Routeful - Travel Planner

Days, stops and times in the order you'll actually do them. Plotted on a map, routed between, ticked off as you go, and synced across your devices. Keeping your holiday stress free.

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Inspiration

I love travelling whether it be for 2 weeks in Thailand or a few days in Germany. I want to make sure I am making the most of my time away, doing and seeing as much as possible. Google Maps has a feature that allows you to plot you activities across layers but it was limited and has no suitable mobile app, it is best suited for the web which is no good when you're travelling with just a phone in your pocket. I wanted to create something truly useful for myself and share it with the world.

What it does

Routeful allows you to create Trips each containing their own date range. Inside each trip you can add locations against specific days, whether it be a restaurant, meeting point, or activity. Once fully populated, Routeful can give you an entire map overview of everything you have planned with a summary of the total travel time, allowing you to check off completed events or launch into a navigation app of your choice to get you going.

How we built it

The app is built in Swift/SwiftUI, mostly hand written by myself. Some AI was used to brainstorm designs which is a weaker skillset of mine. It was moderately used to support my development but more as a research tool rather than allowing it to do everything for me. This is the way I prefer to work with AI as I feel a larger sense of gratification in creating it myself. As I am only targeting the Apple platform I opted for CloudKit alongside SwiftData for persistence which was new territory.

Challenges we ran into

The App Store review process was a tricky area to manage, this is my first app released to the public and understanding what Apple wants was a great learning curve to overcome. Further to this, I have never monitized mobile apps before which initially was a struggle in understanding what was required, but the use of RevenueCats documentation alongside it's MCP server made the process better than I could've hoped for. CloudKit and SwiftData was also new to me as I have mostly worked with Supabase or some other backend solution in the past. This initially felt quite restrictive and challenging but once my understanding started to click, it became an invaluable decision that seamlessly allowed iCloud sync for customer data. Lastly, this app pushed me into learning new Swift technologies to a level I hadn't reached before, notably using MapKit and implementing a search capability, getting this right so it could have addresses and locations was no small feat but knowledge I can now carry forward.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am particularly proud of releasing an app out there to the world, I have previously tried and failed many time in the past so I feel a huge sense of accomplishment for getting something out there. What really benefitted me with Routeful was that I was creating something for myself, I am the customer, stakeholder, and developer all at once. Tackling new technologies is something I always try to do and branching out into unfamiliar territory is always an enjoyable experience and I am proud to be able to carry my new skillset forward and take the learnings of the difficulties

What we learned

Build for yourself, be excited. I have never been more enthused to create and develop than I have for Routeful. My eagerness to use it has allowed me to improve the customer experience like never before. I spent 4 days in London using Routeful to get me around and the feedback I had for myself was extremely beneficial. Alongside this, I have learnt many previously unfamiliar technologies, MapKit, CloudKit, SwiftData. Pushing myself outside of my comfort zone has taught me more than anything.

What's next for Routeful - Travel Planner

My Jira board is packed full of ideas but to name a few key ideas that I am working towards:

  • Push Notifications: Giving the user a nudge when they should start heading to their next location, based on the walking distance between their current position and the destination.
  • Opening time warnings: When adding a venue to your itinerary, Routeful will warn you if it is closed during the date and time you have selected
  • Archiving: De-cluttering the Trips view, allowing you to archive surpassed Trips. Tying into this, implementing a "Spotify"-like year in review
  • Shareable itineraries: Going somewhere new and you have no idea what's there, browse itineraries created by the community and tailor to suit you.

I am also working on marketing the app, I will soon be using the free credits provided by Apple for first time app releases as well as submitting it to a number of app review publishers.

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