TripIt: Travel Planner +4

I travel often both for business and with my big family. This has been a game changer. Not to have to print out anything and have everything in order with added details on telephone numbers, weather, directions links. besides the ease of just forwarding play tickets, car rentals, hotel and flights, it takes a cruise itinerary and put some in the correct day saying where you’re going and when you get off to the ports and when you have to be back on the ship etc. So excellent.

A side benefit I found now that I’ve been using it for 10 years is I have a whole travel journal right here in the app. Can look up previous hotels, miscellaneous companies used for transportation and whatever.

Request for the developers: when I have a listing of flights etc. (particularly for more than one person), the apps at-a-glance screen does not have the name listed. So you have to go into that plan and scroll down and Click under passengers and in that page it’ll show you who the reservation is for. It would be much more convenient to have the name on the first or second line for a quick reference.

User interface is inadequate from iPad and iPhone.

No ability to copy(duplicate) an event. No drag and drop. No ability to have overlapping vacation schedules and keep the entries separated between two users. Unable to add some details for some events, for example, an end time not available for some activities. Notes not available to add in some events. Unclear interface caused me to accidentally merge two different vacations into one “trip”, losing duplicate records which had extensive comments added. Under a cruise ship port (e.g. The port for Athens) overwrites all port notes for other ports on the same cruise. Look, if you are going to another port, why would you want to a) loose your comments regarding transportation in Venice and b) what use would Athens transportation have on the day you are in Venice.

I have loved this software. I’ve used it for a half dozen trips or more. The software successfully imports most airline tickets, train tickets, and hotel reservations, etc. via a simple forwarded email. This part is very elegant in creating a calendar of a trip. It is really useful. Just travel alone or have the exact same itinerary as anyone you travel with. With this combined trip, I want to pull out my hair.

I adore TripIt — I’ve been using it In some form or another since way back in 2008 - yikes I’m old! It really is effective in getting itinerary into one app and then integration into my device’s calendar is also great! I really like the auto import via a gmail account (usually the app has been focused on flying but I’m thrilled that the train itineraries are a bit better - especially Amtrak)

I will say one area that really needs to be streamlined is sharing plans with non-TripIt users. In the app there are a few options, all of them not great. In the app, sharing a plan results in a mumbojumbo of unformatted texts, the iMessage feature doesn’t seem to be accessible to non TripIt users although they can see the thumbnail. I know inner circle can see plans but I think there needs to be a more streamlined process. What I do when sharing plans as a work around? I simply screenshot and message. Perhaps that’s all that needed in a future update!

Anyway like the product some areas could’ve streamlined but this is definitely one of top three apps I use for travel!