AN EVEN EASIER WAY TO CREATE MAPS & ITINERARIES – TAKE 2

This entry is part 11 of 11 in the series Travel Tools & Tips for Planning, Scheduling, Recording & Commemorating Your Trips

The struggle is real. Trying to find a better way to create and manage itineraries seems like a perpetual endeavor. Last year I found a tool called Pebblar and thought it useful, so I wrote a review. There were a few improvements I thought they could make. But instead, the powers that be decided to terminate it. I’d be mad if I’d paid money for it. On the other hand, if I’d paid money for it, maybe it’d still be available. C’est la vie, onto the next search for an even easier way to create maps & Itineraries – take 2.

Recently, I happened upon a Reddit question wherein the original poster was frustrated with Google for eliminating the travel app he’d been using. He thought certainly there’s something better out there. Many people recommended TripIt, and TripIt’s good for what he was asking for — to manage his travel confirmations and put them in chronological order. But if you’re looking for more, like the ability to schedule and organize your activities along with your transportation and accommodation plans, you need something more powerful than Tripit.

The Reddit post had a lot of recommendations in it, most of which I tried. All had significant issues. For example, I found Travelog difficult to schedule an accommodation for which the stay included multiple days. Tripsy – big red flag, its site is not secure and couldn’t connect to Google Maps API. Inspirock was good but has been acquired by something called Klarna Trips. The link to the Klarna trips site doesn’t work. But ultimately, I went looking for other options. I landed on travaa.com, and I paid them $19 for the year. They have a little tutorial that walks you through the different widgets on the desktop version. I found it unnecessary. But let’s walk through the tool, to set up a new trip.

Travaa.com – Add a Trip

We’re thinking about going to Iceland next year. So I’ll use that as the example here. The first step after you register is to click Add. Then you get the dialog box to add the details of the trip. It’s a good idea to find a photo you like and add it here; otherwise, your itinerary you view later will have a lot of white space.

Travaa.com – Add an Activity

The next step is to add your first trip activity. In our case, we generally take Amtrak from Sacramento to San Francisco International Airport for international trips. So, here I’ve clicked on the time we need to take the train to get to the airport. In the right panel, I keyed in the attributes for the train station. Travaa.com is integrated with Google Maps API; so, it will pull back anything that matches your keywords. Some of the other tools I looked at were confined to searching for hotels. So those wouldn’t work for trips where you’re staying at places not defined as hotels, e.g., RV parks, your mother-in-law’s, etc.

Below I’ve selected the matching train station, and that action adds it to the itinerary.

Next, I click on the next timeframe for which we need to be at the airport and add the airport in the right panel and that action automatically adds the airport to the itinerary. After this, I can add my flight info to the description on the right, which is not especially clear since there’s a description already there. You can append to that or rewrite it if you want. *Update one day after I wrote the previous sentence: the site now has a separate notes section for each activity under the description, so that is where you’d put your flight info.

Travaa.com – Popular Places

Now, one thing that initially perplexed me was the functionality that’s supposed to appear when you click on the * — in the tutorial it’s referred to as Popular Places. This is what the tutorial shows.

This led me to believe there should be something showing on the map. But there isn’t — until you zoom in on a particular place and click on the map. The verbiage could be a little more descriptive in terms of what the app expects users to do. Under Popular Places, in faint grey type, it merely says, “Click for info. Drag to schedule.” What you need to do is click an area on the map. Below, I clicked the Reykavik area. From the items in the right panel, I would then drag them to the scheduled time in the bottom panel.

Travaa.com – View Daily Itinerary

Below you can see the attractions already on the timeline. When you look at the itinerary view, you see each day’s activity.

And, scroll down to see each activity for each day. Yikes! I need to change that default picture on the Amtrak activity.

Now that’s more like it! Something to note though: you can’t upload your own photo. The app pulls any applicable images from Flickr. It would be nice if you could upload your own photo.

Travaa.com – Navigation

To get directions to a place on your list, open the travaa app on your phone. Click on the place you want to travel to. Click on the map coordinates. This will open your maps app and give you directions. You can then change your starting point if you need to.

Travaa.com – Wishlist

After using the app to schedule 75 activities, accommodations, and transportation items, I found a few enhancements I would like to see.

• I’d prefer to set a default time slot for activities. Right now, the app defaults to two-hour intervals for activities. I have to change that for everything I want to do.
• When I click on an item in the timeline, I’d prefer the map to move to where that item is. There is a feature that I ran into accidentally (notably missing from the tutorial). If you hover over the date, a plus sign will appear. If you click on that, the map will move to that day’s view of where you’ll be, which is fine.
• It would be great to be able to add a note for the day. Right now the only way to add a note is to add it to the new notes section of an activity.

*Update 6/6/24 – Travaa the App

As I was traveling, I found I couldn’t use the app to make modifications to our itinerary. This is ridiculous. Maybe it’s on the app developer’s roadmap to address this, but without that ability, I find the app almost useless.

Conclusion

The site/app does appear to be a work in progress. As I wrote this, changes had been made between the time I took a screenshot and a day later when I looked at the same thing and realized there was a new notes section on the activities, below the description.

I do feel that it’s the best option out there, and it’s likely to have improvements going forward. I think most people will find it an even easier way to create maps & itineraries – take 2 – too.

Pros

• Easy to use
• Easy to understand
• Easy to schedule multiple nights for stays – just change the end date
• Easy to see daily activities vs. which places you’ll be staying each night

Cons

• It’s hard to move an activity from one slot of time to another day’s slot of time
• Missing a note for the day (so far)
• No integration with Tripit or reservation confirmations – this would make it compelling over every other option out there
• There is a “maybes” feature in which you can designate an activity to be a “maybe.” This is fine, but if you have 75 activities on your plan, you can’t tell where the maybe might fit if you’ve moved them to the maybe list. But if you double-click on a maybe item, you can choose to Include it. And the site/app will put it back where it was when you added it to the maybes list.
• It would be nice if you could upload your own photo to denote an activity or trip.

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