Tips / Tip
Pull a trip's booking emails into one itinerary, then check it for clashes
A two-day trip makes a train booking, a hotel confirmation, a taxi, a meeting invite with a different address and a restaurant reservation, all in different inboxes. Somebody then has to turn that into a page the traveller can read on a platform with one bar of signal.
That's a job for a table.
Below are confirmation emails and notes for a trip. Build an itinerary
in date and time order as a table:
Date | Time | What | Where (full address) | Reference | Notes
Rules:
- Use only what's in the text. If a time or address isn't there, write
"NOT STATED".
- Show times in the local time of the place they happen, and say if the
time zone changes during the trip.
- After the table, list anything that looks tight or wrong: less than
[45] minutes between connections, arriving after a hotel's check-in
closes, a meeting address that's different from the hotel's area, a gap
with nothing booked overnight.
- Don't add anything I haven't given you.
Emails: [PASTE]
Read the warning list first. Scanning eleven emails, it's easy to miss that the last train home leaves before the dinner ends. A table with the times side by side makes it obvious.
Before it goes out, check every time and every address against the original confirmation. One wrong digit in a departure time looks very convincing in a clean table.
Leave out passport numbers, payment details and anything you wouldn't put on a shared page. Booking references are usually fine, but if the itinerary's going to be shared or printed, ask whether they're needed.
Add the hotel's number and the number of whoever you're meeting. People reach for those when something's late.