This is a great site – Tripit

I had never heard of Tripit, but saw on my Linked In updates that a couple of peopel I knew were using it, and beign curious I checked it out.

This is one of the most useful websites I have experienced. It basically allows you to enter in details of a trip, and it produces an itinerary that you can not just print, but share with family and friends.

You can also have it automatically place into your calendar all the major events.

But that isn’t what is so cool. It is the user interface.

Even entering in flights manually is easy. Just need the airline code and flight number and the date. It then looks up (for every airline in the world) the departure and arrival times, the type of aircraft, a seating plan for the aircraft, the terminal you leave from etc etc.

But even that is nothing compared to the e-mail interface. Just e-mail your airline tickets confirmation e-mail to their e-mail address, and they automatically add it to your trip schedule.

And you can do the same with your hotel booking confirmation. One e-mail, and they list your hotel, its address, when you can check in and check out, what room size you have.

Forward to Tripit a dozen of your confirmation e-mails, and bang your multi-week itinerary is put together.

It is also smart. It adjusts your check in time to take account of your flights. You can also add on things like rail or rental car bookings, tour packages etc. They have interfaces to over 500 tourism companies.

They also automatically generate local maps, including routes between airports and hotels etc.

This will save me heaps of time planning future trips. It just brings all your travel arrangements together in one place, and of course you can then access them on your iPhone or Blackberry also.