In addition to organizing all the specifics of your cruise vacation, TripIt searches sites like Google, Eventful, Flickr, Wikipedia, NOAA, and others to automatically add helpful details like daily weather, local maps, driving directions and travel guides.
Here's how TripIt.com works. First, go to TripIt.com and register your email address. Next, "create a trip", and then forward all email confirmations you have related to the trip to plans@tripit.com. Some of the items (i.e. air ticket) will be automatically added to your trip, others you can input manually using the "add plans" button. Since you can give access to the trip to others, they can either view or modify the plans, depending on the level of access you grant them. This tool will be especially useful for those traveling with others who are not in the same household.
I tested TripIt.com for an upcoming European cruise vacation and was well pleased. I added air tickets, transfers, hotels, tour tickets, cruise documents, and shore excursions--all in one place. I then shared it with my fellow travelers, and they added pieces of the trip they had arranged or planned. TripIt.com added the weather for each day of the cruise and maps to our pre-cruise hotel. Since our trip is just in a few weeks, it took a little work to organize all at one time, but would be really useful if used from the the day you first start receiving confirmations for your cruise vacation.
I also liked being able to send the page to emergency contacts back home so they could track our progress and know where we would be each day.
TripIt is a free service. Travelers can get started by visiting www.tripit.com to learn more, or by simply forwarding a travel confirmation email to plans@tripit.com.
