Questions and answers
What is TripEagle, and what is Kestrel?
TripEagle is a group trip planner: a private website and app for one group trip. The organizer plans the trip in the studio, with co-planners if they like, and everyone going gets one itinerary on the trip site and the app. Kestrel is TripEagle's AI. It interviews the organizer about the trip and drafts a first plan, which lands marked suggested, with an undo. After that it proposes changes rather than making them, and on a pass it also answers members' questions about the plan, reads forwarded booking emails and scans receipts. The organizer and co-planners decide: a proposal changes nothing until one of them accepts it, and members see none of the plan until one of them publishes it.
Who pays for TripEagle, and is it a subscription?
Only the organizer, and only if the trip needs more than Free. Every trip starts Free, with up to 10 people and 1 co-planner. A pass, the Trip Pass, for $49, with up to 12 people, or the Group Pass, for $89, with up to 30, is a one-off purchase for one trip, bought by its organizer before, during or after the trip. It is not a subscription. Nothing renews, and nothing is charged again. Members never pay: co-planners, travelers and guests join for nothing. Every pass comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Do the trip site and the app work with no signal?
Yes, for the trip itself. Once a member signs in, the trip site keeps the pages of their trip on the phone: home, each day as their party follows it, the album, notes, bookings, the checklist and announcements, with each image at its smallest width, so they open with no signal. It keeps those pages only until the member's session ends: signing out clears them. The app keeps the trip on the phone too, says when it was last read, and holds an offline basemap of each region the party's days pass through. Photos and expenses added in the app with no signal wait on the phone and go up once there is signal again. The studio needs a connection.
Who can see a trip?
Only its members, unless the organizer opens it. Someone becomes a member when the organizer or a co-planner invites them by email, or when they open a join link pasted into the group's chat, which can be set to wait for approval. Each member has a role: co-planners change the plan with the organizer, travelers add photos, comments and expenses, and guests follow the trip without going on it, with a narrower view. Each party sees its own bookings. The organizer can open the trip site to anyone with its address, but a trip site is never found by a search engine, and members' photos stay members-only unless the organizer opens the album too. What TripEagle keeps, and for how long, is in the privacy policy.