TripIt Blog

TripIt Wins Across the Pond: Telegraph Travel Awards

By Lisa Hutt, VP of Marketing, Concur EMEA

Each year, the world’s most renowned travel brands flock to The Telegraph Travel Awards annual ceremony in the hope of winning one of the coveted awards. A new category of "Favourite Travel App" was introduced this year, and we were delighted to hear that TripIt had bubbled up top alongside Trainline.com and Skype in this category.  

This year, the ceremony was held at the newly opened Renaissance St. Pancras Hotel, originally built in 1873 and hailed as London’s most romantic building. The ceremony was filled with familiar faces, well known editors and presenters like Judith Chalmers OBE. 

Shortly into the proceedings the highly respected travel journalist Graham Boynton, comedian and impersonator, Rory Bremner and actress and founder of the children’s charity Starlight, Emma Samms took to the stage to present the awards.

TripIt was voted Favourite Travel App and we were thrilled and honoured to join other category winners like Virgin Holidays, Eurostar, Emirates and Tripadvisor on stage to accept the award. 

This is a tremendous accolade considering that the awards are in their ninth year and attract over 23,000 voters. 

We’d like to thank everyone that voted!

 

 

TripIt’s Android app has a fresh new face

Today, we unveiled a facelift for our Android app, designed to make it even easier for you to navigate between itineraries and connections, and view reward program points for TripIt Pro users. 

Don’t like ads? Also available is an ad-free version of the app for $3.99.

And for all the stats junkies, we also discovered some interesting things about those of you who use our Android app. Take a look at the trends below, and let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

Android Use Peaks Among Millennials

• A higher percentage of TripIt’s Android users are in their late twenties (25-29) and early thirties (30-34) than any other smartphone group.
• Among iPhone and BlackBerry users, the largest percentages are in their late thirties (35-39) and early forties (40-44).

On the Road Again? Not Necessarily

• TripIt’s Android users travel less frequently for business than other smartphone users.
  • 21 percent of Android users travel 15 or more times per year for business, compared to 36 percent of BlackBerry users and 23 percent of iPhone users.
• Android users take less leisure trips per year than iPhone users.
  • A higher percentage of Android users take 1-3 leisure trips per year than iPhone users; meanwhile, a higher percentage of iPhone users take four or more leisure trips per year than Android users.

Favorite Travel Apps

• Beyond TripIt, other popular travel apps for Android users are: Google Maps, Yelp and TripAdvisor.

What other apps do you use while traveling?

 

Destination: Wedding Week!

There's something in the air at TripIt. It's true love - for travel - and we're in it for the long haul. Starting today, we're ringing in a week of wedding news, tips and trends about the marriage of travel + tying the knot.

Where in the World are Weddings? New Data Visualization

If you find yourself globetrotting to see other travel-lovers get hitched, you're not alone. Take a look at "Where in the World are Weddings?," a new data visualization that captures TripIt wedding travel during summer 2011.  

Green = Up to 500 miles traveled / Yellow = 500 - 2,000 miles traveled / Red = 2,000+ miles traveled

What interesting trends do you spot? (Get the embed code here.)

Who Takes the Cake? Labor Day Wedding Travel

With Labor Day upon us, we revealed the top destinations for the long weekend, and explored the holiday wedding debate. Turns out, 60% of travelers polled on Facebook think it's a bad idea. Ouch!

Get the full scoop here: TripIt Itineraries Reveal Labor Day is the Most Popular Weekend for Wedding Travel.

Grab the embed code here.

We also asked wedding planner Lucy Williams, of Gallery Events in Dallas, why Labor Day is the most popular weekend to tie the knot between April and August.

• Giving guests a 3-day weekend means a bigger celebration with less worries about work the next day or losing a day of their weekend to travel or attend your wedding.
• Typically vendors are a little more generous with their rates on a holiday - especially when it's not a religious holiday or big money-making weekend for them.
• We particularly love playing up the whole "no white after Labor Day" rule. Think Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries and their black or white only dress code. Make it fun and embrace the day.

- Lucy Williams

Up next: meet "destination wedding" couple David and Elizabeth, and learn about planning or attending nuptials abroad.

 

5 Ways Travelers Are Front and Center in Innovation

It’s an exciting time to be a traveler. Coming from a history of lugging manila folders and paper receipts with me on the road, I know other travelers are just as amped as I am that there are smarter and easier digital alternatives.

As those of us in the travel industry pow-wow in Denver for the annual Global Business Travel Association convention to discuss future innovation, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what’s happening right now: 

1) Proliferation of smartphones: We recently shared that 96% of TripIt users carry at least one smartphone. It’s no wonder. Travelers can now research, book, organize, and expense their trips all from the palm of their hand. 

