10 Reasons To Use Notion for Travel Planning with Friends
I finally found it – an app that combines all the best features of travel planning. From sharing ideas to itinerary planning, Notion is an all-in-one tool that makes it a breeze for travel planning with friends. I will be sharing my Notion travel template at the end so that you too can start planning with ease. By the way this is not sponsored, I just think it’s a brilliant app.
If you haven’t heard of this app before, Notion is a productivity app that is quickly gaining in popularity among students and work teams. This is also ideal for gathering information and documents scattered everywhere, which can get messy when preparing for a trip. What you need is a tool that can store all the essential details for your trip in one place, and the ability to access and edit on the go.
Tips for Travel Planning with Friends
There will be different travel styles and preferences to consider when traveling with friends. While some like to plan and others don’t, it is important to communicate well and share ideas openly. To start off, here are some useful tips to note.
- Set a budget (daily/overall) to guide the planning process and have everyone on the same page
- Share ideas and informational resources so that everyone gets excited together
- Allow everyone to have a say in the itinerary through brainstorming together and voting
- Split the planning work (e.g. 1 person for each location) after the main route has been decided
- Create an organised itinerary that is easy to collaborate on and share
The current tools are great, but…
Chat groups: I’m sure you are familiar with how things get lost in chat history, especially if you didn’t save it down at the start. Even with the pin function on Telegram, you might still need to scroll through everything to find other important documents and links.
Google docs/sheets: Sometimes it can be all bullet points or numbers in cells which can look very dull (reminds me of work). Though we can add photos, we still need to align them properly to keep the document organised. It also gets tricky trying to toggle through tabs and pages.
PowerPoint: Am I the only one who uses PowerPoint to share my travel plans with people? I like that it allows me to visualise my trip as I can include map screenshots and pictures of places to visit. However the slides are not easily edited on mobile so it’s less effective for making itinerary changes on the go.
As you read on, you will understand why I think Notion is a great tool for travel planning with friends and overall productivity.
1. Notion is great for sharing ideas
When I first saw a Notion demo I was impressed by how visually pleasing everything is. I thought that this is the perfect app for sharing ideas, so I started to create my own travel planning template. You can use galleries to display pictures, and clicking them will open another page that shows any notes and links that you have added. This is a much more informative way of sharing itinerary ideas.
When you are using this for brainstorming, try to encourage your friends to also share their photo inspirations from Instagram or other blog posts. At this stage, everyone should be free to suggest ideas without the restrictions of a travel route.
2. Plan and display travel budget and expenses easily
Having a budget table with planned expenses is beneficial for everyone as it helps to reduce budget-related miscommunication later on. For example, you could ask everyone to go through the budget to make sure they are alright with the plan. It will also be easy for others to plan how much they need to save or to exchange. If you are sharing your itinerary with others after the trip, this is very useful information to have on hand.
You can also add tags to make the categories easy to filter for, so that you can easily keep track of how much each costs. To make your budget table more detailed, you can also include a column to indicate if something has been paid or not. This is especially useful for accommodations that allow deferred payments (e.g. pay at hotel).
3. Create checklists and to-do lists visible to everyone
Notion checklists are very simple to use, and you can easily segment them with headers, or even keep them in separate pages. You can create checklists for things to do pre-trip, and do up a packing list that everyone can refer to and add on. This way, it helps to remind people of the important things to bring. Having a to-do list also keeps everyone in the loop about the planning progress. For example, create a checklist that reminds you to book flights, transportation, hotels, etc.
4. Store documents, contact info and addresses in one place
In Notion, you can easily store all your information and documents because you can embed them in a page. You can even toggle through the different types of views such as gallery, list, or table. Embedding documents is easy – just drag and drop on desktop, or upload via the mobile app. You could add in descriptions that make it easier for others to refer to.
Accommodation documents and addresses can be saved in Notion, minimising the hassle of looking for physical printouts. Even with digital receipts, we all know how hard it can be to find them within chats. Keeping them in one page on your Notion itinerary makes it easily accessible, especially at hotel receptions or airline check in counters.
5. Toggle various views for greater flexibility
I love that Notion is able to show both calendar and table view, so you can switch your itinerary formats easily. If you are using a gallery for brainstorming, it can also easily be turned into an idea list for a consolidated view. You can also sort through the days with different activity tags on them, such as hiking or shopping. This way, information display can be customised by different users and allows for creativity in planning.
6. Have a resource page to refer to
If you love to research a lot, you might have a note saved in your phone full of website links. You don’t really want to dump this on your group chat either because that might be spammy. However some of this stuff could be really useful, such as a guide to the country’s driving rules, or how to eat sushi like the Japanese. With Notion, it is easy to list all these into a resource page, adding more descriptions to make it easy for others to navigate through.
7. Collaborate on itinerary planning easily
One way of sharing the workload of travel planning with friends is to have different people plan what to do in different locations. You can insert a column in your itinerary table to indicate who will be in charge of planning different parts of the trip. All you need to do is to publish and share the Notion link with editing enabled, and everyone will be able to chip in on the planning. Remember to allow editing, so people can edit via the weblink or the Notion app.
You can also track updates whenever someone makes changes, or see ‘Last edited by …”. These all help to give everyone an idea of who is planning what, and direct questions to the right person.
8. Embed Google Maps with saved places and routes
Google Maps is such an integral part of travel planning, and I cannot imagine an itinerary without it. Is your Google Maps also full of starred places that you want to visit in future? You can draw out a route based on those stars when planning for a trip as it summarises the route visually. After creating an outline of the route on Google Maps, copy the embed link and paste it into your Notion page. Everyone will be able to zoom in or out and click on pins.
9. Add notes and ideas on the go
Even with all this planning, we should still be open to changing our plans. After all, there’s bound to be hiccups and traveling forces us to be problem solvers. As you talk to locals and fellow travellers, they might also give you amazing recommendations for other places to visit or things to do. Thankfully, it’s easy to make changes and add notes anytime. If you need to rearrange the notes, the drag and drop style makes it easy to edit. You can also add or duplicate components easily.
Besides using it for editing the itinerary on the go, it is also useful to take notes for future reference. For example, you can note down the restaurants that had really authentic food so that you can share them with others who will be traveling to the same place in future. Lastly, as you add photos or notes into the Notion itinerary, it becomes a great way to document the trip. Wouldn’t be nice if you can share your itinerary through a Notion template filled with photos?
10. Customisable templates for different planning styles
Notion feels like a combination of PowerPoint and Google Docs, where you can collaborate to create an aesthetically pleasing itinerary. Sometimes designing an itinerary could be the thing that gets people excited leading up to the trip. I know that’s definitely the case for me, which is why I tend to be the “planner” when I travel with people.
You could also pick various templates from Notion to build on if you prefer other layouts, or need more ideas. Using templates can help you to consider various aspects of your trip planning, from packing to transportation arrangements. This also helps everyone to be on the same page.
Free Notion template for travel planning with friends
There’s just so many benefits to using Notion, and it seems like they announce on additional features quite frequently. The last I read, their priority now is to create an offline access, which would be such a game changer.
Why don’t you try out Notion when you are travel planning with friends next time? As you create your own Notion itinerary, you can share it by enabling template duplication. If you want to start planning with Notion, feel free to duplicate my travel itinerary template.
I hope you found this post helpful, feel free to comment or DM me on Instagram if you have other suggestions. Please join my email list to be notified of more travel tips, guides and itineraries posted in future. Meanwhile, stay safe and keep your dreams alive!
