Improved Features from TripIt

One of my favorite travel tools is TripIt. If you’re not familiar with this tool, it’s accessible both as an app and as a desktop utility. Once your account is created, you can forward your confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com and TripIt will consolidate all your plans into a single, easy-to-read itinerary.I typically travel with friends who live in different cities. Since we all have TripIt accounts and have marked ourselves as fellow travelers, one of us sets up a trip, adds the other members and then when they forward their reservations, the plans show up in a single itinerary.

Even if your friends are not on TripIt, you can manually enter their flight info and you’ll be able to see it. In February while on a ski trip I arrived a day ahead of my group. Since I had entered the group’s flight info into TripIt, I was able to see when their flights got delayed and then cancelled – in some cases before they were even notified by the airline!

If you travel for work, you can use the same account for both personal and professional travel. I was able to link my personal and work email addresses last summer and when one of my co-workers who lives in another city was delayed I realized he was going to miss his overseas flight so we didn’t have to wait at the airport for him.

TripIt Pro is just $49 per year and comes with push alerts for flight delays as well as making the Points Tracker section of the tool available. Enter your frequent flyer account and login information and they’ll keep your points totals handy for you in one place. (Note that Delta and American Airlines do not allow Point Tracker to log into their systems but when you get your monthly statements from these airlines, just forward them to points@tripit.com and your point totals will be updated automatically.)

Now TripIt has added some features to their app to make international travel easier. When you select one of your trips you’ll see a new button right above the Add Plans (the plus sign) button. The new button looks like a book.

That will display a pop-up with a couple of selections. The Map View button just shows the location of the airports your trip will visit. (And if you have multiple people flying to/from the same airport you’ll see multiple tiny planes at that airport.) But the other option, International Travel Tools, is the one I find most useful.

When you select that option you’ll be shown information about the first foreign country on your list. Time zones differences, Currency changes with approximate rates, the types of sockets and plugs, vaccination requirements, embassy info (based on the home country you select), wi-fi and emergency information, driving rules and tipping etiquette are all included. This is fantastic information to have handy, especially if you’re not familiar with the country you’re visiting.

And if you want to change the the destination country, just select it and a drop-down will display all the countries in your itinerary and allow you to enter any other country you wish.

As you can see from this trip I’ll be taking this fall I’ll be visiting several different countries and to have this info available at the tip of my fingers is terrific. Thanks for the upgrade, TripIt!