Does Google have a trip planner? Well, not really.
There is obviously Google My Maps that can help you plan your trip. I actually talk about it in my last blog post Must-Have Free Tools and Apps for Crafting Your Trip Itinerary.
Why Google Spreadsheet to plan my lifetime road trip? Because I had tried many Management and project tools and all of them let me down (mostly the price or the lack of features). I then decided to go back to a tool I love and that I use everyday Google Sheet.
Google Sheet as a holiday planner was one of the best idea I have had, planning my trip. Check out how it can provide a convenient and collaborative way to organize your itinerary.
Plus, I will to walk you through some tools and tips to help you get started on Google Sheet for your trip, and what are the Google Spreadsheets extensions I would recommend you to use.
Plan trips using an intuitive itinerary Google template with a built-in dynamic Google Map. Export to Google My Maps, organize to-do’s, track costs, collaborate with friends.
Pros :
Automatically plot your activities/events on a map with markers noting location details with a single click.
Split Costs With Friends : Use the expense tracker to easily divide up costs after the trip.
Cons :
Costs : 7 day free trial of all premium features after installation.
It's not very convenient if you have different currency along your trip.
My experience : I personally find the inspiration from this extension but I didn't use this tools for myself, as I wanted to add many countries in a single tab and the imbedded map in Travel Mapper would not allow it very smoothly. It's a great tool for a single country-trip though.
You want to know the distance by walk, plane or bike between 2 points in order to plan your road trip?
Well here is one of my favorite tool I found to add to my Trip planner Google Spreadsheet (link at the end of the post).
The principle is very simple, past the formula =GOOGLEMAPS_DISTANCE(A1, B1, "driving") for exemple, and will quickly calculate the distance between A1 and B1. You can also use =GOOGLEMAPS_TIME(A1, B1, "walking") to know how long it will take for a person to walk from one point to another.
Just make a copy of this Google Sheet and you are all set.
Pros :
It's free
it's super easy to use, just click in the Google Sheet that already have the feature, and make a copy.
Cons :
no real cons in my opinion
My experience : during our trip planning, we had a lot of ground transportation to figure out and plan. This tool has help us a lot to know how to organise ourselves and split distances between 2 points when we figured out that it was going to be too long. Even Google My map could not give us a quick glimpse of this info!
Google Calendar add-on for Google Sheets (or Sheets2GCal) is a Google Sheets add-on designed for advanced Google Calendar management using google Spreadsheets. Create or import events in a Spreadsheet, edit them in the Sheet and export the changes to Google Calendar, or edit them in Google Calendar and import the changes back to Google Sheets.
My experience : right after I setup the Google Extension, I used a simple =vlookup formula to connect the info collected by the extension from my Google Calendar to my main Travel planner Google Spreadsheet. It took me 2 min and it was a great win from my point of view.
Find in the link below your free
Travel planner Google Spreadsheet template
Lastly, Google Spreadsheet can be used to plan your vacation budget with a forecast of your travel expenses, keep track of all your to do lists before you depart, visa check list, flight check-in list, accommodation list, activity list even a retroplanning / gantt-chart (with a little bit of conditional formatting).
I hope this article helped you know how to create your own travel Spreadsheet or Excel for your next holiday! Plan your trip become as easy as ABC!