2) What about tablets? We’ve only scratched the surface as an industry (a much larger surface, at that). A cool mapping feature on TripIt’s new iPad app was just the beginning. If restaurant patrons can order from a menu through the popular device, imagine what the airlines could do with passengers. 

3) Apps FTW: Some argue that apps are so 2007, but I disagree. Everyday there’s a round-up of “Favorite Apps for Travel” or “Best Travel Apps for Business.” And it’s not just hotels or travel that make the cut; we’re seeing apps like Yelp and FoodSpotting make the list too. 

4) Dynamic data: It's TripIt’s mission to reduce the number of places where you have to enter or keep track of travel details. We have some exciting announcements coming on this front, but it’s what ultimately drove Concur and TripIt to leverage itineraries for easier expense reporting this summer. 

5) Personalized travel: The more we know (and remember) about your preferences as a traveler, the better and more personalized the experience can be. Tell us where and when you’re going, and we’ll help you remember when to check in and where to pick up your bags. The more you put in, the more you get out. 

The travel industry will continue to evolve; but for now, my goal is to help get the latest innovations into the hands of travelers everywhere. Chances are, there’s an easier and faster way than what you’re doing now.

As seen on the Concur Insights Blog.

Who are You? TripIt Reveals Portrait of a 21st Century Traveler

Do you ever wonder what your fellow TripIt users look like? Well, today we announced the results of a survey that more than 3,000 of you participated in. Thanks to you, we have a pretty good idea what a 21st century traveler looks like. 

If this doesn’t ring a bell, here’s a little background: we asked survey participants about preferred gadgets, traveling for business vs. pleasure, and favorite pastimes. 

What does this mean for you? Well, if you’re a TripIt traveler, chances are you…

• Own at least one smartphone (most likely Apple or Android)
• Travel twice as often for business as pleasure; but when do you travel for fun, it’s go big or go home!
• Keep family and colleagues informed of travel plans
• Spend your down time on culinary pursuits and dine out at least 4-8 times per month

Did you catch that last one? There’s a whole population of foodies in the TripIt community. Think of the potluck possibilities…

This is just a sample of the interesting tidbits we discovered about modern day frequent travelers, like you. Check out more information here: http://bit.ly/qwmdNz.

TripIt and Concur Make Expensing Travel Easier

I'm pleased to share we've reached the next mile marker in TripIt and Concur's journey together. As you may remember from previous posts in January and February, we’ve been hard at work integrating the best of both worlds to make life easier for travelers everywhere.

If your company is one of the thousands of global businesses using Concur to book travel (like Salesforce, Constellation Brands, or Cinemark), you may have noticed the option to connect TripIt to your Concur account. Creating an itinerary is even more automagical than before.

Today, we’re taking it a step further, making it possible for companies to automate Concur expense reports from TripIt Pro itineraries – no matter where you book. It’s one less step for you to get reimbursed, and helps fill the gaps for your employer, making expense reporting painless for everyone involved. Full details available here.

Also, companies who sign up for Concur Breeze can get all the benefits of TripIt Pro for their small business in one powerful package, including the ability to automate expense reports. The best part is that travelers can continue to book travel as they always have. Full details available here.

Both integrated solutions make the tedious process of expensing your travel a whole lot easier. And let’s be honest, we could all use a little extra time in our day. 

There's much more to come! Meanwhile, everyone can look forward to more TripIt mobile updates and new features – all designed to solve the problems you face as a traveler, so you don’t have to. 

TripIt for iPad: No More Blur

By Hootan Mahallati, Mobile Product Manager for TripIt

You know what's not cool? Blurry iPad apps. You camp out on the sidewalk for eight days to buy an iPad, ecstatically search iTunes for a dedicated iPad version of your favorite iPhone app, and.....your world is shattered; all you see is the iPhone app in the middle of the big, black canvas. Yes, you can enlarge the app to full-screen, but then all you get is maddening blurriness. You turn red with rage, and all of a sudden, you wonder how you can go on.

As a few of you have reminded us with recent releases of the TripIt iPhone app, we've been guilty of having a blurry app. Well, we here at TripIt really do listen to what you say, and today we're delighted to present to you our brand new TripIt iPad app! 

Now before you call Mom and weep uncontrollably with joy as you deliver this historic bit of news, let's have a quick heart-to-heart: this is the first in a series of upcoming releases that will see our iPad app catch up with our other apps in terms of functionality. Rather than wait to give you the big kahuna later on in the year, we thought we'd get this first version in your hands and hear what you think as we prepare the enhancements. Before you know it, a new version will be available with several enhancements, and we plan on keeping them coming. Cool?

With that out of the way, let's talk about the shiny new app you can use right now.

When you start up the app, you'll see a mix of the familiar and the new. On the left-hand side, you'll find the trusty, logical list of your trips that you can quickly scan. Click within a trip though, and a glorious detail page with a crisp, new design greets you. Given the additional space afforded by the iPad, you can accomplish most of your tasks, like sharing your trip or launching directions to an address, with just a few clicks on the details page. 

