Megabus and TripIt

I rather like TripIt, the popular site that keeps records of your travel plans.  It is really handy to have your whole trip available on the internet, and it is especially useful as a way of storing all your confirmation numbers in a single place that’s easy to access.

When you get a confirmation from a major travel vendor, you can simply forward the confirming e-mail from your vendor (airline, hotel chain, car rental company, and so on) to plans@tripit.com.  TripIt parses the email and adds the confirmation to your itinerary.

TripIt has done quite a good job of making sure that it works with many major vendors (including the Metropolitan Opera!), and, on the whole, it works rather well.  It was especially useful when we went to Thailand last summer for a three-week trip with many flights on different airlines and many hotels purchased from different vendors.

But TripIt does not work well at all with Megabus!  First, if you book a series of journeys in a single reservation, TrpIt parses all of them as a single trip, and it is a pain in the neck to split them up. Another limitation is that the mobile version of TripIt for the Blackberry does not display the most vital piece of information: the confirmation number that you have to show the driver when you board the bus.

This drove me into a near panic as I was driving to catch a Megabus this morning.  Unusually, I hadn’t printed my itinerary before leaving the house, and when i checked it on the Blackberry, I found it was not there.

Fortunately, I was able to contact friends who retrieved the vital number from the TripIt website and sent it to me by e-mail.

But it does mean that the mobile version of TripIt for the Blackberry is almost useless as a tool to support Megabus trips!