TripIt is the tool I use to track everywhere I go and everywhere I stay.  Since 2008, I’ve been able to store all my itineraries for flights, hotels, rentals, and more. It’s so simple and easy to manage. TripIt is by far my favorite tool for tracking my travel plans throughout the year.

This is my second of a few posts I’ll be doing that highlight some tools I use for “travel hacking.” The first is here. The third is here.

Creating an Account at TripIt

Creating an account at TripIt is easy to do and free of charge! Just enter your email address, password, and your home airport, and check the box accepting their user agreement and privacy policy. After that, you’ll have an account with one of the best itinerary trackers out there that I use all the time when planning my trips.

Adding Plans to TripIt

After creating your account, the next thing to do is start using it to plan a trip! Again, fairly straight-forward. Start the trip creation process by clicking the ‘Add A Trip’ button/link. You’ll be brought to a new page where you will enter the initial details of your trip. No need to get this perfect as you can always edit these details later. Just enter the destination city, give your trip a name, select an image that best suits your trip (they have a bunch, but you can always add your own), start and end dates, an optional description, and then click ‘Add Trip’ button. Done!

After you add your trip you’ll be brought to the trip planning page for the trip you just added. This page has all your actual plans for the trip. You’ll see a calendar with the days of your trip along with the historical weather. The bottom of each box has a ‘+ Add Plans’ link. Click on that button and a dialog will display with all the different plans you can add. Each option has some details for you to fill out. Most aren’t required, but I recommend adding as much detail as you can so you can quickly access them later.

Depending on what plans you add, TripIt is able to track changes. Say for example you add a flight, TripIt will keep an eye on the flights you add and automatically update them with the flight times. You can always manually edit these details though if you think things don’t look right.

That’s the gist of creating a trip and adding plans in TripIt. There are ways to speed up trip planning by allowing TripIt to check your emails for travel plans, or the way I like to do it by forwarding travel plans from an email address I have associated with TripIt. I share more about this below under TripIt Favorite Features.

TripIt Favorite Features

TripIt has a number of features ranging from trip planning, travel history tracking, point tracking, and more. I felt it was worthwhile to share my favorite features to help you understand the benefit of this tool.

Travel Planning

This is the primary function of TripIt, so of course, it is a favorite feature of mine. I started using TripIt around the time it first came out and it has made my life super simple for historically tracking my trips as well as planning them. Travel planning in TripIt is simple and allows me to get quick access to all my plans in one app without having to dig through a slew of emails.

Adding Plans by Forwarding Itineraries to TripIt

A favorite feature of TripIt is sending an itinerary from my email to plans@tripit.com.  Since TripIt knows my email address, it automatically stores my plans either adding to an already created trip or creating a new one with the information.  I can then go into TripIt to make any tweaks to the plans.  So much easier than manually adding the information to the planning tool.

One thing that amazed me was the number of itineraries that it was able to handle.  All my flights, hostels, trains, rentals, and more while traveling around SE Asia were almost all stored correctly.  Even the very obscure ones where I booked it using a translator.

Travel Profile

When you want to keep track of your travel documents like your passport or Global Entry information, turn to the TripIt Travel Profile. This is a private location where you can add those documents and pull them up when you need them the most. I currently store my passport, Global Entry, license, and my girlfriend’s documents. Along with that is a place to store emergency contacts to which I have a couple saved.

Travel Stats

I’ve added almost every trip I’ve taken since first going to El Salvador when I was 16.  As of writing this post, I’ve racked quite the number of travel miles – 172,502 miles 408,643 miles!  I’ve now seen 38 countries and 187 cities.  Thanks to TripIt, it tracks all of those stats and gives a small map of past and future trips:

TripIt Calendar Integration

TripIt also gives you a calendar that is able to be integrated into a calendar like Google Calendar which I use regularly.  Give your calendar color and it fits it in along with the rest of your daily events so you can avoid making calendar plans over your TripIt travel plans.

TripIt Free vs TripIt Pro

TripIt has two plans – TripIt (the free version) and TripIt Pro. I recommend you start off with the TripIt free version as it handles the majority of what you likely want to do.

The TripIt free version has a number of excellent features right outside the box:

• Allows you to access TripIt either on the web or on mobile apps.
• Builds your trip itinerary by simply forwarding your confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com
• Syncs your plans from your trip itinerary to your calendar
• Allows you to share plans with others
• Includes airport and terminal maps, which is great for help navigating unfamiliar airports
• Store your important travel documents in a secure vault.

The Pro version of TripIt costs just $49 per year, and includes the following key features in addition to all of the free features:

• Real-Time Flight Alerts – I often get flight change and delay notifications from TripIt long before any alerts from the airline, which can be beneficial if you get rescheduled or need to make alternative plans.
• Monitor for Fare Refunds – this could potentially save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars annually, but TripIt Pro will continually monitor the fares of the flight you booked, and if the prices go down, they’ll alert you so that you can potentially get a refund. This is great if you’re a Southwest flyer where you can cancel flights for free and rebook.
• Alternate Flight Finder – if you get delayed, rescheduled, or simply want an earlier flight, TripIt Pro can list out all of your options that have open seats to help you get the flight you want fast.
• Check-In Alerts – You’ll get a push notification when it’s time to check-in, which is helpful if you’re a Southwest flyer in order to get the earliest boarding location possible.
• Security Wait Times – it loads the wait times at the airports you’re traveling through in order to help you pick the best security line
• Displays important flight information, such as up to the minute gate information (I find out about gate changes faster from TripIt alerts than I do from the airline), baggage claim location information, and more.
• Point Tracker – TripIt can access some loyalty programs for airlines, hotels, and credit cards, and display the balances of those programs. For programs that it can’t directly access, you can simply forward your monthly reward statements to it and it will maintain your balances. Note: If you use AwardWallet or a similar program, it has a similar level of access to the same programs, so some overlap would occur.

Alternatives to TripIt

Though I’m a big fan of TripIt, it doesn’t mean it will suit everyone. There are some alternative tools out there depending on what you’re looking for.

• Travel planning – Google Travel is a great alternative that I use as a backup to TripIt.
• Points tracking – You can track your points in TripIt Pro, but for that, I recommend my favorite, AwardWallet.

Final Thoughts

TripIt saves me a lot of time when it comes to planning my trips. Very simple to send over itineraries of plans I’ve made from my email and see them pop up shortly after inside the app. I hope that they continue to improve TripIt and find more features to make my travels easier.

If you are interested, head on over, and sign on up!  It’s free!

Perhaps you use a different tool to track your flights.  If so, leave me some info in the comments below!  If you decided to use TripIt, tell me your thoughts on it so far.