December 15th, 2009
TripIt Pro Is Worth It
My alarm clock went off at 4:16 am this morning. It’s an ungodly hour to be awake. The sun hadn’t even risen and the house was freezing cold.Time for another business trip.I don’t call myself a road warrior. That label of distinction is something I reserve for the true travel die-hards who are on the road every week and have learned to travel so well that they practically levitate through security and float into their first class seats without so much as a wrinkle in their freshly pressed oxfords.
So even though I’m no road warrior, there are some standard things I do in order to make my trip easier that have now become my usual pattern. I check-in online and print out my boarding passes ahead of time. My new obsession is paperless boarding passes – save the trees while having one less physical object to worry about losing. Carrying on makes my journey less complicated. But truth is that I’d been feeling like there’s more I could do to make my travel more effortless, more streamlined.
My husband first invited me to TripIt so we could share vacation planning itineraries. I humored him (if there’s a word to describe someone who tries out new stuff before the “early adopters”, that’s him) and joined up. It was free, after all. I used it for vacation planning and to stay in the loop on his business travel. But I didn’t initially rely on it very heavily because at the time I didn’t travel more than once a year for business.Fast forward a couple of years and I’m making an average of one trip per month. TripIt started getting more useful because I could simply e-mail my itinerary sent from my travel agency to TripIt and they’d parse it, load it into their databases, and have it ready for me to review and share within minutes. When I downloaded the iPhone TripIt application and used it to tell me gate location information quicker than checking the airline sites, I was hooked.Like any addict, the simple plain vanilla functionality offered by TripIt eventually didn’t seem like enough. I wanted more. I needed more. That’s when I caved in and made the leap and paid for TripIt Pro.
It’s like having my own personal travel agent following me around (not in a stalkerish Verizon-techie way) and advising me about all I need to know to ensure my trip is as smooth and as hassle-free as possible. After loading in a trip itinerary, TripIt Pro monitors the status of the flights and let’s you know if there are any reschedules or changes that might affect your trip. You can check the status of your itinerary either on the web site or on your iPhone application which displays more information for TripIt Pro users (Blackberry application will be available soon). When it’s time to check-in ahead of time and print out boarding passes, it can be set up to text a reminder. This feature is very helpful for me because I sometimes get so busy at work that I don’t remember to check-in ahead of time until I’m packing later than night, and then I have to wrestle with my home printer to spit out my boarding passes.
Returning to this morning at 4:20 am when I was rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and checking my iPhone, I have to decidedly own that TripIt Pro unequivocally proved its worth. It was a simple text informing me that my flight (together with airline and flight number) was on time and that I should arrive at Terminal A, gate A37. I didn’t have to fiddle with my paperwork, call the airline, or even bother looking it up on my computer – three tasks that I would rather not tackle in my foggy-headed, caffeine-lacking, not-a-morning-person-but-trying-to-be-functional state.
On top of the text alerts, TripIt Pro also extends the networking functionality that is part of the free TripIt. In addition to connections with the likes of LinkedIn and Twitter, the standard TripIt also offers you the ability to connect with other users and updates you on when they are traveling. It you have TripIt Pro, you can specify certain users to be part of your Inner Circle. It’s a short cut for ensuring that family and close friends can have access to your information without you having to specifically grant it to them for each itinerary.
For anyone who travels frequently and wants to further simplify her logistics, I highly recommend forking over the $69 per year to upgrade from TripIt to TripIt Pro. For those who aren’t true believers after this above testimony, just try the regular TripIt and see if you get hooked. I wish you happy, safe, and hassle-free travels!
