Digital Wall Planner for Travels

What a great idea. I've bookmarked this so I can try this out. Thank you.

CW, I like this idea! I look forward to seeing more information on this. Just out of curiosity, have you checked AI for ideas?

Mardee, good thinking! And funny given the discussions about AI for travel planning ;-)

My initial AI search led me to YearGlance. So now, I did an actual ChatGPT query and found "DashCal" which I'm about to try.

Notes on DashCal as a Travel Wall Planner

Cost: free (perhaps there is a paid version, I didn't look)
Setup: super simple, took me 30 seconds to get it running by connecting to the Gmail account that includes my travel calendar
Result: negative; useful for a weekly view; so far, I haven't found a yearly planner view

Disclaimer - I have no financial interest in DashCal. My only relationship to it is as an end user. My only interest in it is as a travel tool.

CW, this may not be what you're looking for, and I could be way off target here, but what about creating a new calendar in Google just for this purpose? You could label it "Travel" and then put all your travel events in it.

You wouldn't be able to get a yearly view with events, but you could do it month by month, and just scroll along as needed when you want to look at it. And you could sync your Trip-it events with your new Travel Calendar as opposed to your regular one, so you'd get all your travel events in there. I think you can do that using a calendar feed. And of course, you have plenty of colors to work with. 😊

Hey Mardee, thanks for putting some thought into this.

I don't enter any of my travel events (flights, hotels, activity reservations) directly into my Google Calendar. I send them all through TripIt. The TripIt synch with Google Calendar sends them to their own layer, which I can toggle on and off, just like other Google Calendars. So, by toggling everything else off, I see only my travel events.

This allows me to see a monthly view of only my travel events. I can click through from month to month, but it doesn't give me a scrollable view of the months. I was hoping to replicate my physical wall planner view in a digital format, where I can see it all at once, without clicking. The Yearly Google Calendar allows me to see all the months, but doesn't show any events.

The Monthly view in the YearGlance app comes close; it's not too bad actually. I'm seeing a scrollable calendar of the months, showing my TripNames from TripIt for the duration of each trip.

This may just be a case where old school - sheets of paper with sticky notes - has its advantages!

I am following this because I use a slightly unwieldy process of creating a yearly spreadsheet. Each year I have to copy a previous year at a glance, reformat for days of the week for each month - about an hour.

Then as I plan out my trips (on a different sheet), I color code my days on the yearly calendar and add country and city where I will be laying my head each night in text for that date (this step is mainly for the benefit of people who want to stay up with where I am while I am gone). In a Notes line at the bottom of each month, I have started adding in “days in Schengen” for the month as an added way to keep an eye on that.

It is far from streamlined but does give me the full year at a glance from anywhere. So it’s not an answer to what you want - just an acknowledgment that I felt the same need!

CW, I'm glad that YearGlance is working out for you. I was checking it out before and it does look like a nice program. I don't travel as much as you and TTMs so I probably don't need anything like that, but that doesn't mean it's not fun to work on. 😂

TTM, I do love a good spreadsheet! That sounds like it works well. I do something sort of similar with all my auto payments. They're in a spreadsheet so I can keep track of them and know what's coming out of my checking account when and from where and so on. But it's more fun to plan trips than credit card payments. 🙄

As I'm pondering this, two solutions have come to mind to replicate my colorful sticky notes version.

Take a photo - instant online access! Too late for this month away, but a simple (if static) option for next time.

Make another one - not automated, but I have lots of time on my hands!

Mardee, you would be proud! I tried a completely different AI query to look for an "app to arrange sticky notes on a calendar."

Monthlys (Apple only) - specifically designed as a sticky note calendar
Trello (I recall using this in some past job) - a calendar view allows you to arrange sticky notes by date
Notion - the "ultimate customizable planner" (sounds like more than I need)

I am currently trying Post It from 3M, which seems to be the digital equivalent of buying a colorful pack of Post Its at the office supply store and arranging them on a board. Not automated, but easy, colorful and fun! And, if you create a free login, it can synch across devices.

I think a combination of YearGlance and PostIt will work.

YearGlance synchs with Google Calendar and shows me a scrollable view with events from my TripIt calendar spanning the exact dates of each trip.

PostIt (3M app) gives me a colorful daydreaming view, which I'm arranging into "Groups" by year. For now, I'm adding 12 stickies to each Year and "hand writing" the destination and dates of each trip. The stickies can easily be re-arranged as life (and whimsy) direct. Not automated, but it's digital and does synch across devices.

TexasTravelMom, you are so organized with your spreadsheets! I'm interested to see how you've added features.

