Group Trip Planner: Itinerary, Travel Kitty and Crew in One App

The idea comes quickly: two weeks in Portugal with friends, a sailing trip in Croatia or a long weekend in the mountains. Then the real work begins. Who books the accommodation? When does the ferry leave? Who filled up the car, and after the third dinner, who owes whom how much?

On most group trips all of these questions end up in a chat, a spreadsheet and two or three apps side by side. In this post we show how Kithora works as a group trip planner that keeps the itinerary, the travel kitty and everything else in one place, whether you travel with backpacks, a rental car or a boat.

Why group trips need so much coordination

The more people come along, the more depends on single individuals. Typical stumbling blocks:

• The itinerary sits in booking emails that only one person received.
• Expenses are paid in euros, pounds or dollars and painfully converted at the end.
• There is no signal on the way, and the shopping list is out of reach.

Everyone knows the result: one person organises, calculates and reminds while the others are on holiday. That is exactly what we want to change.

One Kora for the whole trip

In Kithora you create a shared space for the trip, called a Kora, for example with the Travel group template. Everyone travelling sees the same plan, the same kitty and the same lists. After the trip, the Kora stays with all photos and settlements as a keepsake.

The itinerary, day by day

A trip in Kithora is made up of individual stages: travel, accommodation, excursions, restaurants. Each stage has a date, time, place and, if you like, its cost. The trip is grouped by day and even empty days are visible, so you instantly see where something is missing. Tapping the place opens the map app on your phone.

Instead of typing everything in, you can take a photo of a booking confirmation or itinerary and the app creates the stages from it. And when the group cannot decide between a boat trip and a hike, a poll right on the stage settles it.

The travel kitty, in several currencies

Whoever pays adds the expense, whether it is fuel, groceries or entry tickets. Expenses in a foreign currency are converted into your base currency. At the end the app shows who owes whom and suggests as few settlement payments as possible. Receipts can be photographed and the app recognises the individual items.

At a group dinner where everyone orders something different, Live Split from Premium helps: everyone taps their own items and the tip is split equally or proportionally.

The shared shopping list

Everything that still needs buying goes on the shared list, from sunscreen to provisions for the first days. Items can be linked to a stage, such as the big shop before casting off. Whoever is in the shop sees at once what is missing, and ticked items disappear for everyone.

All photos in one place

In the Chronicle you collect photos, videos and short posts from the whole group. Instead of gathering pictures from ten chats after the holiday, you have one shared timeline of the trip.

On a sailing trip: crew kitty, crew list and no signal

On a boat different rules apply. A crew usually shares a kitty for provisions, marina fees and diesel, often across borders. The multi-currency travel kitty fits exactly that. And because Kithora works offline, you can keep expenses and lists up to date at sea. As soon as there is signal in the harbour, everything syncs.

Charter companies and authorities often ask for a crew list. Members can store their travel details in their profile, and the Kora admin can create a bilingual crew list as a PDF from it, provided the feature is enabled for that Kora.

Larger groups, several cars or boats

In larger groups not everyone travels together. With sub-groups, a Premium feature, you can split the group into two cars or two boats, for example. Everyone sees what matters to them, and everything still stays in one shared Kora.

Your trip is your business

Travel details, expenses and holiday photos are nobody else's business. Every Kora is end-to-end encrypted, and even we as the provider cannot read the content. And nobody needs an account with an email address to come along.

How to start your group trip

1. Download Kithora from the App Store or Google Play and create a profile.
2. Create a Kora and pick the Travel group template.
3. Invite your fellow travellers via link or QR code.
4. Create a trip with dates and add the first stages or snap a photo of your booking.
5. Set the base currency and add the first expense.

What comes next

This post gives you the overview. In upcoming articles we will go deeper: how to settle a travel kitty fairly when not everyone joins everything, how to run a crew kitty on a sailing trip, what belongs in a crew list and how to plan a stag do or city break without chat chaos. If there is a topic you are especially interested in, let us know.