My Favorite Business Travel Tech Tools (That AREN'T Airline Apps)

I just travel for leisure these days (cue the National Car rental ad...)
But, with TripIt, I like to manually activities, restaurants, etc, with addresses, if I know them ahead of time while planning. That way I can just click on the address in the TripIt Itinerary and it automagically gives me Google turn-by-turn directions instead of looking it all up again.

I moved from Trip It to the trip planning tool in Award Wallet. You can either forward virtually any emailed confirmation to them, allow it to scan your email for confirmations or have it scan your frequent traveler accounts and it will pull plans for you. You can also manually add stuff like tours that it doesn’t pick up. You can organize trips any way you want, name them, etc. It even will alert to flight changes, check-in and departure information. All that on top of it’s great frequent traveller account tracking tools. Paying for TripIt was redundant to me.

Just as a tip for the future-- with Tripit, you can merge your return trip with your outgoing trip into 1 trip, if it doesn't automatically combine them! Very easy to do!

@Steph, whenever TripIt creates two trips, open the second trip, click on edit (pencil picture), and click merge into another trip. Voila! Now both itineraries are in one place 🙂

I'm a fan of TripCase personally, mainly because our corporate TA is SABRE based. It automatically imports any itineraries created in SABRE where my email address is used as the contact (air, hotel, rental, etc..) and then updates flight schedule changes, delays, etc.. with push notifications. For non-SABRE itineraries, you can either input manually or forward the emails to them like most of the other similar apps.

@LB and @ Alana - thanks, awesome!

I was a long-time TripIt user, but switched to Kayak Trips a couple years ago... the interface is more modern and streamlined than TripIt's was at the time, and push notifications for delays/baggage claim updates are free instead of $50/yr. It's been pretty solid for me and I haven't looked back.

@Rufo, our travel is for leisure and we're often gone for extended periods of time so I share our itinerary with family. I used to use Kayak, but, several years ago, they changed how their itineraries either printed or were shared. They now show too much detail (too much to wade through and I usually don't care to share how much I paid for plane tickets, hotels, etc.). Have you experienced this? If so, is there a workaround? Otherwise, I prefer Kayak over TripIt, but I don't want to maintain two itineraries, and TripIt's shareable itineraries are far more preferable for me.

Tripit has paid for itself a million times over for me. Since I fly Alaska, it scans my itineraries and lets me know if my airfare has gone down. I just call Alaska and get the refund deposited into my wallet. That feature has paid for my premium account for at least a decade.

"There are a couple of minor annoyances to be aware of. The primary one is that the platform sends you a confirmation email every time you forward an itinerary"

Settings > Email Notifications > un-check "Trip Itinerary Received"

Steph, you can easily configure which notifications you want to receive by email, text message or push notification in the TripIt app. By default, they send you way too much email.

"depending on the megahertz"

When did they start sizing portable chargers by frequency?

🙂

Megahertz is a measure of frequency. Abbreviated MHz, it indicates one million cycles per second.

When talking portable batteries, the unit of measure is mAh (milliampere hour) which expresses ability to deliver a given charge for a given time.

I’ve used free Genius Scan for years and have no complaints. The plus version is $7.99, but you only need it for printing, cloud export, no ads, customizable email signature and security.

I hate TripIt, and have given up looking for a really good travel app. Hope to see some suggestions here.

I just use the free version of TripIt. But now that Google Trips has gotten more usable I mostly use that. My phone also keeps track of flights and delays and alerts me using the Google app. Google Trips is also helpful if you're looking for things to do, tourist attractions, etc

I send the @raksiam's recommendation of Google Trips. It is pretty powerful, especially if you use gmail as it automatically populates all of your trips with reservations and details.

I have been monitoring responses for a humorous comment on this girl's misuse of the term "megahertz"
I'm just a frumpy engineer with no comedic abilities ... but I figure someone can dig at this one for a good laugh

I use Google trips. I do nothing. The mega overlords AI figures everything out from my emails and creates cards with all the details and provides notifies needed before the event. Usually well before the stupid airline tells me like with delays. Trips will figure out my next destination and provide transport info. It's scary good.

@Burning and @mark - I'm not above joining you in the laugh (my engineering knowledge is not a source of pride!) I did change the language to "capacity" just to keep things comprehensible.

Lucky for all of us, I don't do any work involving engineering, and my feelings surrounding the comments aren't "megahertz." 😉

Kayak is way better than tripit! I use both and kayak is at least 2x as good in terms of interface and experience. And it's free! Just forward any email to [email protected] (you don't even need to setup an account first)

"Touche!"
Your response was better than any joke I imagined

I agree with the suggestion of Genius Scan as a simple, free way to make photos on your phone into .pdfs. Comes in handy!

I am one of those who doesn't install every app that is suggested along the way - but in the case of JetBlue (at least), you can use their SMS boarding pass to get a link to the pass, and when it arrives, follow the link, and then install that to your Apple Wallet. Problem solved.

Haven't seen a comparison between TurboScan and CamScanner in a few years. Have both, but use CamScanner since it has always supported high-res and OCR. TurboScan appears to still not support either...unless anyone has information to the contrary.

Great post Steph well written

EVERNOTE works great, syncs across devIces and OS, scans, OCR, its not travel oriented, but its really flexible and reliable.

Setting daily and even hourly reminders has always helped me get organized and you can even synchronize your schedule in your calendar in the computer and phone.

@Denise, I'd have to double-check this, but I believe there are two people of sharing; one is just itinerary info, the other includes booking/price information and allows editing. I often send my girlfriend my itinerary information and I've verified that those links don't include sensitive information, so it might be worth checking.

For an itinerary manager, I use Travefy (website) and it’s corresponding My Itinerary app, recommended by OMAAT’s Tiffany. It’s completely manual but intelligent entry, but I like it given that I do lots of international travel and TripIt would inconsistently read foreign-issued itineraries (times would be off; if I have to manually check everything then I might as well enter it manually). I also had issues with Kayak’s formatting and sharing functions. Google doesn’t work for me because my husband does a lot of business travel, and Google was sucking in his forwarded itineraries into my trips.

Try these combinations:

- Trip It with App In The Air : Awsome
- Reminders with SIRI : Indispensable

@Rebecca

TripCase by Sabre
CheckMyTrip by Amadeus

Takes care of itinerary management for free. Very user friendly too.

FYI as all things Google, particularly if useful but used by a niche crowd, it is killed off and parts maybe used for something else.

https://support.google.com/travel/answer/9337634

Was not for power users but Trips app will become unsupported Aug 5th. Likely sunset shortly after a la onthefly app for ITA matrix. Desktop will continue, but eventually no more auto bundling travel details from gmail within an app.