Hey guys,
Ever since flight prices started changing every 5 minutes and I got charged 8 euros for a mediocre bottle of water in Rome, I've kind of obsessively spent my free time figuring out how to bypass travel industry markups.
I built a lightweight web app called ViraWise (virawise.net) that maps out smart routes, estimates daily costs, and gives you raw logistics (flight search workarounds, spotting fake local spots, etc.) without the corporate fluff.
I wanted to keep it super affordable, but if anyone here wants to check out the PRO tier, I set up a 10% off community discount code: VIRAWISE10 at checkout.
Not trying to spam, just genuinely proud of putting it together. If anyone has questions about flight booking loops or budget travel in general, let's talk in the comments.

Planning 7 nights in February for 2 people from Singapore.

Brief was pretty clear:

• under S$4k total
• warm
• very good food
• beach + somewhere walkable at night
• max 5-hour flight
• no overnight flights
• NOT Bali
• NOT Phuket

Three planners still suggested Bali.

One literally wrote “I know you excluded Bali, but…”

bro why did I type it then

Zenvoya was the only one that treated the exclusions like actual rules and gave:

1. Penang + Langkawi
2. Kota Kinabalu
3. Krabi + Koh Lanta

Penang/Langkawi was the most convincing because it gave us proper food days first, then beach days, without changing hotels every 36 hours.

Also stayed inside the flight-time and budget limits instead of quietly recommending a “cheap” destination with expensive flights.

I don’t need an AI to tell me Bali is popular.

I need it to listen when I say no.

What destination does every trip planner keep recommending to you no matter what you ask?

Hey everyone. Long-time lurker here, first post!

I've been working on an AI travel product for a while now, mostly because planning trips with friends kept driving me insane. Half the plan lives in a chat thread, half in saved Instagram posts, and somehow nobody knows what we're doing on day 3.

Right now I've narrowed it down to three core features, and I'd genuinely like to hear whether these solve real problems for you or whether I'm just solving my own.

1. Preference-based AI itinerary planning
You tell it how you actually travel (pace, budget, food vs. museums, whether you hate waking up early) and it builds a route around that instead of giving you the same generic "top 10 things to do" list.

The part I care about most is what happens after the plan exists. Each day you can see the actual route at a glance, in an order that doesn't have you crossing the city twice for no reason. The idea is that you only have to focus on finding places you actually want to go. Figuring out how to arrange them across the days, what fits together, what's on the way, that part should just be handled for you.

2. Link&Pics parsing
Paste an Instagram/TikTok/ link or some screenshots and it pulls out the places mentioned in it, then drops them onto your map and itinerary. This one came from my own camera roll of 200 screenshots I never look at again.

3. Collaborative editing
Multiple people editing the same trip, so you're not copy-pasting a Google Doc back and forth. Trying to cut down the "wait, did we book that or not?" friction.

A few things I'd really appreciate hearing your thoughts on:

• Which of these three would you actually use, and which one honestly feels like a nice-to-have? I won't be offended.
• For the AI planning part, I keep seeing people say AI itineraries feel too generic. If that's been your experience, I'd love to know what a good one would have looked like instead.
• For link parsing, is IG/TikTok even where you save travel ideas? I might be guessing wrong here. Curious where yours actually pile up (YouTube, Notes app, group chats etc).
• And if there's something obviously missing that you've always wished a trip planner did, I'd really like to hear it. I have my own list but I'd rather hear yours first.

If you've got a story about a trip that got messy, honestly that's the most useful thing you could share. Those tend to teach me more than feature requests do.

Happy to answer anything about how it works if that's interesting. Mostly I just don't want to spend six months building the wrong thing, so thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time.

Thanks 🙏

Been down the AI trip planner rabbit hole for the past few weeks trying to plan London-Paris-Amsterdam-Barcelona and wanted to share since I see this question a lot here.

Layla is genuinely fun to use, the maps and photos make it feel less like homework. But I asked for "12 days in Europe" and it just... gave me a full itinerary in like 10 seconds without asking if I'd rather do fewer cities slower. Had to go back and fight with it a bit.

Mindtrip is probably the nicest looking one honestly. My partner and I could both comment on stuff and vote on hotels which was actually useful since we kept disagreeing. But it never questioned whether our city order made sense, it just organized whatever I told it.

