Wait a second: is that one word or two? Not sure if "com" is a word, exactly or more like, you know, a suffix. Anyway.
Leave it to Stacy, The Designated Neatnik at Work to know the best way to organize anything from review meetings with senior management to book club parties. I'm certain that her forebearers were at Stonehenge, carrying stone-age versions of a Kate Spade handbag with things like a tape measure and lint brush inside, saying things like, "Well, if you want it to be perfect, you'd move that 40-ton slab over just a tad."
I told Stacy I was making a binder for my upcoming trip to Turkey, complete with separate sections according to city and broken down by hotel, car reservations, activity reservations, historical and tourist attractions, and restaurants. I'd never actually planned anything out to such a degree, much less organized it all in a binder, and I wanted to put Stacy on notice that her uncontested days as Designated Neatnik were numbered, but Stacy was nonplussed. "You don't do tripit?" she said.
And in that way, I was introduced to the best innovation in travel since airlines started replacing those crummy bags of peanuts they used to give you with snack mix instead.
What it is, How it Works
tripit is an on-line travel organizer, which is sort of like saying a Ferrari is a car. Membership is free, and as far as I can tell doesn't generate a lick of Spam. After you sign up, you start by adding a trip and building it from there by forwarding the emails of any reservations you've made--plane, car, hotel--it doesn't matter where you made the reservations from, tripit will sort it out, creating an itinerary. If there's an email tripit doesn't understand, it files it under "undated" so you can add the information manually.
What Does tripit capture?
The designated categories include:
- flight
- lodging
- car rental
- rail
- cruise
- transportation (i.e. ground, ferry)
- activity
- restaurant
- meeting
- map
- directions
- note
- article
But Does it Work?
I started by forwarding information on our three flights--one round-trip international and two domestic round-trips within Turkey. The international flight I'd gotten through priceline; the domestic flights I'd gotten at the Turkish Airways site. Within minutes, tripit registered the information and began compiling an itinerary by date, with flight number, carrier, confirmation number, frequent flier number, projected departure and arrival times, arrival and departure cities, and cute little flight logo with color-designation (in this case, blue for transportation; there's also green for maps, pink for hotels, peach for restaurants, pale yellow-orange for activities, and gray for articles). tripit also automatically inserted a map of the cities designated for flight arrival.
Thus encouraged, I started forwarding the confirmations for hotels. Because the hotels we're staying at are small, local hotels that I booked via personal email rather than via Expedia, Travelocity, or a large chain hotel's website, the information didn't register in the itinerary but did show up in my "undated" file, which I then used to manually input the applicable information: just click on the date and then the "Add Plans" link will walk you through the rest. While not automatic, it was certainly easy and kind of fun, too. I input my own confirmation numbers, noted who I had contacted or spoken with, typed in addresses and phone numbers, added directions, noted fees and any applicable discounts, and even inserted pictures of the exact rooms we'd be staying in that I pulled from the B&B, cottage, hotel, or resort's websites.
Copying and Moving Information for Efficient Inputting
Because breakfast was included in all of our accommodations, I added "Breakfast" under each day, a task made easy by choosing "Copy" from the "Options" pull-down menu after I input the first breakfast entry. Put something under the wrong day? Just use the "Move" command under the "Options" menu.
Using tripit to Coordinate Your Schedule
Once the major elements were in place, I began tweaking the times to better and more accurately reflect our schedule. I projected an hour to go through customs and find our luggage, and another 2 hours to get to our hotel through Istanbul's notorious traffic. Seeing the times laid out before me, I realized that we really wouldn't have time for a leisurely stroll through the covered market that evening; with an 8:00 a.m. departure for the airport for an 11:00 flight the following morning, we'd need to make sure we were in bed plenty early. I found a couple restaurants within a few blocks from the hotel that looked interesting and created an "article" for them, listing out their addresses, hours of operation, a few reviews, and their menu. Perfect!