Simplify Your Travel Plans With Tripit

Travel agents. Remember them? With their so-cheery-they're-depressing colored jackets and flickering currency exchange boards in the window, there was something strangely reassuring about them when it came to vacation planning time.

But perhaps one of the best things about travel agents was that they'd take care of everything. Walk-in, read brochure, sit down, and then walk out with flights booked, hotel arranged and fistful of funny-colored bank-notes in hand.

Then the Internet came along and ruined everything. Yes, yes...I know it's cheap and convenient to book your trips online, but there are just so many sites and portals to deal with. In fact it's not uncommon for the average trip to involve three or more merchants - one for the flight, one for the hotel, one for the car rental....you get the picture.

Enter TripIt which helps bring order to the chaos of booking a trip. After creating an account, simply forward all your trip-related confirmation emails to an email address provided by TripIt. From flight confirmations to restaurant reservations, TripIt automatically creates a single, simple itinerary from all the submitted emails.

Once your itinerary has been created, you can view it online or via a mobile device and share it with friends and family.

TripIt is one of those rare start-ups that offers a genuinely useful service and the user experience is beautifully simple. So next time you're planning to take a vacation, give TripIt a shot - it really helps cut down on the email clutter.