My last post generated a tip about a free service called TripIt. I've signed up and used it for my last couple of trips.
The service is described this way by the website: "TripIt is a personal travel assistant that automatically organizes all your travel plans." I suppose that accurate enough and from a business traveling parent's perspective, that could be handy.
While making the immediate family (read "spouse") aware of where you're traveling is obvious, letting other people know is less obvious and maybe even a bit of a hassle. Who else might need to know? How about folks on the emergency contact list at your child's school? If you worry about these things, it might also be a good idea to inform godparents or grandparents.
Like other services like this, the value goes up along with the number of folks who use it (or I suppose "TripIt" is more accurate). Eventually, another possible value to business traveling parents is to get a head's up on when parent-friends from other towns are traveling.
Here's another plausible, but unlikely scenario: Suppose I were arriving in Philly or New York and one of my buddies happened to be landing in Atlanta? If we were all using TripIt, we'd know who's away from their family. A simple call to check in with the local family might be nice and reassuring. I'm pretty sure that if I were out of town a a friend visiting on business in Atlanta called home to simply say "hello" it would be well received.
These two scenarios are the once-in-a-million situations. And because they're so unlikely, they aren't routine. However, TripIt makes these (and all the routine stuff) pretty easy, so why not?
I'm happy to give it a more rigorous trial next year when travel picks back up.
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