How To Organize Travel Plans: 2 Trip Proven Ways
You saved your money, chose your dream travel destination, and made numerous bookings. Yay! Crafting travel plans is fun. You get to choose the places you feel are a must-see and which ones are no
Should we spend more time at the museum or go to a show? And, most importantly, where are the best places to eat?
Making all these decisions can be overwhelming, but you’ve done it! Now, you have a virtual (or maybe a real) blizzard of paper and emails confirming all your plans.
This article may contain affiliate links. We may earn a commission if you use these links to buy products or services. Please see our disclosure policy for full details. Thanks.
How do you keep all your ideas and bookings neatly organized? You’ve got rail tickets or airline e-ticket numbers, hotel confirmations, site tours, and shows. Now you need to know how to organize travel plans, so you don’t lose or forget anything!
There are as many ways of solving the age-old problem of keeping your travel plans in check as there are people traveling our beautiful planet. But there are just two methods: You can go digital and put all your travel plans in an app or get organized with paper.
How To Organize Travel Plans The Digital Way
These days, there is an app for doing just about anything you want to do. Why use an app? Well, if you are like most people, your smartphone is probably never far from your side.
This means that an app makes perfect sense if you want to organize your trip plans. With an app on your phone, your travel plans are always right there with you.
There are dozens of apps to choose from. I don’t have an Android phone, but I’ve checked, and all are available for both iOS and Android.
These apps are handy travel planning tools. However, different apps have better functions depending on how you travel or organize your thoughts.
Tripit and TripCase
When I first started thinking of how to organize travel plans, I immediately thought of apps for my phone.
Two of the most popular apps for organizing travel plans are Tripit and Tripcase. Both apps have free and paid versions. I use TripIt and have only needed the free version so far, but I am tempted to upgrade to the paid version for an upcoming two-month-long trip.
In 2024, The Process Hacker wrote some blog posts on these apps and recommended TripIt over TripCase based on the higher level of integrations TripIt offers with other travel services.
When you give the app permission, it scans your inbox for travel confirmations from airlines, hotels, car rentals, and cruise lines and automatically adds them to the itinerary. You can also email your plans to the app, and the system will add them to your itinerary. When all else fails, you can make manual additions.
These apps sync across the web, so if you don’t have your phone, you still have easy access to your travel plans from any computer or tablet and are in business. Adding documents, like a boarding pass or digital passport, is as easy as uploading a PDF.
When you have your plans in one place, you can sync them with your calendar. Sharing your fantastic upcoming trip with a group of friends is easy, with many options, from email to text to LinkedIn and more.
Evernote
Picture one big inbox for your life… with great filters. That is the aim of Evernote: the app for note-taking, organizing, and task management.
You can “take notes” in many different ways: typed notes, handwritten notes, photos, sketches, PDFs, websites, audio clips, and videos. The list goes on and on. Why is Evernote a good way to organize travel plans? Simple, it is easy to use.
Note your travel credit cards, upload a PDF from one of your favorite guide books, like Lonely Planet, or drop in a link to Google Maps of your dream destination.
Evernote even has a template to get you started on your travel plans notebook.
With Evernote, you can sync your notes (travel plans) across devices. This makes it easy to keep track of all those bits and pieces of paper you’ve accumulated for your trip. While not intended for travel, it can sure be a big help!
Organizing Your Travel Plans Digitally Can Be The Best Way
All of these apps allow sharing with others. You can set up reminders and integrate your plans with most calendar apps. So, if you set up your travel plans well in the app, you will have a step-by-step guide and won’t miss a thing.
There are tons of travel apps I don’t discuss here. This is not a review of travel plan apps; I’m just talking about how to organize your travel plans. If I didn’t mention your favorite, please leave a note in the comments and let me know what the app is and why you think it is best.
The Paper-Persons Guide On How To Organize Travel Plans
My husband lives and dies by his travel binder. Every piece of paper and every email (yes, he will print them out) is in his binder in date order. This is how he organizes travel plans.
The first step in all of this is creating an itinerary. DH does this in Word, but I recently asked if moving it to Excel might be better. He is considering this. You can also use Google Docs or Google Sheets, or you can use whatever works best for you.
The itinerary is always the first page in his binder, right on top. He also prints out the itinerary in the full 8 -1/2 x 11 size and smaller 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 sizes. These all get laminated. Why, you ask?
We put copies of the itinerary in each of our bags. If a bag is lost, we hope the agent at the train station, airport, or cruise port will look through it and find the itinerary.
The idea behind having the itinerary in our bags is that it will allow the bag’s finder to either give us a call or send the bag along to the next destination. We haven’t had to test this theory yet (knock on wood), but we are hopeful it will work.
The Binder Method For Travel Plans Is Straight Forward
How do you organize travel plans? You start with the itinerary on top. Then, depending on the need, you add separators by date or city. Or, if you are like my DH, just by number. (Do you see where he has numbered each day on the sample itinerary?)
In each section, you slip in the confirmations from hotels and tickets you purchased in advance, such as Eurail tickets or a JapanRail Pass. You may want to include some plastic pockets to hold the items you should hole-punch.
Also kept in the binder are copies of other vital documents that may be needed while traveling, such as passports, driver’s licenses, and credit/debit cards (front and back). If you lose these items, they are stolen; having a copy will get you back on track faster.
If you read my post on How to Plan a Trip, you know I recommend scanning these documents and uploading them to a secure document center like Google Drive. But there is always a chance that you won’t have access to these digital copies.
Traveler Personal and Health Information
Suppose you or someone you are traveling with is taking prescription medications. In that case, you will want to have a copy of the prescription from the doctor. If you need to refill drugs while traveling, many countries won’t fill just from the prescription bottle’s information.
As a note of caution, you should keep all medications, over-the-counter or prescription, in their original bottles. You don’t want to guess what a pill is when the customs officer asks you.
And last but not least, a copy of your travel insurance policy. What, you don’t use travel insurance? You are one crazy, confident, risk-taker! But if you change your mind and want to ensure you can get home when the next pandemic strikes, check out what AXA Travel Insurance has to offer.
Travel Plan Organization – Paper vs. Digital – Why We Use Both!
Yay for Paper! But all that paper is bulky! Generally, when we are in transit, this big binder is in my husband’s backpack up in the overhead. My phone is on my person. (I may be addicted, but I love having my phone close at hand.)
If we need to check something, I can quickly look it up on the app on my phone. The same thing applies while we are out and about walking in the city or on public transportation. We don’t carry that binder with us, but we do have our phones.
I love having digital access to my plans. I always have my phone pretty close at hand, so this is my favorite way to organize travel plans. But there are instances where having paper backups is a terrific idea.
For example, in Amsterdam, my daughter was pickpocketed. Yup, they got her phone. She was “lucky” that she was carrying two phones, her work phone and her personal phone. Without a secondary way to access her travel plans, she probably would not have been on her flight home later that day.
Another time in Frankfurt, we were late for a connecting flight and did not have a boarding pass. But we did have our paper tickets. When we showed up at the security checkpoint, the paper ticket got us through. The gentleman behind us did not have a boarding pass or paper ticket and did not get through.
How do We organize travel plans?
At least for now, I work the app, and my husband hauls the binder.
Whichever method you choose, whether you are taking a road trip to a National Park or the adventure of a lifetime in a foreign country, it’s always a good idea to make sure your trips are well organized, and the plans are easily accessible. Know what the next thing is you need for your perfect trip? A good packing list!
