Let’s face it: apps are changing the world. They are changing the way we live, interact, work, bank, shop and certainly the way we travel. I got an iPhone 5 earlier this year and have since experimented with dozens of different travel apps. I get emails all the time from companies asking me to try their apps out. Some are OK, some good and some suck but there is only one that I don’t know what I would do without. To me, TripIt is the best travel app and a must have app for any serious traveler.

When I got my iPhone, TripIt was amongst the first apps I downloaded as I had heard such good things about it. For years I have struggled with organizing all my flight confirms, hotel confirmations, trains, rental cars, etc. I used to print out like 50 pages of confirms for a long trip and then try to organize them by date and basically throw them out as I went along. This was annoying for sure, but at the time I didn’t have another option.

TripIt, in my opinion, is the best travel app because it simply makes my life so much easier. My bag is not full of papers and there is no clutter. If I want to know any information about any aspect of my trip, I simply check the free TripIt app on my iPhone 5 or pull it up on TripIt.com.

How It Works

Once you sign up for TripIt, you simply email all travel confirms to [email protected]. TripIt then does its magic-literally. I don’t pretend to understand the technology or how it reads the confirms but within seconds it organizes your trip perfectly and you can see it in your account and get an email.

Generally, I book my trips in separate segments and will email them all to TripIt almost wondering if the app will not understand or not organize it correctly but amazingly it always does. So if you email rental car, hotel, train, flight all separately; then TripIt will still recognize the dates and organize them all into one simple trip. This is great because you can refer to it constantly to get flight numbers, hotel confirmation numbers, etc.

Benefits of TripIt Pro

TripIt Pro is a great service offered by TripIt. Pro sends you emails and notifications of your flights, delays, gates and how much time you have in between flights. TripIt Pro basically holds your hand through the transfer process. Believe me, it is very helpful and convenient when you land late and don’t have time to look at the monitor in the terminal. Pro will tell you what gate your connection is at and how much time you have.

TripIt Pro also has a function called Seat Tracker, which helps you pick the perfect seat for you. TripIt already has your flight info and knows what type of plane you are flying. You are presented with a seat diagram and you can see the different seats and choose what works for you.

Other Functions

TripIt also allows you to track points from rewards programs other than airlines such as hotel rewards programs like Starwood Hotels or Marriott etc. This is a nice thing to be able to quickly reference when you are on TripIt as it just saves you time.

With TripIt, you can also share your trips with your networks and for business travel, it allows your whole team to share travel and interact as a team. I have never used this function myself but talking to a friend the other day who uses it; he said it work great!

So again, in my view and experience, TripIt is the best travel app and one I cannot travel without. Sometimes I forget to email my confirms to TripIt so my yearly stats are not 100% accurate but that is my fault. I need to set up the automatic import of travel confirmations. That aside, I have a ton of cool trips to add to my upcoming trip roster for the rest of this year including a trip to the South Pole! I wonder if TripIt can process that one!

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