Travel Plans & Vacations

Why plan trips in beanies.family?

Planning a family trip usually means juggling flight confirmations in email, hotel bookings in a spreadsheet, and everyone’s ideas in a group chat. Travel Plans brings it all together in one place — flights, stays, transport, activities, and your family’s wish list — so nothing falls through the cracks.

Creating a trip

The trip wizard walks you through five steps. You don’t need to fill in everything at once — you can always come back and add details later.

Step 1: Trip basics

Step 2: Travel

Add your travel segments — flights, cruises, cars, trains, or ferries. For flights, you’ll be asked if it’s one-way or round trip, and the return flight is set up automatically. Each segment has fields for dates, times, booking references, and notes.

Step 3: Stay

Add your accommodation — hotels, Airbnbs, campgrounds, or staying with family and friends. Check-in and check-out dates are pre-filled from your travel dates when possible. You can add the address, room type, confirmation number, and whether breakfast is included.

Step 4: Getting around

Add local transport — airport shuttles, rental cars, taxis, or buses. Include pickup times, booking references, and agency details so everything is in one place when you land.

Step 5: Ideas

This is the fun part! Add things your family wants to do — beaches, restaurants, excursions, shows. Each idea can have a category, estimated cost, and duration. Family members can vote on ideas with the ❤️ heart button to help decide what makes the cut.

The trip timeline

Once your trip is saved, you’ll see a visual timeline showing everything in chronological order — flights, hotel check-ins, transport, and planned activities. Each segment is a collapsible card that you can tap to see full details or click Edit to change.

You can add more segments anytime using the + add a plan button at the bottom of the timeline.

Booking progress

Each segment can be marked as Booked or Pending. The trip card and header show a progress bar (e.g., "3 of 5 booked") so you can see at a glance what still needs confirming. Items marked as pending show an "items need booking" badge.

Accommodation gap warnings

beanies.family automatically checks your accommodation dates against your trip dates. If there are nights where you don’t have a place to stay, you’ll see a 🏨 warning in the timeline with a quick link to add accommodation for those dates.

Ideas and voting

The Ideas panel (on the right side of the trip page, or below the timeline on mobile) is your family’s shared wish list. Anyone can add ideas, and family members vote with the ❤️ heart button. Ideas with the most votes float to the top, making it easy to see what everyone’s excited about.

Ideas can be marked as Planned once you’ve decided to do them. Planned ideas appear in a separate section so you can see what’s confirmed versus what’s still on the wish list.

Trip countdown

Each upcoming trip shows a countdown badge — the number of days until your adventure begins. The message is personalised to your trip type: "5 days until takeoff!" for flights, "until we set sail!" for cruises, and so on. Past trips show a "Completed" badge instead.

Past trips

Completed trips move to the Past Trips section at the bottom of the page. Click to expand and revisit the details — useful for rebooking a favourite hotel or remembering that amazing restaurant.