Frequently asked questions

What is SirTripsALot for?

It holds your bookings so you can read them in one place: flights, stays, activities and the ground legs between them, in order, in the right local time. On top of that it does the arithmetic a traveler keeps doing by hand — what a trip cost across currencies, an award redemption's cents per point, how many of your ninety Schengen days are left, which countries you have actually been to.

How do bookings get in?

Four ways, and you can use any mixture of them.

• Connect your mailbox. Gmail or Outlook, with your permission. SirTripsALot looks for booking confirmations, files what it finds, and keeps a short excerpt of each email it acted on so you can see why it did.
• Forward one email. Send it to plans@meridiantravelpro.com. Forward from the address you sign in with, or one you have confirmed.
• Paste it. Drop the text of a confirmation in and check the preview before anything is filed.
• Type it. On the web and on the phone, for the booking that never sent an email.

Do I have to connect my mailbox?

No. Forwarding, pasting and typing all work with no mailbox connected at all, and you can disconnect a mailbox at any time — reading stops the moment you do.

What does it read if I do connect it?

Booking confirmations, and the attachments on them. It does not keep the rest of your mail. The privacy policy says this in more detail and is written from the code rather than from a template.

Why was my forwarded booking ignored?

The forwarding address is shared, so the sender is the only thing that says whose booking it is. It has to come from an address SirTripsALot has confirmed is yours — the one you sign in with, plus any you add in Settings — and your mail provider has to sign it. A sender SirTripsALot does not recognize is not answered; one it knows, whose mail it could not authenticate, is told at the address they sign in with. The support page has the longer version.

Does it work offline?

Partly, and only for trips you have asked it to hold. Save a trip for offline and a copy is kept on the device. That it holds up with the radio off has been checked on a couple of trips so far, not on every screen, so treat it as being proven rather than proven. Anything you change while offline is queued and sent when you are back. A trip that is not on your phone yet needs a connection.

Can I share a trip with someone who has no account?

Yes. Each trip can produce one read-only link, off until you ask for it, and you can replace it or stop it whenever you like. The shared page deliberately carries no confirmation codes, no prices, no other travelers' names and no documents.

Does it put my trips in my calendar?

Yes, as a subscription: one feed URL per account that Apple Calendar, Google Calendar and Outlook can subscribe to. It updates on its own, on whatever schedule your calendar app chooses — which is sometimes slower than you would like, and is not something SirTripsALot controls.

Does it track flights live — gates, delays, baggage claim?

Around the day you fly, when you look. A flight card shows the status, delay, terminal and gate the airline currently reports, with how long ago that was checked, and the baggage belt once it has landed, where the airport publishes one. Further from the day it shows what the confirmation said. The airline's own app is still the authority at the gate.

Will it notify me?

On the phone, for things it works out by itself: a reminder to write a trip up when you are home, a free-cancellation deadline about to pass. Messages about the flight itself — a gate change, a delay, a cancellation, the belt your bags are on — are built and sent to your phone, by email or both, as you choose on the phone's Profile screen or in Settings on the web. They are going through their first real flights now, so until one has reached you, keep the airline's app to hand on the day.

Which passports, visas and allowances does it understand?

It counts your days against the Schengen ninety-in-one-hundred-and-eighty rule from your own booked stays, and shows the whole window rather than a single number, so you can see which stay breaches it and try a date. It holds your passport, vaccination records and visas, and warns when a passport will be too close to expiry for a booked trip. It is not immigration advice and does not know your nationality's visa rules.

Where is my data, and can I get rid of it?

In a single hosted database with per-account isolation, and in private file storage that only signs a link when you open a document. You can delete the account yourself, from inside the app, and it takes the rows and the files with it. There is no “contact us to delete” step.

What does it cost?

Nothing today. SirTripsALot is not open to the public yet, nobody is being charged, and there is no card on file to forget about. When there is a price it will be said plainly here before it applies.

Web, phone, or both?

Both. The web app runs in any modern browser; the iPhone app is in development and not yet in the App Store. The two share one account and one set of trips.

Something is wrong and none of this covers it

Write to hello@meridiantravelpro.com. The support page says what to include.