How to your plan/organize your trips?

I currently use a spreadsheet template I created a while ago, online via google drive (so it's accessible anywhere there is internet if I need it). It's all color coded and probably a bit OCD. My friends and DH have laughed at my "obsessive attention to detail" and the amount of time I invest in said (often lengthy) spreadsheets. Just curious - how do you plan your trips and schedules? I've seen some apps out there like trip-it etc but I think my spreadsheet is just as good, if not laborious.

I don't use spreadsheets,(don't know how!) but have folders for each port on my computer and put emails from guides in there. Have folders for people taking the tours I plan.

I print off the guide info on the tour, to take with me.

I make a 4x6 card for day we depart and arrive in port, with flight info, name of hotel, confirmation number, price, and info for transfer that I have booked to hotel.

There is a 4x6 for each day of the cruise, with the date, time in port, where we are, and little hints for the area (please and thank you in local language, tipping info, reminders like go to ATM and get Euros or local currency to have for NEXT port)

Also on it:what tour I'm on, who's on it with me, what it costs per couple, and where we meet the guide. Has name of guide's company and email/phone number.

Disembarkation day 4x6 has transfer info to hotel, confirmation number, and price.

Another 4x6 with health insurance and cancellation/interruption insurance.

Another 4x6 with names of all participants on my tours and their cabin number.

All goes into a tiny little binder that holds 4x6 cards, and is about to go on my 5th and 6th O cruise with me.

Each day, I carry the 4x6 for that port with me, and the printed off info for the tour. The days I don't have tours planned, I research, and the card will have restaurant ideas, interesting sites, etc.

As a matter of fact, I have been working on this all day today! Just sent out my 3 month in advance confirmations to the people taking my tours. Will reconfirm in mid March with guides and participants. It is very time consuming, but worth it for the excellent guides I book MONTHS in advance!

We use Excel to detail our trip day by day ... But, we keep it all one one page. We print copies and take them along with us .. We would be lost without it.

I love it! You are as bad as me. My spreadsheets are a lot like your cards except they are all in one "master" document - and I share the online link with my family so they know pretty much exactly what I'm up to at what time (I even go so far as to put the time back home). I also print out daily itineraries to take on our adventures. One thing I HAVE learned is to always plan "nap time" in the afternoon. Makes the night adventure so much more fun. :)

It is very interesting to read these posts about trip organization. We use a rather more casual method. Our first plan is to book everything: the cruise, flights, hotels. Next, do packing lists with bag locations. A woman once told me how she divided her husband's tux, pants in one bag, pants in another. Hum. Of course, we have copies of relevant documents with essential phone numbers. With the exception of planning specific site visits, we plan to arrive at the ship.

I use a spreadsheet when I'm planning, on the lead-up to a trip. Once I book and start filling in details, then I use tripit.com. It's an travel app with a website as well. It tracks my flights, hotels, etc.

I also always have a folder for of information about the trip specifically. A tips file, particular files I need to print out leaving like car ressies and the like.

I use Tripit website to organize our trips.

Advantages for me: I can share the website with family and friends (or if travelling with friends you can both make entries). When you make a car, hotel, airline or tour reservation, you email it to Tripit and the information is inserted for you. You can enter or copy and paste all your own information, make notes, track costs. There are some hotels, car rental, tour companies that are not as yet connected so you would have to enter that information. Maps are automatically inserted as to where hotels are located. On my Tablet the information is stored so I don’t need to be on line to have access to it. You can print your itinerary, either a short form or a more detailed. Especially great for long trips. I also like that I can call up all your information from past trips. The other site I use is Google Drive to store information on various destinations

I will be looking at tripit, sounds great!

I use Tripit website to organize our trips.

Advantages for me: I can share the website with family and friends (or if travelling with friends you can both make entries). When you make a car, hotel, airline or tour reservation, you email it to Tripit and the information is inserted for you. You can enter or copy and paste all your own information, make notes, track costs. There are some hotels, car rental, tour companies that are not as yet connected so you would have to enter that information. Maps are automatically inserted as to where hotels are located. On my Tablet the information is stored so I don’t need to be on line to have access to it. You can print your itinerary, either a short form or a more detailed. Especially great for long trips. I also like that I can call up all your information from past trips. The other site I use is Google Drive to store information on various destinations

I'm playing with Trip It right now. Seems to work really well. It scanned my email and built out a bunch of itineraries for my various upcoming trips. I might stick with this because it auto-updates the stuff (things change). Can it catch cancellations? Like if I cancel a hotel and switch into another?

I am old fashioned

I use binders for each trip

I create a master list for the tours I organize.

I have only manual deleted a hotel reservation. Never thought about emailing the cancellation, next time I will try it.

