Looking for some early-access testers for my new travel planning and management platform

Forums › Travel (planes, train, cruise) › Looking for some early-access testers for my new travel planning and management platform

steve98

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#320032 28-Jun-2025 08:58

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a website aimed at anyone who wants to travel organised (no matter how frequently or infrequently). These days we all book the various aspects of our travel plan across a number of disparate platforms - flights booked via one service, accommodation via another, and so on - and it can be a headache putting together a single view of all of these elements, let alone easily finding tickets and confirmations while travelling. This is the problem I aim to solve with travvl. I've been working on it for about 18 months, and have used it myself on two overseas trips where I can honestly say it saved me so many headaches. I also used it to share my plans with family so that they knew where we were.

I'm now almost ready to open it up, but before I do I would like to invite some users to test it out and I figured who better to ask than the Geekzone community! Ideally, I'm looking for people with travel planned, preferably in the near future, who can add their flights, hotels, transfers, rental cars, activities and restaurant bookings and plans to it and then use it. If you don't have immediate plans, I'm still interested in your views. I want to hear what you like, what you don't, and what additional features you'd like to see. Oh and if you find bugs, I want to know about that, too.

If you'd like to learn more, please visit the site at travvl.pro to read about the features. At this stage, sign-up is disabled but if you'd like to join as a beta tester please DM me with the email address you would sign-up with, and I will arrange an invite.

Regards,

Steve

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Smpl Mnmlst
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#3387767 28-Jun-2025 09:45

Good on you - had a quick look and it looks excellent. Will it be free? I have used the free version of TripIt for about 20 years. It's totally brilliant and I couldn't do without it. Your solution appears to keep track of much the same info as TripIt but TripIt doesn't track travel costs unless you have the paid Pro version - which I never have. It has a website and apps. I think an app would be important if you are looking for wide acceptance.

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

johno1234

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#3387778 28-Jun-2025 10:59

Another Tripit user here and likewise, I really depend on it. I’ve looked at the Tripit Pro paid option but don’t think its features are of much benefit to me. The key benefit of Tripit to me is the ability to forward booking emails to it from various airlines, rental car companies and hotels and it somehow manages to pick the eyes out of them and get it into its calendar. It also deals nicely with duplicates and clashes created by flight schedule changes.

Great to see a challenger in this space to push along the innovation. Watching with interest.

kiwifidget

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#3387779 28-Jun-2025 11:30

Himself books flights, accommodation, and vehicles for a group of like-minded sportsball friends several times a year.

Are either of these tools good for managing group bookings?

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Mehrts

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#3387780 28-Jun-2025 11:37

I've got an upcoming domestic trip booked for July, which has a mix of Air NZ airfares, hotel, and airport car parking bookings.

Would this stuff be the sort of thing this could help to manage?

If so, then I can give it a go to help you out.

eracode

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#3387784 28-Jun-2025 12:28

johno1234:

The key benefit of Tripit to me is the ability to forward booking emails to it from various airlines, rental car companies and hotels and it somehow manages to pick the eyes out of them and get it into its calendar.

Yes - among TripIt’s many features, it’s this simplicity of use that’s at the top of my list. Very occasionally it can’t decipher a confirmation email - in which case it tells you it had trouble. Usually it’s unerringly accurate - even with recording details like carriage and seat numbers for European train bookings.

If the app has had trouble, it’s very easy to manually add or edit an entry.

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

steve98

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#3387789 28-Jun-2025 14:14

eracode:

Good on you - had a quick look and it looks excellent. Will it be free? I have used the free version of Tripit for about 20 years. It's totally brilliant and I couldn't do without it. Your solution appears to keep track of much the same info as Tripit but Tripit doesn't track travel costs unless you have the paid Pro version - which I never have. It has a website and apps. I think an app would be important if you are looking for wide acceptance.

Hey, thanks for that. There will be a free tier, yes, but will be ad supported with some limit on the number of 'items' that can be added to a trip. There will also be a couple of paid tiers, which will remove ads and limits and unlock some extra features such as upload your booking PDFs and AI will find the details. Would love to do it all for free but the Google Places API is quite expensive at scale, and there's really no alternative. In addition there are Flight Radar, OpenAI APIs involved. Part of the purpose of this beta is for me to understand typical user usage of all the various APIs so that I can figure out how to price it.

An iPhone app is under development at the moment, but the website itself is fully responsive and looks great even on mobile browser.

Let me know if you'd like an invite to the beta!

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steve98

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#3387790 28-Jun-2025 14:17

johno1234:

Another Tripit user here and likewise, I really depend on it. I’ve looked at the Tripit Pro paid option but don’t think its features are of much benefit to me. The key benefit of Tripit to me is the ability to forward booking emails to it from various airlines, rental car companies and hotels and it somehow manages to pick the eyes out of them and get it into its calendar. It also deals nicely with duplicates and clashes created by flight schedule changes.

Great to see a challenger in this space to push along the innovation. Watching with interest.

Hi John, thanks for this. At this stage we don't have the ability to add by forwarding emails but it's on my trello board and we do have an exciting alternative that is already live for flights, rental cars and hotels -- you can simply upload your booking PDFs and Travvl will figure out the details and add it to the trip. It will capture dates, place, costs (including deposits / paid), even if the PDF contains multiple flights. It will also store a copy of the PDF itself so you can download it again whenever you need.