I've got my Travel Wall Calendar set up in PostIt, with "groups" for 2026 and 2027. The process is a near digital replication of hand writing post it notes to stick on a sheet of paper. In other words, zero automation. I'm using different color stickies for solo trips, tours and visiting family. And the best part is the visibility of light yellow stickies, representing timeslots available to plan another trip!

I love all of your ideas! Way to go on the AI query. I've been using it so much lately. In fact, I just got a monthly subscription to Claude, which is my favorites right now. It's really helping me with Iceland and Norway, and any other little thing that pops up. I'll probably cancel it once the trip is over or maybe right before I go, but it's nice to have the extra resources right now.

Notion is a really good program. I used it years ago when I first started learning German and had a whole thing built up there, but it's so time-consuming and there's a big learning curve. I don't even remember most of it, so I would probably have to start from scratch and I just don't have the energy.

I like the digital Post-it—who knew there was such a thing? That looks great!

Well, I am sure interested in hearing what works for you. My spreadsheets don’t have any added features and don’t sync with anything - I use TripIt, but am reluctant to sync my Google Calendar with anything - it gets a bit obnoxious in its desire to read my email and put things on my calendar…..

Plus, what I use this for is the dreaming stages, not the nitty-gritty planning. All the details are elsewhere.

it gets a bit obnoxious in its desire to read my email and put things on my calendar…..

I don't know if this solves the problem, but you can turn the TripIt calendar off in Google Calendars. It's a separate "layer" that you can choose to display or not.

But that doesn't stop TripIt from picking up emails that you wish it wouldn't. I don't let TripIt synch with my email; I push (via email) to TripIt only those reservations that I want it to have. But that's an extra step that I have to remember.

Yes, that’s what I do with TripIt. And it’s a good check for me - it recently helped me discover I had accidentally booked one less night than I needed.

No, it’s Google Calendar that irritates me, if I let it try to put things on my calendar from my email.

You can also export the bookings from TripIt to Google in the form of a static calendar. That's what I did.

Interesting, Mardee, does that give you an annual view? Perhaps by selecting a date range?

I'm so impressed and fascinated to learn the different ways people plan their trips.

I've never considered a wall planner or post-it notes. I use Wanderlog just to keep track of the things I've definitely scheduled, and I use Excel to lay out options and help in the actual planning.

We all love travel, but we all plan differently and travel differently. How great is that!

CW, no, it basically just looks the same as it does if you sync all the information. The only difference is that my entries don't get updated because it's not synced to it. What's in there now stays in there unless I manually change it.

However, I went back to Gemini and asked it for some ideas on how I could open up Google Calendar's year view but still see events. It gave me a few options, and they all look pretty good.

Kalnext: A dedicated web application that syncs with your Google Calendar to display a true 12-month overview, allowing you to view event names, colors, and times while managing your schedule directly.

visual-planner: A highly popular, free, open-source web app that connects to your Google Calendar via API to render a custom full-year planner with readable event labels.

DayMark: Year Events Calendar: A Chrome extension that gives you a 12-month overview of your entire year and highlights custom-colored events, holidays, and vacations right in your browser.

I briefly checked them out, and they all look viable. Visual planner is certainly the easiest one to do, but Kalnext looks good as well. I didn't try DayMark, which is a Chrome extension, but I probably will.

Lane, I use Wanderlog as well and have been really focusing on my itinerary with that, but I use OneNote (thanks to CW) for my document repository and to keep all the information about bookings and scheduling and so on in there. I do use Excel a lot, mostly for things like packing lists, travel costs, et cetera.

I will say that the more I use Wanderlog, the more I embrace it. I now go through and change all the photos to ones that I like better. I have added a ton of notes in there that I don't want to get buried in the description of the places I am visiting, so I put them in a separate note right underneath. With Iceland, the optimizer feature really came in handy for figuring out which places to go in what order. I could have done it on Google Maps myself, but this is a lot quicker and I get the same result.

Mardee, I had looked at Visual Planner, but couldn't figure it out. It seems it was too simple for me to figure it out ;-) I had completely missed that you just click on the grid in the upper left to see the calendar.

I like that you don't have to set up an account with Visual Planner, whereas you do with YearGlance.

A few tech notes on Visual Planner:
Setting "light mode" (click on crescent moon) was key. Increasing the % Font Scale and % Scale of multi-day events made a huge difference in readability. It took me a bit of fiddling to turn off "timed events," so as not to display flights. I wasn't saving the settings correctly. My hotels are also timed events because of the way TripIt stores them - from checkin time to checkout time. For anyone who creates their hotels as multi-day events directly in their calendar, their hotels would display in Visual Planner.