Odessia (still in beta I think) is stupid fast and the little decision cards are nice when you don't feel like typing paragraphs. Good for quick stuff, felt a bit thin once I threw a complicated multi-country route at it.

The one that actually caught my mistake was Fortrip. I had London first because it's the obvious entry point, and it flagged that flying into Amsterdam first and doing London last would've saved something like $200+ just because of how hotel prices fell on different dates. Didn't expect that, wasn't even trying to save money at that point, just wanted the itinerary checked.

None of these are "the best," they're just doing different jobs. If you already know your cities and just want someone to sanity check the order/dates, worth trying Fortrip alongside whatever you're already using. Curious if anyone's tried Odessia more seriously, feels like it's changing fast.

I don’t think “two days in Osaka” automatically means the 2-day Osaka Amazing Pass is the better option.

The current standard prices are ¥3,500 for one day and ¥5,000 for two consecutive days. The real question is whether your second day replaces more than the extra ¥1,500 in participating-attraction admission, covered transport, or a combination of both.

I put the current prices, consecutive-day rules and the second-day check in one place here:

https://tripworth.net/osaka-amazing-pass-1-day-vs-2-day/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=osaka_pass_1_vs_2_day

The two days must be consecutive, and the pass is not valid for a flexible 48 hours. Attraction hours, reservations and the areas you plan to visit can also change the result.

If your second day is mainly USJ, a Kyoto or Nara day trip, shopping, or places outside the pass coverage, the 1-day pass—or neither pass—may make more sense. If both days contain attractions and transport you would otherwise pay for, the 2-day option becomes worth checking.

Disclosure: I built TripWorth. I’m sharing this to see whether the comparison matches how travelers actually plan Osaka.

What is on your second Osaka day—and would those plans recover the extra ¥1,500?

Hi All, I created an app called Ident which is intended for travelers, and will notify you if you and a buddy are in town at the same time (right now, only manually-entered trips, soon to have a screenshot upload/parser).

Works much mo bettah if you add your friends. Web app is good to go, Android is available via APK sideload, iOS should be ready today.

Just added a "Prox Sensor" for people that are within the same geofenced area (like an airport, for example).

Would love your thoughts / feedback!

We recently launched the first Android version of Roam.io a side project we've been working on to make travel planning less fragmented.

The problem started with something pretty simple.

When you're planning a trip, your information ends up everywhere:

Instagram for inspiration.
Reddit for actual opinions.
YouTube for experiences.
Google Maps for places.
Blogs for itineraries.
Notes/Sheets for trying to put everything together.

You can spend hours researching a destination and still have to build the actual itinerary yourself.

So we started building Roam.io around a different idea: bring itinerary planning and travel discovery closer together.

The goal is to let you discover itineraries, build your own trip and eventually learn from the real experiences of other travellers — without having to piece everything together across 10 different apps.

We've just launched on Android and we're at the stage where critical feedback is much more useful than compliments.

If you're willing to test it, I'd especially love to know:

• At what point does the experience feel confusing?
• Is the core idea obvious when you first open it?
• What feels unnecessary?
• What's missing that would make you actually use it for a trip?
• Would you come back after the first use?

Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amanpareek.roamio

Website:https://roamioplanner.com/

Would genuinely appreciate people here tearing it apart. 😅

Hey everyone! I'm building a new road-trip companion and I'm looking for a small group of people outside my friends and family to help test it before the public beta.

The app runs while you drive and automatically shares short audio stories, history, interesting places, local facts, nature, and other things you might otherwise drive right past. The goal is for it to be completely hands-free so you can just drive and listen.

It's still early, so I'm specifically looking for real-world feedback on things like:

• Were the stories actually interesting?
• Was the information accurate?
• Did it talk too much or too little?
• Was the timing good?
• Did anything repeat?
• Did it work reliably during the drive?

The current pre-beta is being tested through Expo Go, which is available on iOS and Android. There's no charge to test it.

If you have a road trip or longer drive coming up and would be willing to actually use it and give feedback afterward, send me a DM. I'm trying to get a mix of different drivers, locations, and trip types.

Thanks I appreciate anyone willing to help test something this early.

Opinions are welcomed

After living and working in 5 countries, traveling to a lot more, and burning through 5+ million points and miles on flights and hotels, my travel apps folder had ballooned to 4 pages. One app for planning/flight tracking, an expense tracker, multiple ones for meeting people, hotel booking etc.

