Not Everything Belongs on the Itinerary (Yet)

You're scrolling Instagram and see a photo of a restaurant in Rome. It looks incredible. You screenshot it.

A week later, your friend mentions a gelato place near the Pantheon. You make a mental note.

You read a blog post about a day trip to Tivoli. You bookmark it.

You find a coffee shop on Google Maps while virtually wandering around Trastevere. You star it.

This is how trip research actually happens. It's scattered. It's non-linear. It unfolds over days or weeks or months. You discover things long before you know when—or even if—you'll actually do them.

And yet, most travel apps completely ignore this reality.

The tyranny of the calendar

Open most trip planning apps and try to save that restaurant you found. What's the first thing they ask?

What day?

You don't know what day. You don't even know if you'll have time. You just know it looks good and you don't want to forget it.

But the app insists. Pick a day. Pick a time. Commit now, or your idea disappears into the void.

So you do what everyone does: you guess. You throw it on Day 3 because that seems like it might work. Or you abandon the app entirely and go back to your chaotic system of screenshots and bookmarks and notes scattered across a dozen places.

Neither option is good. Guessing clutters your itinerary with things that don't belong there yet. And the scattered approach means you'll forget half of what you found by the time you actually need it.

Collecting and planning are different activities

Here's what I've realized after years of planning trips: there are two distinct phases, and they don't happen at the same time.

Phase 1: Collecting. This is the fun part. You're discovering places, saving recommendations, bookmarking articles, gathering possibilities. You're not making decisions yet—you're expanding your options. This phase happens sporadically, over time, whenever inspiration strikes.

Phase 2: Planning. This is when you actually build the itinerary. You look at everything you've collected, figure out what's realistic, and start slotting things into days. This phase happens closer to the trip, usually in one or two focused sessions.

The problem with most apps is they only support Phase 2. They assume you already know what you want to do and you're ready to schedule it. But that's not how it works. By the time you're ready to plan, you've already lost half your ideas because there was nowhere to put them.

A place for things that don't have a place yet

This is why I built Ideas into Avventura.

Ideas is exactly what it sounds like: a place to save things before you know where they belong. Found a restaurant? Save it to Ideas. Interesting museum? Ideas. Day trip possibility? Ideas. That weird bar your coworker mentioned? Ideas.

No dates. No times. No commitment. Just a running list of everything you might want to do.

Then, when you're actually ready to build your itinerary, everything is there. You can see all your options in one place. Drag something to a specific day when you're ready. Or leave it in Ideas if you're still not sure—maybe you'll get to it, maybe you won't.

It sounds simple, because it is. But I haven't seen another travel app that works this way.

Why nobody else does this

I think most travel apps skip this because they're optimized for booking, not thinking.

If your business model is taking a cut of hotel reservations and activity bookings, you want users to commit as quickly as possible. A "save for later" feature is the opposite of what you want—it delays the purchase. It introduces friction in the conversion funnel.

But if your goal is actually helping people plan better trips? Then Ideas is essential. Because great trips aren't planned in one sitting. They're assembled over time, from dozens of sources, with plenty of things that don't make the final cut.

The Ideas feature exists because I built Avventura for planning, not for selling.

How I actually use it

When I'm planning a trip, my Ideas list usually has 3-4x more items than my actual itinerary. And that's the point.

I save everything that looks interesting. I don't filter. I don't judge. If it catches my attention, it goes in Ideas.

Then, when I sit down to actually build the itinerary, I have a menu of options. I can see what's near what. I can notice that I saved five restaurants in the same neighborhood and pick the one I'm most excited about. I can realize that the day trip I bookmarked doesn't actually fit and remove it without guilt—it was never on the itinerary anyway.

The separation between "things I'm considering" and "things I'm doing" makes the whole process cleaner. The itinerary stays focused. The possibilities stay preserved.

And when I'm actually on the trip and dinner plans fall through? I open Ideas and pick something else. The backup options are already there.

Research deserves a home

Trip planning is an investment. All those hours of reading blog posts, watching YouTube videos, asking friends for recommendations, scrolling through photos—that's valuable work that shouldn't be outsourced to an algorithm. It shouldn't evaporate because there was nowhere to put it.

Ideas gives your research a home. Not everything you find will make it onto the itinerary. That's fine. But at least you won't lose it. And when you're ready to plan, you'll have everything you need in one place.

That's how it should work.