Road Warrior Tip – Let others organize your trip
One thing that really annoys me is once I have my basic trip confirmed with flight, car, hotel is that I then have to go back and enter all that data in to my PDA, which these days is my iPhone. I already did all this work once, why can’t I just have it automagically added for me? Well, I can!
The free service TripIt.com is an awesome web site that I don’t think gets enough attention. Sign up for free and you can organize your trips and vacations in their easy to use interface. You can share these trips with fellow travelers as well as with spouses who may not be coming with you (sorry Cariann). Get tips from other travelers who have already been to that city and suggest things you should do and places you should go. And finally, since it has a social media aspect, link up with others who may be traveling to that city at the same time. Pretty awesome stuff.
But that doesn’t solve my initial problem of being too lazy to enter my details in to my iPhone. That’s where TripIt.com’s awesome e-mail planner comes in. Forward your travel confirmations e-mails to plans@tripit.com from the same e-mail you signed up to the service from. TripIt will scan the e-mail and auto-create a new trip for you. The hardcore awesomeness is that if you forward your plane confirmation, hotel and car all to TripIt, the system will scan the dates and automagically put them all within one trip! If you send a different plane confirmation with different dates it will create a new trip. Quite intelligent! So now all I need to do is forward on two or three e-mail messages and I’m all set to go!
Well, almost.
I still need this information on my iPhone so I can see where I’m supposed to go. Generally I have no idea what city I’m going to, where I’m staying or what I’m doing. I just go where I’m told when I’m told and do stuff. So I need all that data on my iPhone. Enter a nifty little app called TravelTracker Pro. This $13 application also has a $5 upgrade that allows me to sync my iPhone to TripIt.com. I can now have TripIt automatically create my trip which is then sent to my iPhone. I then tweak and modify things on my iPhone as the travel plans change in real-time in the city I am in which re-syncs back to TripIt.com. Flippin’ amazing stuff!
There is also a pro version of TripIt.com which I think is pretty cool. It will analyze my current trip and SMS me any alerts like flight delays, gate changes, etc. so I am on top of my travel plans in real time. It also allows me to create an ‘Inner Circle’ so someone like Cariann can look at, modify and tweak my flight schedule. This can be handy for any office road warrior who may need to have their travel plans changed by someone in a different state. Just have them log in to the TripIt.com site, they can see your entire trip schedule, make changes as needed, and those changes get downloaded to your iPhone.
In my opinion, TripIt.com with TravelTracker Pro is a hardcore awesome combo that can’t be beat!
This is so wicked! I have the same problem as you had with going loads of places and got really knowing where until I’m about to head to the airport. I have a blackberry, do you know if TripIt.com is compatible with bb? It has to be right? I’m so excited to start this application, it’s totally genius!