so I have to do is pull up that app and it's there. In fact, if I pull it up ahead of time, it usually stays on top so that if my phone goes to sleep, one quick tap will bring it back.

Another tech tip: Practice with your software. Try to figure out its limitations, how long it takes to do the stuff you want, and read the reviews to anticipate glitches or possible failure situations. Have a backup plan.

Here's one more: My phone contains E V E R Y T H I N G—much more than a wallet. If I were to lose my phone (almost did at SeaTac), I'd be terribly inconvenienced for days. That's why I carry a small travel camera; my phone stays in its zippered security pocket unless I absolutely need its advanced functions.

Thanks for this thread. We are preparing for a trip in early 2023, and many of the reservations I have made suggest being saved to Apple Wallet. And a whole slew of restaurant gift cards I received for Christmas come as "e-cards."

I guess I need to learn how to use that feature of my phone. I've had a cell phone for years, but seldom use it. This past year was the first time I took it on our European trip, and found the WhatsApp feature handy.

Pam has suggested taking a photo or screenshot of e-tickets; I tried that this year, and wasn't happy with the result. We did use the phone to photograph our negative Covid tests, though!

All tips welcome. Thank you.

Good tips, especially about PRACTICING in advance. Not being prepared in line may be the biggest hindrance to speedy lines. Or reading glasses. I also keep all my wife's info on my phone because she needs to have her reading glasses on to see her phone, but then she can't walk with her glasses on. It's another process in slowing down the line when you need to find your glasses, then get your phone, then put away your phone, then take off your glasses, move forward....

Screenshots are key for me -- I don't want to rely on the network when I need to find that ticket / boarding pass / QR code.

If you have an iPhone the easiest and safest thing to do is to add the pass to your wallet. For example when purchasing an American Airline ticket, your boarding pass with ask "Do you want to add this to your wallet?" say "yes" and it will go into your wallet. If you have more than one boarding pass, the question will ask "do you want to add all passes to your wallet? say yes, and the passes will stack in your wallet from left to right. Just swipe left to get to the next pass. If you have tickets from more than one place say an AA boarding pass and a train pass, then the tickets will stack top to bottom. This way you don't need cellular data or wi-fi to get to a pass or ticket.

I had an odd thing happen with a Thalys train ticket last week. I bought it on the 19th. It gave the option to add to wallet so from my phone I did that. Over and over. and Over. Operator error, I thought. Then on Sunday (a week later) I got another confirmation email from Thalys and boom...it added that time. I guess there is a delay uploading the actual ticket if you are purchasing several months out?

In addition to putting a screenshot in an album specific to my trip, I upload the screenshot to my Notes function to a separate folder there.

I've been trying to purchase directly thru various apps - train company apps, museum apps, etc and always run thru the apps and tickets the week or so before I go to make sure they are available.

I have always been a belt and suspenders kind of traveler but last trip I did not do that and did fine without any paper back ups. Much lighter load to haul around as well!

A couple of people mentioned Apple Wallet. Hey, I love Apple Wallet. I use it whenever I can, like you said, for boarding passes on Alaska Airlines, etc. My vaccination info and credit cards are in there too (I use Apple Pay whenever I can, for both the convenience and added security).

But.......

Apple Wallet is exactly why I wrote this post.
Because on my last trip to Europe, Apple Wallet was not the answer here. Not by a long shot.

Reason #1: Support

Many of the electronic tickets we got in Europe had no way to add to Apple Wallet directly. Small regional companies may not be set up for Apple Wallet at all. You should be aware that the electronic tickets you get in Europe, for transportation, events, and more, could be sent to you in all kinds of forms, depending on the company. Some of ours were provided in an email as a link to a web page, and you were to go to that page and use the QR code or bar code on that web page. Other tickets were sent to us as PDF documents sized A4 for print, with the QR/bar code small in a corner, so if you want to show that on the train, you have to enlarge the corner of the A4 document on your little phone screen so that the code can easily be scanned by the conductor.

So I normalized all of those variations so that if there was no provision to add to Apple Wallet, I made sure I had taken a nicely enlarged screen shot of any QR/bar codes that was going to be scanned, ready in my Photos app.

Here's an exercise for you: If you sign up for Italo train tickets through this very website (ricksteves.raileurope.com), how do you get those tickets into Apple Wallet? Answer: You can't. Italo provides the ticket QR code as an image that pops up on the Rail Europe website. (Trenitalia uses a PDF.) I took a screen shot of it so that when the conductor walks in, they don't have to stand there waiting for me to load that web site, sign in, and drill down to my reservation where the QR code is. Also because the Internet can be unreliable on a moving train.

Reason 2: Time and hassle

For many services, the only way to get the ticket into Apple Wallet is through that service's mobile app. If you are only ever going to use a service once, like some airline you are only using to do one hop within Europe and you might never use them again, you still have to jump through their hoops. You have to go find the app, download and install it, create an account and a password, verify the account, and then after you finally reach your trip record in the app, you have access to the Add to Apple Wallet button.

I watched a (non-techie) travel partner spend 10-15 minutes going through that process, because they reeeeeally wanted to add it to Apple Wallet. What did I do? Spend one second taking a screen shot the QR code in their email so that it was in my Photos app.

Again, I love Apple Wallet. It is worth it, when a service supports it, and you will use it more than once to justify the setup process. But not enough places support it yet.

Tech background: You cannot just add anything to Apple Wallet. Apple Wallet is secure, verifiable storage of credentials so that people can't just make up fake tickets and stick them in there. You can't take random images or documents and add them yourself. You have to go through an Add to Apple Wallet button that is expressly provided on an app or website. So some custom coding is required on the website end to get it working. That is why you don't see it for everything.

"If you sign up for Italo train tickets through this very website (ricksteves.raileurope.com)"

I would never recommend anyone buying European train tickets from a travel agent and that is what Rail Europe is. I'd always recommend people use either the app or the website for the actual company operating the train.

As much as we all appreciate Rick's hosting this forum I doubt you'll find anyone here who recommends booking this way either.

Brio

I use DropBox. If you right-click an item, you can select "Make available offline". Then your item will be available on your phone even if you do not wifi or data.

Not me, everything on my iPhone is on my iPad. If I truly lost my iPhone, I would have a new one by days end, fully restored.

I agree - I refuse to use a separate camera when my iPhone has a wonderful camera included in its features. I'm careful with my phone and have never yet lost one, but if I did, it would be easy to get a new phone and transfer all my data that has been backed up on iCloud.

I guess I need to learn how to use that feature of my phone.

Jane, a lot of places offer courses to people on how to use the advanced features of a cell phone (both Apple and Android). Many universities have classes for senior citizens that are very helpful. If you have an iPhone, you could make an appointment at the Genius bar and get some help there. Also check the "Tips" app, which has lots of info on new features. And there is a lot of information online - you can google phrases like "how to use an iPhone (or Android)" and find blogs or even online classes that can explain it to you.

Thank you, Mardee. I've done lots of tech related work in the past, including teaching computer classes and writing accounting programs for small businesses, but I haven't taken the time to actually figure out how to best take advantage of the iphone. I did download the manual, and it has been helpful, especially when I was first starting out using the phone.