How do you track your travel ideas and goals?

[mabartel]

Hey guys - my friends and I have been making plans to visit a few cities in the USA. We've created a handful of whatsapp groups to keep track of restaurants to visit, tourist sites to see, etc, but are looking for a tool to be a bit more organized. I've looked at a few tools like TripAdvisor (not bad, but it's less designed to compile ideas and moreso designed to save and eventually buy tours), Wanderlist (half-assed at best), and TripIt (also not bad, but moreso for creating solid itineraries than any kind of idea storage).

What do you guys use? Are there any niche apps out there that could store location-specific notes on restaurants and sites and tours and hyperlinks and all that fun stuff?

[AZBuck]

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

The 'app' I use is me!! It may be because I was born before there were computers, grew up on paper maps and AAA TripTiks, and have always allowed for a good bit of serendipity in my travels, but the best way I know of to do the planning you are attempting is to just keep a running list of possibilities. While I used to do this with simple paper lists and memory, I now rely on text files and lists of websites in planning, and then before departure make a PowerPoint with information about each site I might like to visit: address, hours, costs, highlights, etc. Any app is going to come with its founders' preferences for organizing built into it. I prefer to go my own way.

AZBuck

[landmariner]

A random notes file does it for me. Then when ideas begin to gel I might move to a monthly calendar that I have now generated in a spreadsheet file and can run out about 6 to 8 weeks, so that I get a flow. Then I move to details in a spreadsheet table with the caldendar formed with day #, date and day of the week. Columns going across include where the pillow night will be, reservations needed (abbreviated form); Google Miles, Google Hours & Adjusted Reality Hours; Reminders and Maybe a calculated column for when to make campsite reservations. MS Word files document the stuff that needs to be written down.

Internet can be a great research tool but I think Travel Guidebooks are a friend. As are good AAA maps.

[DonnaR57]

When my husband and I are in the process of actually planning a trip, I start the planning on paper. Yes, like AZBuck, that's how we planned in the days before Internet! I also now create bookmarks in a bigger file called "XXX Trip Ideas", such as "East Coast History Trip".

One of the next steps is creating a day-to-day plan, such as "drive home to XXX". Once the backbone of that is on paper, I transfer it to a spreadsheet. In that spreadsheet goes the date, Depart From, Arrival at, mileage estimate, overnight information (we reserve places), approximate cost, plus layover plans and the accommodations cancellation policy. I have also had meal thoughts on that spreadsheet, especially if there was a place we heard about and wanted to try. Or, perhaps, a reservation was made before we left home, such as a restaurant in Colonial Williamsburg (for our past trip). That is noted - time and date.

Another step is collecting state maps from AAA, and making sure that our AAA membership is up to date. We use our GPS on the phone only for finding our way within a town/city, such as to a specific gas station, restaurant or even our lodging. I use paper maps for everything else since I can then eye alternatives and see where they go.

I use my documents to write a journal each day. Years down the line, I can bring up that file (easiest if it's printed, and you've changed laptops/etc) and remember specific things through that.

For my documents and spreadsheet, I find Google to be helpful. It transfers from computer to tablet to phone or to another computer pretty easily. Best right now, it's free.

On the apps you mentioned, I think Tripadvisor is the best of the lot, though I only use it to determine what's in a given area (restaurants, hotels, etc). I do our reservations a different way, using a chain's website or app, or calling a place directly. We've had issues in the past, and now we are very careful on how we reserve a place.


Donna

[Mark Sedenquist]

The 'app' I use is me!!

Me too. I guess.

I personally know many of the app developers who have worked on trip planning apps and they have a bias that doesn't really match well with my approach.

Such a POV probably sounds a bit like a troglodyte -- I do use some apps, but I still prefer paper maps and making decisions on-the-fly when possible.

Mark

[mabartel]

Me too. I guess.

I personally know many of the app developers who have worked on trip planning apps and they have a bias that doesn't really match well with my approach.

Such a POV probably sounds a bit like a troglodyte -- I do use some apps, but I still prefer paper maps and making decisions on-the-fly when possible.

Mark

Yeah, I've got a few engineering friends who have spent a ton of time trying to build apps without market feedback haha. What's your approach that they miss? I'm wondering if that's the same issue I'm having and why none of the apps I've found have worked yet.

Mark

[Mark Sedenquist]

What's your approach that they miss?
Mark

Mark, for me, it's all about the source code. Or rather, how the accurate the information about an event | attraction | location might be that is used in the app.

Most apps use some version of scraping the Web -- with very little focus applied to the value of the underlying information.

On RTA, if we publish mini articles--or even longer articles--about attractions and events, one of the contributing writers personally went there, spent time at the location and verified information. That's an expensive and time-consuming process and the majority of the apps out there don't value personal observations. Or if they do, they don't weight human observations as high as they should.

I do think that with the advent of AI, that a skilled human operator can use AI to generate a trip guide that will closely mimic what a human roadtripper like AZ Buck, Donna, GLC, Midwest Michael, or me would generate. It is already happening and hundreds of articles about travel are being published that are using AI-generated content.

There is still a lot of GIGO at play in the AI metaverse -- but those bots are getting smarter every day.

If you haven't used ChatGPT yet -- ask it to give you a list of places to see on road trip between points A and B -- you have to be smart and sophisticated with the prompts -- but I think you might be amazed.

Mark

[Mark Sedenquist]

What is ironic about this this topic -- is that at this exact moment that I am writing this -- there is a new scraper bot diligently scraping content from this RTA site. What I can't identify is to whom the bot belongs.

If this is an AI-directed bot (and it could well be) an bot service like ChatGPT could, in theory, use the content herein and deliver information in manageable segments to end users in 1/1000 of the time it took us to create and publish that information.

I have been watching what the bot is "feeding on" in the last hour and it looks to be directed in some way.

I love new technology -- but sometimes it can be a bit worrisome.

Mark

[Ram4]

Places to eat on the road are at the top of my road trip experiences and I really miss the Roadfood Forum for that. I have been on a few pizza trips where I had pizza over 100 times at 75 different places. They would have loved my reviews. As an added bonus I walked over 10 miles a day doing part of the trips in New York each time which was another way to "travel" that I loved.

[Mark Sedenquist]

Places to eat on the road are at the top of my road trip experiences and I really miss the Roadfood Forum for that. I have been on a few pizza trips where I had pizza over 100 times at 75 different places.

Yes, we used to feature our favorite eating places -- some of the news one are now on the maps.

How many of these have you been to? RTA Eats

If you go to the Maps page and enter "dining" in they keyword search -- there are 145 places we've written about in the last couple of years. Click on the links for the mini-articles.

I like the idea of a Pizza Trip!

Mark