Tripit.com: The Killer App For Travellers

I started planning a month-long family vacation this week, and like everything else I do these days, I started my research by looking at review sites on the net. In my opinion, Tripadvisor.com is still the best for reviews on just about anything travel related. I also like WestJet, Hertz and Expedia. But where's the glue that puts all of this stuff together? Up until now, I've resorted to entering the details of travel bookings into my calendar manually.

Tripit.com will change your life even if you travel just a bit. Here's how it works:

1. You email your confirmation emails from travel sites such as Expedia, Hertz and WestJet to plans@tripit.com. (it reads everything from flight confirmations to restaurant reservations)


2. Login to tripit.com, and make sure that the details were entered correctly.

It's just that simple. Tripit creates an itinerary, starting from the date of your outbound flight and ending on the date of your inbound flight. In-between, it adds your hotel reservations. (no more manual entries!!) Then, it automatically adds a Google Map detailing how to get from the airport to the hotel. You can also add other events, meetings and links manually.

Then, it feeds the information back to you in a slick web 2.0 interface, but more importantly, it publishes an iCal feed that you can plug back into your calendar. It also has a very cool mobile feature, where you can email commands such as "get schedule" or "get flight" and it will email the details back to you - no more digging for buried confirmation emails!

I love how much work the Tripit team has done to keep things simple. For instance, there's no sign-up page on website. You simply sign up by emailing a confirmation to Tripit.

There's a few things that I would like to see added to the feature set, but they're relatively small nits. The application is currently free to all users, and that's great for consumers - sometimes, you do get more than what you pay for. Tripit raised $5.1 million in April, and it will be interesting to see how they develop their revenue model. I, for one, hope they've already figured it out and stick around for a long, long time.