I'm playing with Trip It right now. Seems to work really well. It scanned my email and built out a bunch of itineraries for my various upcoming trips. I might stick with this because it auto-updates the stuff (things change). Can it catch cancellations? Like if I cancel a hotel and switch into another?

It's not great at that. Nor is it great at itinerary changes. For example, we have an upcoming air itinerary with 4 segments from different locations. I keep getting itinerary changes from the airline, minor ones, and I tried just sending them to Tripit and it didn't really work, I had to edit it myself. Doesn't handle bookings from smaller agencies either, like independent hotels. But for airlines, booking engines and car rentals, it generally works great. I like that I have the whole itinerary on my phone, and can share it with my husband.

I use a spreadsheet to keep the basic itinerary, times in port and daily plans. Then I have file folders for each port to keep research and ideas and tour possibilities and confirmations. When we depart I clean up the files and review each day the evening before we get to port. I'm going to experiment with tripit to manage the air and hotels this time.

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I use Excel to keep track of all the details and excursion information. The file is kept in DropBox for access from anywhere. A couple weeks before the cruise I make a PDF of the info needed and save it in iBooks on my iPad, so I have copies in DropBox and iBooks. The PDF is also handy in that I can email it to her for her to put on her iPad.

Well, to begin with I prepare my own itinerary. I include on the itinerary flight and hotel reservation info as well as basic tour information. I also include dinner reservations there but not extreme detail.

Separately, I have a file for the trip (I'm a word perfect gal) that includes all information about the tours I have set up. This includes participant names, their emails, costs, etc., not to mention all previous correspondence. I bring all this with me on my laptop, although I also have a printout of the basic information (by no means, not everything). I print out a separate copy of participant information for the guide to use as well.

I do NOT do a spread sheet! But I have more information with me than I will never need since I bring my laptop with me.

Mura

I use a 3 ring binder...tab for each day/port. Massive research for each port, history, diy walking tours, tips on restaurants, places not to be missed, maps (both paper and downloaded). (I'm talking months of research!)

In the front pocket is all info on flights and pre-cruise hotel. At night we throw away the info from that day and review the next day. The notebook is virtually empty when the cruise is over, except for info I picked up which will get scanned and "dumped" when I return home.

I keep a "dump document" on my desktop and over the years as I acquire info from a wide variety of sources, that info gets "dumped" into its proper section. Sometimes the info is where to take a cool picture, sometimes about a bar, or food not to be missed or places to buy local art/crafts.

Unfortunately, we don't travel leisurely on a cruise. I learned my mother's philosophy of vacation "you can rest at home, let's get going" early and well!! Fortunately, Mr Wonderful buys into the philosophy.

For an itinerary it's really easy just to us word for everything from flights, car service, hotels,port's, Conf numbers, phone numbers and dinners. Everything you need to have on one page. If you really need more space use the other side so you truly have it together.

Rick

Well, to begin with I prepare my own itinerary. I include on the itinerary flight and hotel reservation info as well as basic tour information. I also include dinner reservations there but not extreme detail.

 

Separately, I have a file for the trip (I'm a word perfect gal) that includes all information about the tours I have set up. This includes participant names, their emails, costs, etc., not to mention all previous correspondence. I bring all this with me on my laptop, although I also have a printout of the basic information (by no means, not everything). I print out a separate copy of participant information for the guide to use as well.

 

I do NOT do a spread sheet! But I have more information with me than I will never need since I bring my laptop with me.

 

Mura

Sorry, Off Topic

Word Perfect!!! Good for you Mura. Glad I am not alone in my liking for things that did things well without all the bloat & neediness. A program that almost from the start had 'reveal codes' so the user could be in charge. A pet peeve is the googley and its ilk that constantly 'helps' us out with things I do not want /need. Example, took me three attempts to enter 'googley' until I learned how to trick it so the word was not 'corrected' w/o even asking me.

As I start my trip planning, I create a Word document. It gets added to and edited as I research. When I get close to the trip, I tend to pare it down to only essential information.

I use Word document as well! c

I send my port research to friends and family when they ask, and using Ctrl F, they can search the document for those things/places they are particularly interested in, copy, paste into a document and print/download. Easy to share! (i can also add comments/opinions in bold upon our return for future trips).

I do the same for land-based trips as well. Friends using info on Key West right now.

It's not great at that. Nor is it great at itinerary changes. For example, we have an upcoming air itinerary with 4 segments from different locations. I keep getting itinerary changes from the airline, minor ones, and I tried just sending them to Tripit and it didn't really work, I had to edit it myself. Doesn't handle bookings from smaller agencies either, like independent hotels. But for airlines, booking engines and car rentals, it generally works great. I like that I have the whole itinerary on my phone, and can share it with my husband.