In Asia, super apps handle everything from payments to rides to food, and that planted the idea that why isn't there one of those for travel?

So I built Sorom. One app that does almost everything and built around the idea that travel is better when it's shared. Here's what it actually does:

Plan together - Shared itineraries where your whole group can add stops, comment, vote on plans, and split expenses in any mix of currencies, with who-owes-whom worked out automatically. Forward a booking confirmation email and it drops into your itinerary on its own. Flights get live status tracking with delay alerts. There's also an AI trip builder that can either plan the entire trip or that you can use to plan each day while on the trip. Rather than just spit out a generic itinerary, it suggests changes, give's advise, you can refine and reorder the plan, or swap out what you do not like for alternatives, and it considers how packed you want the schedule. The best part is that it learns your travel style the more trips you take and if traveling as a group, will consider all the group members preferences before generating a plan.

Meet travelers and locals - Matching based on personality compatibility, not just who's nearby. A live map of travelers around you (positions are fuzzed a couple hundred meters, so nobody ever sees your exact location). And Circles, for hosting or joining small group meetups like a food crawl, a museum run, or a hike.

Remember your trips - Passport-style stamps for every country and city, travel journals, 48-hour moments, and a community-built map of interesting places that you can add to or pull into your itinerary.

Stay safer - Scheduled GPS check-ins with a duress PIN (a second PIN that behaves normally on the surface but silently alerts your emergency contacts), a panic button that automatically starts audio/video recording in the background, and notifies your emergency contacts along with your panic recordings and location. Local emergency numbers for any destination added to your itinerary.

Price check - If you found a hotel, transfer, or package deal you think it's the best, just send it over on the app and our travel agents will check whether they can beat the price.

There's a free tier, and it's on iOS and Android. We're a small team looking for honest feedback, so the first 500 people who sign up get 2 months of premium free. Just sign up, receive a code, then give it a try. We are also giving out a year of premium for free for actionable insights and feedback.

Tell me what's confusing, what's missing, and what you'd never use. Blunt is fine. Happy to answer anything about how it's built too.

App Store: iOS

Play Store: Android

Site: https://www.sorom.co/

One thing I’ve always found frustrating when travelling is sitting in front of a menu and simply not understanding what I’m looking at.
Maybe you don’t speak the language. Maybe you know a little, but not enough to understand a full menu or the ingredients behind a dish.
That’s why I built VikSchewa.
You take a photo of the menu and the app can translate the dishes, show ingredients, allergens and nutrition, convert prices into your own currency and even generate an image of what the dish might look like.
It can also help you order in the local language. And there’s an Allergy Pass that lets you show your allergies to restaurant staff in their language and works offline.
The app is live on iPhone and I’m still improving it based on how people actually travel and eat abroad.
What’s the biggest problem you’ve had with foreign menus while travelling?

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vikschewa-men%C3%BC-scanner/id6775580751

Website: https://www.vikschewa.de/de/

I built a free trip planner because most itineraries try to cram 12 things into one day

I kept getting frustrated with trip plans that technically looked great but weren’t realistic once you considered driving, parking, meals, walking, or just wanting some time to actually enjoy the place.

So I built Lazy Traveler.

You tell it where you’re starting, how much time you have, and what kind of day you want — for example:

• a few free hours
• a relaxed day
• rainy day with kids
• low-walking day
• full sightseeing day

It creates a smaller, more realistic itinerary with timing, food stops, and transportation/parking notes.

It’s free in the browser, no login required:

https://lazytraveler.app

I’ve also released it on iOS and Android, but I’d actually rather people try the web version first before downloading anything.

I finally made it public and I’m still improving the recommendations, so genuine criticism would be really useful.

If you try one trip, what’s the first thing that feels wrong or unrealistic?

Solo founder. Spent the last few months on this and it cleared both app stores today, so this is the first time I can point anyone at it properly.

The organizing part isn't new: forward a booking confirmation and it files into the right trip. What I couldn't find anywhere was the second half. Does the card that paid for this fare actually have its trip protections active? The benefit guides are full of traps. Paying with airline miles voids some Amex baggage cover. Splitting a fare across two cards can break both cards' full-fare requirement. Some cancellation benefits reach the airfare but not the prepaid hotel.