But wait, there's more! What would a TripIt for iPad app be without huge maps? Cue the music: glance over to the top of the page and you'll see a "Maps" button. Go ahead, click it. What you'll see is a map displaying all of your trip plans with stylized pins that you can tap for a quick preview of specific points in your itinerary. While the default view zooms out just enough to show you your entire itinerary, you can swipe and pinch to pan across and zoom in for more detail.

Our iPad app is a universal binary, which is geek-speak for two birds, one stone. In practical terms, this means that if you already have v2.5 of our iPhone app installed on your iPhone and later sync your iPad with iTunes, each device will launch the app designed for it. The reverse is true as well. In summary, install TripIt once wherever you want and the rest is taken care of.

You can purchase the app for free, or if you're the type of person who fast forwards your DVR through commercials, we have an ad-free option for you too in the paid section.

We are all very excited about our first iPad app and hope that you are too. Thank you for your patience as we roll out lots more very soon. As always, please share the joy by tweeting, Facebook-ing, and sending telegrams to your friends. Of course, keep those comments coming!

Oh, and those of you who gave us four stars in iTunes and promised a fifth if we gave you an iPad app, we're watching! 

4 Tips to Reduce Your Travel Carbon Footprint

Scott Bulua is our first guest blogger and the creator of TripCarbon, a service that integrates with TripIt to show travelers the environmental impact from their travels. In the future, we’ll feature additional partners and developers on the TripIt blog.

As Earth Month winds down, here are four simple steps travelers can take to become more aware of their carbon footprint and make earth-friendly travel decisions all year-long:

1. Offset your personal travel: TripCarbon gives you an estimate of the CO2 you're emitting from your flights, hotels, and rental cars. It even includes the full methodology behind the number it provides. You can use that number to purchase offsets, which will mitigate your environmental impact. Native Energy, Terrapass, and Brighter Planet are some good outlets for purchasing high quality offsets.

2. Create a personal or corporate CO2 target for your travel: Depending on your travel needs, create a monthly or quarterly cap for your travel's CO2 emissions, and commit to staying under. A good way to do this is to take the average monthly travel from the previous 3 or 6 months, and reduce that by 25 percent. Set personal penalties for exceeding your target, like riding your bike to work instead of driving, taking public transportation instead of a cab on your next business trip, or making a donation to your favorite environmental charity.

3. Convince your employer to offset or reduce your travel: Show your employer how much carbon you're using, and suggest ways to minimize or offset travel. Many companies involve their clients in the discussion about environmental impact, and split the costs of purchasing offsets.

4. Justify more direct routes: Does your travel department often suggest layovers to save money? Show them the reduced carbon impact of direct travel, and spend less time on planes.

How it works: TripCarbon is powered by BrighterPlanet’s CM1 carbon intelligence web service. Brighter Planet's energy models use standards-certified calculations to analyze your environmental impact by combining the itinerary data from TripIt with government data from agencies like FAA and BTS. Unlike many carbon calculators, they're able to get higher-resolution picture of your footprint by accounting for stuff that's often overlooked -- for instance, their flight calculations measure variables like the efficiency of your particular aircraft model and variations in cargo and passenger loads by route. As it turns out, these factors can mean that seemingly identical itineraries between the same airports have markedly different footprints.

For TripIt users: One of the great features of TripIt is its openness, and its Developer API, which allows engineers to create add-ons which complement the core functionality TripIt provides. I recently developed TripCarbon as an add-on, which calculates the carbon impact of your TripIt itinerary and displays this data on the TripIt website and smartphone app. 

To get started, visit http://www.tripcarbon.com and use your TripIt login to grant access to TripCarbon. Shortly, you’ll see a summary of all your trips and the total carbon footprint. You'll also be able to view this information on tripit.com, and on your TripIt smartphone app. Next, review the tips above to reduce your impact!

About Scott: Scott’s an old hand at both climate and computers, having led the Climate Campaign at Middlebury College —the foundation for the globally successful 350.org campaign—and having served as a developer and Product Manager for EchoDitto, GOOD, and Causes.com.

 

Reward the unsung travel hero in your office with a $500 SpaFinder Gift Certificate

 

To celebrate Administrative Professionals Week (April 25-29, 2011) in the United States, we’re giving you the chance to reward the unsung travel hero in your office.

You know the one we’re talking about. The one who books your travel arrangements; has the patience of a saint each time your plans change; gets you to the meeting on time. The one who has your back when flights are cancelled, drivers don’t show up or you can’t find the hotel. The one you always forget to thank enough.

Well here’s your chance to say thank you in a big way!

