We confess. Before we started Relovate we were travelers, the high frequency kind. We traveled for business reasons, client meetings, pitches, trade shows and field days with representatives and suppliers. And so on. And, of course for personal reasons—like getting the kid back to school or seeing the nephew get married. And we travelled for leisure, though like most of you, not enough. Just like you our lives were, and remain, full of trips.
One of the tools we used then, was Tripit. It automatically builds itineraries for you, when you forward booking confirmation emails to an address it provides. Tripit tech parses the information and places it into an itinerary format. There are two versions, one is free, and the other is $49/year.
The gap, for us anyway, and we admit we're biased, is that Tripit is good, only after you have booked something, and it requires you to pay attention to your email inbox, so you remember to forward the emails. Then, you have to go to their site or application and be certain everything was added the way you hoped. That adds steps.
And that's the rub.
The tool works best AFTER you have completed a series of trip planning steps or phases. After you have explored, discovered, then searched and considered, compared options, budgeted your choices, and booked the travel items you need.
At Relovate, we decided it made more sense to simply put all of those needs into one convenient, time saving trip planning and booking application. In so doing, we eliminated the need for any post booking tools that promise to build itineraries for you in a separate application, you have to remember to use.
Now, with Relovate, your itinerary is automatically created each time you book an item. If you book items separately, in different planning sessions, or from your mobile when you’re waiting to pick up the kid, or before the next meeting starts, no problem. Relovate grabs all your booking details, contact information, locations and populates them into a simple itinerary. You can download it quickly, integrate into any calendar tool, and you’ve got everything you need for check in and reference at your fingertips.
So, when you book a flight, it automatically goes to your itinerary. Same with hotels, and car rentals and activities and tours and so on. And Relovate offers event creation, for example, "Lunch with Tracey" or "Team Photo Shoot." You get the idea. Any event created is automatically included in your itinerary, along with notes, dates and locations.
Relovate also lets you copy that itinerary-really, the complete trip with all your searches and considered items and prior bookings—so you can re-use that effort. This means if you travel to a few locations frequently, so you no longer need to start a fresh planning exercise each time. Just copy, change dates, and you’re ready to book. Relovate finds all the same travel options and updates the prices and availabilities. Here's a quick rundown on how we think Relovate stacks up vs. Tripit. Like we said, we're biased so read on with that qualifier.