Between YearGlance and Visual Planner, now that I've figured out how easy Visual Planner actually is, I'm giving a slight advantage to Visual Planner because it doesn't require that you create an account, whereas YearGlance does.

YearGlance: I may be remembering that you can use YearGlance without creating an account, I'd have to go back and confirm. I'm logged in on their 14 day free trial. After that, I'll learn whether I'm using any of the paid customizations.

CW, you know, with Visual Planner, if you created a separate Google account, with a new Calendar and Gmail address, and used that for all your travel events, it would mean a lot less clutter in VP when you open it, since it would just show the travel entries. That would also solve the problem of giving TripIt access to your main Gmail/Google account. You could set up TripIt to either sync with the second email, which would just give it access to the travel events, or just continue pushing it like you're doing now, but push it to a different email.

Or (and this one would probably be easier) you could just create a new calendar for your original Google account with only travel events, and then when you go into Visual Planner, make sure that that is the only one checked, and it will just show the travel events.

I don't know, it may not be worth it (for either one), but it was just a thought.

I have Tripit Pro and synch it with Google Calendar.

But I wanted a planning calendar that didn't synch. I've found two that are very similar:

Good Calendar

and

My Calendar.

I've been able to do some customization with the non-paid versions. They work for me.

I use these calendars for planning and then once booked, I change the color so I know something is booked and then transfer it to Tripit.

I use Android.

Frank II, thanks for the names of your tools. I'll check them out.

Perhaps you would like to join us for the Tech Talk this Saturday:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/travel-meetings/tech-for-travel-talk-sat-jun-13-digital-wall-planners-for-travel-online

Everyone is welcome!

Thanks for the invite. I'm currently in Rick Steves' favorite continent and have plans that evening. (It will be evening here.)

Travel is the best reason to miss a travel meeting!!

For those who may be considering Digital Wall Planners, I'm adding a few thoughts.

What are Digital Wall Planners good for?
I use my non-digital Wall Planner, with colorful Post-It notes, to see - at the highest level - the trips I have planned this year and the next year or even two. I do not use it for details of my trip - flights, hotels, activities, dates or times. When I began researching a digital version, to take with me when I am on the road, I was looking for something to replace that level of non-detail.

The digital tools I have researched are best used to give a high level view of your trips, eliminating all the details so that you can see the big picture. I use my wall planner to answer questions such as:

Do I have a trip planned in April?
When could I fit in a trip to Madrid?
How many trips do I have planned for this year / next year?

What are Digital Wall Planners NOT good for?
The tools I have researched as Digital Wall Planners are NOT good for tracking the details of your trip. They are not good for planning or tracking your itinerary.

At best, they might answer the question "what are the dates of my trip to Italy?"
They are not intended to answer questions such as "what hotel am I staying in?" or "what time is my food tour?"

My goal for researching a Digital Wall Planner was to find a tool that would hide all those details so that I can see the big picture.

Which tools could I use for planning the details?
For detailed itinerary planning, other digital tools are better - TripIt, Wanderlog, spreadsheets, OneNote, many others. We held a Tech for Travel Session on some of those tools 2 years ago. I would be happy to host another sesssion in the future, if there is interest.

PostIt App - available for Android, and (I've read) for iPhone

Setup: Download the PostIt app from 3M on your cellphone or tablet (not available on Windows laptop)

Pre-requisites: does not require a Google Calendar and will not synch with your Google Calendar.

Getting Started: you can begin without creating an account; if you will want to synch across devices (e.g., phone and tablet) then you will need to create a free account and log in to begin your project

It's pretty easy to add colorful Post-It notes and either type or draw with your finger on a touch screen. You can group post-its and name the groups.

My example: I've created a "group" for my 2026 travels and a 2nd group for my 2027 travels. I added 12 PostIt notes to each group and added the name of my trip, if any, for that month. No dates, no details, no flights, no hotels. Just the trips at the highest level.

It doesn't synch with anything. The advantage is that it is easy and colorful and fun to look at. Like my physical travel planner on my wall at home.

I have been a paper and pencil planner for years. I'm now trying to move into digital.

But I do things a little differently. I print out a blank monthly calendar with just the dates printed as well as major holidays. (Each date is in a square.) You get get the calendar I use at:

https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/create.html?tpl=3

I print one month per page and use Design 3.

I then figure out my itinerary and write the city I will be in at the bottom of each date square. Once I book the hotel for that stay, I circle the city. Circled information means its been booked. As an example, let's say want to fly from London to Prague on the 5th. On that day on the calendar I'll print LHR-PRG. Once it's booked, I circle it.