Let me know if you'd like an invite, if you haven't asked for one already.

Steve

steve98

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#3387791 28-Jun-2025 14:22

kiwifidget:

Himself books flights, accommodation, and vehicles for a group of like-minded sportsball friends several times a year.

Are either of these tools good for managing group bookings?

Potentially... with Travvl there is the ability for one user to create a trip and then share it to other Travvl users with granular controls over permissions and whether each invitee can view files / costs etc. So it could work, though I hadn't considered that use-case specifically. If you'd like an invite, just DM me and you can give it a go. Your feedback will help inform how we need to adapt things for groups.

Steve

steve98

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#3387792 28-Jun-2025 14:25

Mehrts:

I've got an upcoming domestic trip booked for July, which has a mix of Air NZ airfares, hotel, and airport car parking bookings.

Would this stuff be the sort of thing this could help to manage?

If so, then I can give it a go to help you out.

Airfares and hotels, absolutely -- car parking bookings you could add as an 'Activity' (selecting 'Other' as the activity type when you add it). So yes, it can help -- DM me with your email address and I'll get an invite to you.

Steve

Stu1

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#3387801 28-Jun-2025 15:45

Great idea, probably just me but even with tripit i find it hard to plan an overseas intinary with trips in one country . For example planning a 14 day trip around the uk seems difficult and have gone back to simple excel . For example I want an app where I can plan then view plan on a map to see if it makes sense . Example

Full 14-Night Itinerary: Great Britain & Paris (Self-Drive) Day Route & Highlights Overnight Stay 1 Arrival in London — rest and recover from jet lag London 2 London — Harry Potter Studio Tour + Windsor Castle day London 3 London — explore major sights (Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, British Museum) London 4 London → Cambridge → York York 5 York → Alnwick Castle visit → Edinburgh Edinburgh 6 Explore Edinburgh — Edinburgh Castle, Royal Mile, museums Edinburgh 7 Edinburgh → Loch Ness → Glencoe → Highlands Glencoe / Highlands 8 Highlands → Gretna Green → Lake District → Liverpool Liverpool 9 Liverpool → Manchester Manchester 10 Manchester → Cardiff (day trip) → Manchester Manchester 11 Manchester → Bath → Diddly Squat Farm Shop → London London 12 London → Eurostar to Paris Paris 13 Disneyland Paris day Paris 14 Paris sightseeing + departure

eracode

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#3387809 28-Jun-2025 17:48

Stu1:

Great idea, probably just me but even with tripit i find it hard to plan an overseas intinary with trips in one country .

TripIt isn’t really a trip planning tool and doesn’t claim that. It’s more for recording all your bookings once you’ve made them, all in one place - to save going backwards and forwards to individual confirmations to find specific details.

It sounds like Travvl will be much like this too.

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

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CYaBro

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#3387813 28-Jun-2025 18:14

Stu1:

Great idea, probably just me but even with tripit i find it hard to plan an overseas intinary with trips in one country . For example planning a 14 day trip around the uk seems difficult and have gone back to simple excel . For example I want an app where I can plan then view plan on a map to see if it makes sense . Example

Have a look at Wanderlog, I think that will do what you want.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

eracode

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#3387814 28-Jun-2025 18:22

kiwifidget:

Himself books flights, accommodation, and vehicles for a group of like-minded sportsball friends several times a year.

Are either of these tools good for managing group bookings?

In TripIt you can add as many people as you want into the travelling group - travellers and/or interested parties. You can also specify who has editing rights.

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

Stu1

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#3387816 28-Jun-2025 18:40

CYaBro:

Stu1:

Great idea, probably just me but even with tripit i find it hard to plan an overseas intinary with trips in one country . For example planning a 14 day trip around the uk seems difficult and have gone back to simple excel . For example I want an app where I can plan then view plan on a map to see if it makes sense . Example

Have a look at Wanderlog, I think that will do what you want.

Thank you will check it out

steve98

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#3387867 28-Jun-2025 20:33

Stu1:

Great idea, probably just me but even with tripit i find it hard to plan an overseas intinary with trips in one country . For example planning a 14 day trip around the uk seems difficult and have gone back to simple excel . For example I want an app where I can plan then view plan on a map to see if it makes sense . Example

Full 14-Night Itinerary: Great Britain & Paris (Self-Drive) Day Route & Highlights Overnight Stay 1 Arrival in London — rest and recover from jet lag London 2 London — Harry Potter Studio Tour + Windsor Castle day London 3 London — explore major sights (Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, British Museum) London 4 London → Cambridge → York York 5 York → Alnwick Castle visit → Edinburgh Edinburgh 6 Explore Edinburgh — Edinburgh Castle, Royal Mile, museums Edinburgh 7 Edinburgh → Loch Ness → Glencoe → Highlands Glencoe / Highlands 8 Highlands → Gretna Green → Lake District → Liverpool Liverpool 9 Liverpool → Manchester Manchester 10 Manchester → Cardiff (day trip) → Manchester Manchester 11 Manchester → Bath → Diddly Squat Farm Shop → London London 12 London → Eurostar to Paris Paris 13 Disneyland Paris day Paris 14 Paris sightseeing + departure

Generating a map of your trip is definitely on the Trello board. For now, you will at least get a very nice day-by-day itinerary that does help sanity check your plans.

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