Almost everyone loves going on trips and getaways. Whether it’s for business or for pleasure, it’s nice to experience new places. Whilst it can be remarkable seeing different cultures and experiencing different ways of life, it can be daunting and overwhelming just trying to plan your trip.
YourtTrip aims to simplify the process of preparing for a trip and aims to help you plan out where you’re going, what you’re going to pack, budgets and also helps you make an itinerary. Let’s take a look.
Creating Trips
When you create a trip, simply click the Add button and you’re presented with a rather simplistic view asking for the basic details of your trip, including a duration, description, location, names of travelers and a name for your trip.
When adding where you’re going, YourtTrip gives you the ability to add multiple places and presents a map in which you can search for your locations and add them, YourtTrip allows you to add multiple places. When adding the names of travelers, YourtTrip doesn’t utilize your address book, it simply takes people by name. Furthermore, I have found that YourtTrip crashes periodically when attempting to input the names’ of various travellers.
Preparation
YourtTrip provides three means of preparing for your trip: creating an itinerary, plan what you’re going to pack and also the ability to specify your budget.
When creating an itinerary, you’re presented with a simple view to add events and the ability to specify a contact number, location and add notes. This is especially useful if you’re planning to go on various trips and visit different places. The itinerary can really give your trip that much needed structure and YourtTrip takes a minimal approach to creating an itinerary.
Packing is arguably the most important part of getting ready to go away and also can be the most devastating when you don’t pack something. Luckily, YourtTrip makes packing easy and conveniently splits your packing into different categories in hope of not overwhelming you and then makes it easy to export, check and manage your list with other people.
When specifying a budget, you can divide your money into different categories and then specify sub categories. Then, YourtTrip presents this data in a nice pie chart and you can include a reservation budget. Within the preferences, you can specify your currency so you’re not just limited to USD, there’s about two dozen different currencies to choose from.
Once you’ve planned your trip, you can then export each of the different sections into a PDF document in which you can email, share and print.
Interface and Performance
One thing that does let YourtTrip down is its interface; it’s that of minimalism and, frankly, the interface seems as though it’s not yet complete and still in need of some work. This is evident as soon as you open up the application. The application features Apple’s classic linen texture, not to provide depth but appears to be used simply to add some contrast to the interface of the app.
Furthermore, the app has also crashes countless times and it’s a given that YourtTrip will crash if you attempt to edit the default category name within the Budget section. Overall, YourtTrip just appears as though the developers haven’t given it the time nor the attention that is deserves as it does have the potential to be a useful and handy app for many people, it’s just a shame the the interface and general stability of the application aren’t up to scratch.
Kayak
One strong competitor of YourtTrip is Kayak Explore, this application definitely appears to have been given more care and attention and it doesn’t looks as though the developers have just thrown it together. Furthermore, Kayak also has the ability to find fights and hotels whereas YourtTrip does not have any third-party resources that would allow you to plan a whole holiday within the application.
Although Kayak’s main purpose isn’t to create an itinerary, it does allow people to plan their flights, accommodation and trips and despite the lack of features such as budget and packing management, it’s still a much better application in my opinion.
Conclusion
Finally, YourtTrip can be used but, to be honest, it’s disappointing. Its lack of finish and polish has the tendency to make one feel as though the application was thrown together and despite having some pretty solid, useful and handy features, the lack of refinement that comes with the interface bares the question of whether of not the developer was actually ready to release the app to the App Store. This also applies to the amount of crashes that are evident throughout the application and also bares the question, did the developer give the app enough care and attention and test the app enough to ensure it would provide the best possible experience for the user? I’m thinking not.
At the astonishing price tag of $19.99, it’s hard to justify paying such a high price for, what seems to be a rushed, buggy application. My advice would to be simply wait or find an alternative. YourtTrip does have the features and foundation of what could be a great application but until it’s given some tender loving care, best to stick to a good old of TextEdit document or find something else to you.