I then add flights, trains, tours, etc to each date. Circling when booked.

When things get booked and I receive the confirmation email. I forward it to Tripit Pro. I use Tripit not for planning but as a schedule while traveling with all the travel information I need.

The paper calendar is just for planning. I'm now transferring this procedure to an online calendar and using color coding for different events like city, air, train, etc. Once those are booked, I change their color to one I've chosed to mean "booked."

This is not used for research as to what to do. It is strictly for logistics, transportation, lodging, and possible daily tours.

One other thing I do is look up the predicted temperatures for those days and write them down as well in the corner of the square. Depending on the time of year, I might also put down sunrise and sunset times.

I've always done this in pencil because I'm constantly making changes even after I've left for the trip.

Thanks, Frank II!! This is such a great example of how to transition from paper in pencil into using some digital tools.

When things get booked and I receive the confirmation email. I forward it to Tripit Pro. I use Tripit not for planning but as a schedule while traveling with all the travel information I need.

This is such a great use case for how to use TripIt, or TripIt Pro. I use it in a similar fashion, with my all-digital planning.

What is TripIt good for?
TripIt is great for saving you from typing in the details of your trip, by importing the details from your confirmation emails for flights, hotels and activities. The result is a detailed timeline, not in a calendar format.

If you set up the synch, it will display (not edit) your imported itinerary items in Google Calendar.

TripIt (and the resulting display on Google Calendar, if you choose to synch) can answer the detailed questions that are found in your confirmation emails:

What time is my flight?
Do I have a hotel reservation in Paris for my dates?
Which date is my food tour and what time does it start?

What is TripIt NOT good for?
TripIt is not great for planning your itinerary, but rather for displaying it, either in TripIt or on your Google Calendar.
TripIt does not have an integration with Google Maps, so you can't see the route of your day of activities. (That is a strength of Wanderlog.)

How does TripIt Work with Digital Wall Planners
Digital Wall Planners display information that is already in your Google Calendar.
Digital Wall Planners do not read your confirmation emails and do not create a trip timeline.
Digital Wall Planners do not write anything to your Google Calendar, they only read it.

So, a scenario for a traveler who uses Google Calendar and TripIt and a Digital Wall Planner might be:

Book your flight and hotels
Forward your flight and hotel confirmations to TripIt (if you have the auto-synch set up with email, this step is not required)
View your trip details in your Google Calendar as you always have.

Use the Digital Wall Planner to view multiple trips across the months/years at a high level view.

If you only plan a small number of trips at a time, the Digital Wall Planner might not seem useful. Google Calendar might be all that you need.

Thanks for adding in your process (and calendar link), Frank II. I am going to think through that for my own process.

If you only plan a small number of trips at a time, the Digital Wall Planner might not seem useful.

This feels like a very true statement. I currently have a full year spreadsheet calendar for 2026, 2027, and just created 2028. There will be many changes as I make final destination decisions, but it helps me with the initial process of visualizing where and when. And since I am gone a lot, a paper calendar on my wall isn’t helpful. But we all have slightly (or vastly) different travel needs. This is also a very useful tool for me to share with my kids, a few friends, and my brothers, so they can see at a glance basic info on where I plan to be and when (or where I am in real time). Most don’t need details.

And why I only last month thought of adding in a note here for days in Schengen each month, I will never know. But already it’s so helpful for 2027 planning.

TripIt just saved me from sleeping in my car for a night. LOL! Probably not really, but as I went through the plan as it lays out dates and times, I realized I had used a wrong date for a lodging reservation in Shetland in my initial reservation months ago. I was one night short in a place with fewer options than many locations. On my very detailed spreadsheet I used the dates I really wanted so didn’t catch the discrepancy. But TripIt, because I forward the actual reservation email, showed me as checking out a night early. I was fortunately able to go back and add a night - the one before an onward flight.

I love to plan and dream!

Two things about Trip It Pro...

Recently, Trip it Pro has found reservations in my emails without me having to send them in. Mostly train reservations.

It also warns me of changes to schedules of some of my modes of transportation and today of an upcoming strike in London where I am flying to in a few days.

I also synch it with my Google Calendar to get reminders.

In case anyone wants to know what I do about researching areas I'm heading to....well....I use good old paper and pencil to takes notes then transfer it to a Google Docs page.

I like things simple to use.

Good Calendar for planning

Tripit Pro for scheduling

Google Docs for research.

Since my travels are ongoing, for me, it's a never ending process.