To nominate your unsung hero to win a $500 SpaFinder gift certificate as well as a one-year subscription to TripIt for Business, tell us about your hero in 100 words or less. Our judging panel, made up of TripIt for Business employees, will be looking for inspiration, originality, humor and irreverence.

How to enter:

1. Be a member of TripIt.com or visit www.tripit.com to register for free.
2. Tell us why your hero should be our hero in 100 words or less by posting a comment to this blog post.

Prize Details: 

Five finalists will receive a one-year subscription to TripIt for Business valued at $348. One grand-prize winner selected from the five finalists will also receive a $500 SpaFinder gift certificate.

Start and end dates:

You have from April 13 – April 22, 2011 to nominate your office hero.

To see more details: Read full contest rules.

Good luck!

 

TripIt for Business, a new product for small and medium-sized businesses, is the smartest way to plan and organize office travel. It allows travel coordinators to create itineraries for travelers in an instant, organize all travelers on a convenient dashboard and easily keep travelers in the know and on the go.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Promotion open only to residents of the 50 United States and District of Columbia who are at least 18 (or the age of majority in entrant's state of residence). Promotion starts 12:01 AM PT on 4/13/2011 and ends 11:59 PM PT on 4/22/2011. To enter, follow the directions in Section 7 of the Official Rules ("Rules") to submit your online entry message (100 words or less) about your unsung travel hero. Grand Prize: (1 winner): one $500 SpaFinder gift certificate. Finalist Prizes (5 winners): 12-month subscription to online "TripIt for Business" service for each winner's current place of employment (approx. retail value: $348 per subscription).  Winners will be selected by a panel of judges comprised of Concur Technologies employees. Entries will be judged on the following criteria: the most apt, original, and interesting entry message; the most inspirational entry message in relation to the unsung travel hero theme. Odds of winning depend on number and quality of eligible entries received. Void where prohibited. Promotion subject to Rules, so see Rules for full details. Sponsor: Concur Technologies, Inc., 500 Treat Ave., Suite 100, San Francisco, CA 94110.

 

 

How Many Third Party Apps Have You Synced with TripIt?

It’s been a busy couple of months here at TripIt, and we don’t just mean in our office.  We now have more than 850 developers and development companies building apps that sync with TripIt!

Each of these apps offers a little something extra for your next trip, from personalized news and travel recommendations, to alerts that will tell you when someone you know is at the airport.

Below, we have compiled a list of some of the latest apps to sync with TripIt, and as always, you can browse a longer list of third party apps on our Apps page. New apps are being added all the time, so we encourage you to check out the Apps page every so often.  

Better yet, if you are a developer and have a great idea for a product that solves a travel problem, why not build your own app today?

 Airside Express

Never fumble at security or the gate again--put your mobile boarding pass on your smartphone!

To get started, download the Airside Express App, import your trips directly from TripIt inside the app, then automatically retrieve and store your boarding pass on your phone. 

Airside Express currently works with the following airlines:  American Airlines, United Airlines, Continental Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and Delta Air Lines.

Planely

See who else Is flying with you. This service is particularly popular for people going to conferences. You can sync Planely with TripIt a single time, then you will receive an alert whenever someone else on the service is on your flight or in your airport.  

To get started, create your free Planely account, then sync with TripIt from the settings page.

Tripline

Easily make shareable, animated trips with photos, music, links, and stories.  Once you connect your Tripline account with TripIt, you can import your Triplit trips into Tripline, which will automatically create a travel map for this trip, equipped with travel dates and places. It’s a great way to share your trips with friends, or relive them later.

To get started, create your free Tripline account, then connect your TripIt account on their settings page.

Memolane

Display your past trips on a beautiful social timeline that also shows your activity on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and other social services. Travel is a key part of life, and Memolane has done a great job of tying it in with the rest of your perhaps less exotic lifestream.

To get started, create your free Memolane account, then connect your TripIt account by going to their services page.

TripCarbon

Automatically calculate your Carbon offsets when traveling.  TripCarbon pulls in your flight, hotel, and car rental details, and then uses some nifty calculations to calculate your combined Carbon offset total, and then sends this information back into your itinerary automatically. For the stats junkie in all of us, you can also view how they made their calculations.  I’m using it on a trip to Greece and feeling a little guilty. I think I’ll go plant a tree – or seven.

To get started, visit TripCarbon.com.

FlexTrip

Broadcast your travel plans and automatically retrieve travel deals and things to do when you’re traveling. Flextrip accesses a database of local deals and connects these offers with your upcoming destinations.

To get started, create your account at flextrip.com, then connect your TripIt account to FlexTrip on their trips page.

News360 (iPad App)

 Aggregate thousands of news sources for coverage from all points of view, and then get personalized news recommendations based on your future destinations.

To get started, download the app from iTunes, then sync with TripIt by holding your iPad vertically and then going to the Settings link.

To view press release: TripIt’s Open Platform Now Powers 330+ Travel Related Applications