I just downloaded the free version of Tripit yesterday, so was very interested to find this thread. Do you have the paid version? Quite expensive, at $49 a year, but you need the paid version to receive notices of flight changes, cancellations, etc.

So far, I have just input my own information. Are you comfortable with sending in all your trip confirmations? That is a lot of personal information.

When you send in your Oceania confirmation, do they include ports, dinner reservations, etc?

Also, when I do not have access to the internet, can I open the app and see what was last saved?

Tripit is OK and I've used it a ton for organizing over the past ~3 years. Its best feature (for paranoid people like me) is that it will display all of your reservations in a chronological sequence - so you can see very quickly if you've made a reservation on the wrong day or something like that...

It does have significant limitations - not all hotel reservations are automatically entered; as others have mentioned, small independent hotels often don't get imported properly, if at all. Have not used Oceania since I started using Tripit, so can't answer if their info is imported properly, but Silversea's information is not imported at all. Sometimes I manually enter it; sometimes I don't bother. Celebrity Xpedition's port stops, OTOH, were entered perfectly.

In my experience, it doesn't cancel hotels automatically from a cancellation e-mail but easy enough to remove a reservation with a click or two.

Flight changes are a little clunky but not too bad. For me, it will import the new information from the revised itinerary e-mail, then present me with a notice of "conflicting flight information" and ask me to choose which is correct. Once you tell it that the new information is the correct itinerary, it deletes the old one.

Update your phone info (easily accomplished by opening the app, and hitting refresh) before you leave home, and the info is available on the phone even without internet access (at least it works that way for me). Though there's usually some wifi hotspot you can connect from during the trip if you need to.

I use the web version for almost all of the data entry, changes, and cancellations; I use the android app mainly to have the info at my fingertips when traveling.

******

Chris makes index cards for all of our stops after taking notes from travel guides, supplemented by tons of internet research. She'll note entry fees, opening hours, and whether the attractions are included in combination passes (like the London pass, etc).

I tend to write out very little, but I frequently "print" interesting information that I find on the net directly to .pdf files, and I have a folder on my laptop for trips. Within that folder, I have subfolders for each upcoming trip where I save these .pdfs for future reference. I find that much more convenient than lots of paper.

One other hint - the best thing we ever figured out was to join our local library. They have racks and racks of travel guidebooks. We stopped buying them years ago, and just borrow the guidebooks that we need from the library. They are amazingly comprehensive and up to date!

I don't use spreadsheets,(don't know how!) but have folders for each port on my computer and put emails from guides in there. Have folders for people taking the tours I plan.

I print off the guide info on the tour, to take with me.

I make a 4x6 card for day we depart and arrive in port, with flight info, name of hotel, confirmation number, price, and info for transfer that I have booked to hotel.

There is a 4x6 for each day of the cruise, with the date, time in port, where we are, and little hints for the area (please and thank you in local language, tipping info, reminders like go to ATM and get Euros or local currency to have for NEXT port)

Also on it:what tour I'm on, who's on it with me, what it costs per couple, and where we meet the guide. Has name of guide's company and email/phone number.

Disembarkation day 4x6 has transfer info to hotel, confirmation number, and price.

Another 4x6 with health insurance and cancellation/interruption insurance.

Another 4x6 with names of all participants on my tours and their cabin number.

All goes into a tiny little binder that holds 4x6 cards, and is about to go on my 5th and 6th O cruise with me.

 

Each day, I carry the 4x6 for that port with me, and the printed off info for the tour. The days I don't have tours planned, I research, and the card will have restaurant ideas, interesting sites, etc.

 

As a matter of fact, I have been working on this all day today! Just sent out my 3 month in advance confirmations to the people taking my tours. Will reconfirm in mid March with guides and participants. It is very time consuming, but worth it for the excellent guides I book MONTHS in advance!

Ooh, what a nifty idea to use 4x6 cards. Easily portable and easily filed.. Beats my sheaf of papers in various file folders. I don't have a smart phone and am not computer literate enough to organize on my iPad. I don't organize tours for other folks but sometimes my husband and I choose separate tours. 4x6 cards would make that a lot easier to organize. Thank you for sharing the idea.

I do a variety of all of these ideas. One thing that I do is scan passports, drivers licenses, medical cards etc and put them in my iphone/ipad. I use an app called Secure File so it is password protected. I also use an app called Evernote to scan relevant information to such as flight and hotel information. I try to reduce the amount of paper that I carry.

Kaiser, our medical carrier, gives us our medical history on flash drives to carry with us. I have used it once, and it saved me from having to get a tetanus shot.

Virginia