A digital answer to the “travel” file folder

I do a fair amount of traveling and — anyone who does can tell you — it takes a little work to keep the airline, hotel, car and event confirmations organized and ready when you need to access them. (Am I in Cleveland today? Was it Hertz or Budget?)

I have used several different systems, including a trusty paper file folder marked TRAVEL. Thing is, that’s just so, well, not digital. Recently I’ve started playing with a year-old or so service called TripIt

TripIt allows you to organize all of your travel details in one place and, in my opinion, does it in simple fashion.

Create a free account
Set up a trip
Reserve your air, hotel, car, etc.
Forward your confirmation e-mails to TripIt
Magically find all your travel details on one page

And, local weather, Google map from airport to hotel, local info from Wikipedia, local events from Eventful are automatically added to your trip. You can also add all the detail you want, including meetings and dinners. You can access your trip details from any browser or mobile phone.

TripIt has the ability to pull all the details it needs from your confirmation number and currently appears to have system compatibility with most major airlines, car rental companies, hotels, and travel services like Expedia.

They have recently added a location-aware network so people in your network can know where you are and you can display it proudly on your blog with the TripIt widget. But I’m not sure I want people knowing where I am at all times yet.

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Comments (1)

by Ricky Cadden / October 12, 2008

I discovered Tripit recently and it is hands-down the best thing EVER for trips. I *love* the ability to just forward the confirmations and see all of my information magically appear in a nice, neat timeline, with all of the relevant information. BRILLIANT.

The mobile site works great, too. I added it to my Keytoss.com homepage so I can get to it really quickly, no matter what computer I’m using.