A Travel Organizer for Families and Frequent Fliers
The TripIt Pro app for the iPad.
August is a time for families to wind down the summer with a final trip before school starts. Keeping on top of travel arrangements and changes is crucial.
To help with a recent trip, I signed up for TripIt, a travel organizer from Concur. The service has a free version, but I tested its paid subscription version, which has several extras.
The free TripIt service keeps travel arrangements like flight, hotel and car rental confirmations organized and available on the Web, a smartphone or a tablet (iOS, Android, BlackBerry or Windows). An upgrade to TripIt Pro, at $49 a year, offers useful features like reminders about travel plans and alerts about flight delays, gate changes and fare refunds.
Other extras with TripIt Pro include maps and driving directions, and the service will automatically share your itinerary with others in your circle, like family members or co-workers. It also keeps track of frequent-flier points.
I used TripIt Pro a few weeks ago for a trip to San Diego. I’m not a frequent flier and I was going solo, so a lot of the TripIt services were unnecessary this time. But I was eager to use the tracker that allows a user to check for open seats. Unfortunately, no seats became available, so I put it out of my mind.
But on the way to the airport to catch my flight home, Delta called to tell me that the second leg of my return flight had been canceled. I had to scramble to make other arrangements. When I checked my e-mail, TripIt said everything was status quo. Fortunately, a helpful Delta agent at the airport was able to rebook my flight. Hours later, while I was flying high over the Midwest, TripIt Pro finally sent me an e-mail notifying me that my original flight had been canceled.
When travel plans can change at a moment’s notice, it helps to have an organizer that can adapt quickly. TripIt Pro may offer some great features, and I will use it again, but I prefer a service that keeps up with shifting travel plans.
