I’m looking for the mythical “perfect” travel app. There’s lots of good map or itinerary apps out there but I have yet to find one that you can fully share with another person. I want both travelers to be able to add places to the map or items to the itinerary and have it show up on the other person’s devices.
An example is maps.me. Great app, offline usage if needed, constantly updated maps, etc. But in order to share it with someone you need to send them a .kml or .kmv Google Maps file. If I add a place to my map I have to export the file from Google Earth, say, send it to someone, then they have to import it into maps.me.
Another candidate is mapstr. I use that all the time but you can’t share a map. You can share all your points of interest but you can’t make a separate map for just your trip to Iceland, for example, at least not without also including all the dessert spots you’ve added to your list of places to go in Boston. Also, it’s been years and they still haven’t made an iPad version. Hard to understand.
I’ve used travefy.com with the Our Itinerary app but while it works it’s more of, well, an itinerary situation. If I’m driving the Ring Road in Iceland an itinerary is great as I have to be in specific places on specific days, and having all those places and days on a map worked out well. But if I’m going to spend a week in LA for the Rose Parade, for a completely made up and not at all real example (he said), I don’t really need an itinerary at all. What I need is a map of places I might want to go instead as I can pick any place on any given day rather than having any particular schedule.
I looked at TripLine, which is close, but they’re big on the “line” thing. Their assumption is that you’re doing things in order, which is great for driving across Route 66 but not ideal for flying to a place and staying there for a week. I’ve looked at Mapify also. It’s good, but again everything has to have a date. Not what I’m looking for. Some things on some dates are fine, but there’s no way to have a place that doesn’t also have an appointment with it.
I’ve tried to share Google Maps, and that’s indeed possible, but it’s also kind of a terrible user experience as things that you’d think would take two taps are instead hidden behind a maze of tapping and layers. Yes, you can still share a map, but you have to launch the app, tap the hamburger, tap your places, tap Maps, then tap the map you’re interested in. Every. Single. Time. And then even when you’ve done that the list of places on the map is not “live,” so you can’t tap items on your list. So close, and yet so awful.
Surely there’s a great travel map app out there that two people can log into and see a common map. If there is, though, I’ve not been able to find it.