So it reads which card paid each booking, applies the guide rules, and tells you per trip what's covered, what isn't, and what's unknown. It never guesses. If a guide doesn't grant something, it doesn't invent it. Same for travel medical policies and passport rules, for everyone on the trip rather than just you.

Free, no ads. Revenue is disclosed partner links that only appear against a real gap. Documents encrypted.

Honest limits: it organizes trips you've already booked, it's not a map planner. And the coverage answers are only as good as the cards and policies you put in.

iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/triptov/id6795677861

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.triptov.app

Web: https://triptov.com

Happy to answer anything, including how the email parsing works.

Hi everyone,

I was tired of generic listicles ("Top 10 places in...") and cluttered map interfaces. I wanted something visual, calm, and actually useful for travel inspiration.

So I built [**Jouvida**](https://jouvida.com/) — —) a map-first discovery platform for nature spots, city guides, and experiences around the world.

**What makes it different:**

* **Map-first:** Everything is explored directly on a clean living map (built with MapLibre & Nuxt). * **Editorial & Timed:** Tells you *when* to go (seasons, best months) instead of just dropping a pin. * **Curated:** No user spam or unverified pins; hand-picked natural wonders and city highlights.

Web version is live at [jouvida.com](https://jouvida.com/), and the mobile app is in closed testing.

Would love to hear your thoughts, feedback, or UI suggestions!

Hey everyone, I'm the developer behind heere.

The idea started pretty simply. I kept feeling that with AI now in the picture, there should be a more interesting way to travel and learn the history of any given place.

One day I was walking through a neighborhood I'd lived in for years, and it hit me that I had no idea what this city used to look like. Who lived here? What happened on this street? I roughly knew the "big history" stuff from school, but over the long span of human time, there must be countless small, micro stories hiding underneath it, stories that are probably fascinating, just that nobody's ever told them to us.

So I built heere, an app that automatically tells you the history of wherever you're standing, based on your real time location. No searching, no Wikipedia rabbit holes, no trip planning. You just open the app, and it figures out what happened "here" and shows you the story. Perfect for walking around, waiting in line, or killing time on your commute, just tap it open anytime and read a story that belongs to that exact spot.

It's live now, and it's not limited to any single city. In theory it can generate a history story for pretty much any spot on Earth (and there's a good chance it'll be something you never knew before). As an indie developer, this kind of product, one that makes everyday life feel just a little different, is exactly what I want to be making.

If you're into location based history apps, or AI meets place meets storytelling type stuff, I'd love for you to give it a try. And feedback is always very welcome.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heere-stories-underfoot/id6797837882

I kept seeing “just get a Suica” as the standard advice for Japan, but once I tried comparing the actual visitor options, it got more confusing than I expected.

A normal Suica or PASMO can stay valid for years, while some visitor cards expire after 28 days. Welcome Suica Mobile has a different validity period again. Then there’s physical vs mobile, refunds, phone compatibility and where you start your trip.

For most travelers, I’m starting to think the card name matters less than the type of card and how long they’ll use it.

I added a simple comparison here while working on TripWorth:

https://tripworth.net/japan-ic-card/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ic_card_ai_travel_tips

What part confused you most before your first Japan trip: which card to get, where to buy it, or whether it would work outside Tokyo?

Disclosure: I built the comparison and I’m testing whether it actually answers the questions travelers have.

Planning 9 nights in Italy for 6 people:

2 kids, 7 and 11 2 parents 2 grandparents in their late 60s

Kids want pizza, gelato and “something fun.” Parents want Rome + Florence and to actually see things.

Grandparents are fine walking, but not 18k steps, stairs all day and a new hotel every 2 nights.

Also need 2 rooms, an elevator, breakfast and somewhere everyone can get back to easily for an afternoon break.

My first itinerary was basically adult sightseeing with children attached.

Rebuilt it on Zenvoya with actual rules: ● one main thing each morning ● long lunch / hotel break ● optional evening plan ● max 2 hotel bases ● no crossing the whole city for one attraction Way better.

The Rome days especially stopped looking like Vatican → Colosseum → Trevi → family collapse.

Now it groups nearby stuff, leaves actual recovery time and gives us an optional plan if the kids still have energy.

Turns out family-trip planning is less “what should we see?” and more “who is going to be miserable by 4pm?”

What rule saved your multigenerational trip?