Trip management apps

First, I'm glad your post got restored!

I have a suggestion:

Planapple is the tool I've used to plan my last few trips, and it's my favorite overall. I haven't used the email forwarding feature, so I can't vouch for how well it works. One of the things I like about it is they have a button you can add to your browser that allows you to quickly add any web page to your trip plan. On the down side, there is no app yet (they say they're working on it), but they do have a mobile version of the web site that allows you to save your itinerary for off-line use and view it on your phone when you don't have a connection. This might not work for you if you want to update your itinerary off-line and then upload it later when you have internet access. They're also very responsive. I've emailed them with suggestions and input and gotten quick replies and fast turnaround on updates.

I also tried Travefy, and while it looks promising, it is still missing some features that I like in Planapple. And I don't see any off-line option at all.

Thanks! I'll definitely check into those. Looking at Travefy, they do say "If you're stuck with a spotty internet connection you can always view your itinerary on the app as long as you have previously opened it with internet connection. The app will remember your itinerary and you will have full access to it if offline or in airplane mode."

So that would be good. Will at least give it a poke. :-)

An update - I tried Traxo, and it has no offline capabilities at this time other than just the very very top level of itinerary (not even confirmation numbers or any useful details). They're planning on adding it down the road, but it's not imminent.

As for Planapple, as an FYI since you said you hadn't tried the feature - the emailing in of items doesn't seem to do anything other than just load the text. You then have to drag the email from the notebook onto the calendar, and manually give it dates, etc... So I don't think it really saves much if any time over just adding it manually. The offline capability exists, although it's implemented in an interesting fashion (no app - through the website instead). However, the big issues for me are not finding a way (so far) to see a map of all places - only one at a time - and there doesn't seem to be any alert functionality. I do like some aspects of its interface quite well, but overall I don't think it'll meet what I'm looking for. Neat offering, though! Thanks again! The hunt continues. :-)

However, the big issues for me are not finding a way (so far) to see a map of all places - only one at a time

There is a way to see a map of all places. When you click on your itinerary, everything that is in your itinerary (that has an address) is displayed on the map.

and there doesn't seem to be any alert functionality.

I'm curious what sort of alert functionality you are looking for.

Oh, and one other thing -- you can hook up Planapple to automatically import everything from TripIt. This might seem redundant, but it allows you to use TripIt's email parsing functionality to create itinerary items and then they will magically show up in Planapple.

If you find something you like better, I'll be eager to hear about it. I've put a lot of effort into hunting for a really first-class trip-planning app, and there just aren't that many good ones out there.

Strange - that overall map wasn't coming up for me. Will have to play more. And I saw the TripIt import, but their parsing wasn't great for me. Was okay, though, so maybe an option.

For alerts, was looking for flight alerts and so on - I change phone numbers some times on a trip, and having to go in and make sure that airlines have the right ones, etc... has failed me in the past. :-) Not a dealbreaker, but would be nice.

So far, Kayak is definitely seeming to be the best on the hard details, if they can fix that bug. The more soft details, i.e. attractions and such - some of them are handled very nicely in Google Trips, but the interface isn't ideal. My biggest issue with Google Trips is that whenever you tag a place as somewhere you want to see, it adds it to your Saved Places list in Google.
Which I use for other things. It doesn't let you sort them (except how you see them in the Trips app itself), and it doesn't flag them to a particular trip. So if you were going to a city twice, and had already seen a particular attraction on one trip and didn't want to see it on the second one, there's no way to track that. It's either on your saved places list everywhere or nowhere. :-( It is the best I've seen so far in terms of breadth of info and offline capability, though. Think I'm going to try Lonely Planet or Tripadvisor for this stuff as well.

It's really looking like one app isn't going to handle everything I'm looking for, so one app for logistics and one "guide" app might be the best way to go (in my scenario, anyway).

Is there any map functionality on Kayak?

Thank you for doing this research. Have you found anything else lately? I would love to have an app that I can access offline while I am away.
Lori

So as I suspected, Kayak was good for the hard trip logistics - storing flight info, hotels, etc... but didn't have what I wanted for mapping possible sights to see, etc... Ended up loading both Google Trips and MapMyTrip for that. Both were okay, but both had flaws. For Google, it was the lack of a desktop version, the lack of ability to make a specific trip map - all your places you mark just get lumped into your "Favourite places" in your google account, and the lack of ability to add a custom place (i.e. a friend's house, a B&B that's not listed, etc... That last one was an issue in MapMyTrip as well. Also it's search was nowhere near as good as google's. But it did have the ability to make a specific trip map, share it with friends, etc... and a desktop version. I don't find either app up to what I was looking for yet, but those two are closest, and so I'll try them both again on my next trip and see if either of them improve.