Plan and organise your holiday online

When the site loads, have a look around and, if you fancy, click to take one of the tours to see trips other Duffel users have created. When you are ready, return to the Duffel home page and click the Sign up link at the top right of the screen.

Duffel accounts are free and take only a moment to set up. Type in a valid email address and then decide on a username and password and then type in the two Captcha words to prove to the site that a real person is filling in the form. Finally, click the ‘I accept. Sign me up!’ button. Alternatively, Facebook fans can sign in using that site’s Connect feature. This is useful if you routinely use Facebook to keep in touch with friends – just click the blue Facebook Connect button to access it.

Check out the Duffel video by clicking the link or dive straight in and plan a trip of your own. Start by typing in the name of a destination. Duffel does not know every last dot on the planet, but there are more than enough destinations to keep even habitual travellers interested. For our example, we are off to sunny Palm Springs. Type the name into the empty box (if there are other destinations that sound the same, just pick the right one off the list) and then click the Plan button.

At the next screen, give the Duffel (as the site dubs its travel plans) a name, confirm the destination and then enter the trip dates. We don’t know ours yet, so we will leave this blank. Below, define whether the trip is open for anyone to look at when they visit the site or just to the people you invite. Finally, decide whether the trip is a solo job or if it’s being planned with others. For now, we are going to select Plan alone.

And here’s our Duffel corkboard. The site knows where we are going and has already gathered a collection of recommended places to stay and things to do. If there is an item that looks interesting, click any of the ‘more details’ buttons to read more about it. To help organise the trip Duffel divides items into categories along the top of the work area: Activity, Food & Drink, Lodging, Transportation, Note and Recommendation. If any of the suggestions don’t suit you, roll the mouse pointer over them and click the dustbin icon then click OK to confirm the deletion.

As items are deleted the others on the board shift round to take their place. It’s also easy to rearrange items by picking them up and dragging them into a new position using the cursor. New notes can be added to the board by clicking the Note category at the top. Or you can edit one that is already there by rolling the pointer over the note and clicking the Edit button in the bottom right-hand corner. In this screenshot we have edited an existing note that we are about to save back to the corkboard.

Let’s say someone has recommended somewhere to eat while we are staying in Palm Springs and they sent the information in an email. Click the Food & Drink category along the top and then use Windows’ copy and paste commands to transfer the relevant information from the email. Be sure to click the More details link and enter the postal address if possible, because everything will then show up on the Duffel map later. When you are finished, click the Add Food & Drink button to pin the new item on the corkboard.

Add more items in the same way if you like, but Duffel has another trick up its sleeve that makes things even easier. Click the Dashboard button at the top right of the button bar and then click on the Clip-It Bookmarklet link. The precise method of adding this bookmarklet to the browser depends on the brower you are using. For Internet Explorer, for example, right-click the Add to Duffel bookmarklet (on the left of the screen) and choose Add to Favorites. If Windows displays a security alert, ignore it and click OK. Then click the Add button. For other browsers, follow the instructions displayed by the Duffel website.

Click the Dashboard link at the top to return to the main screen and then click the name of your trip to reopen it. Now we are going to open a new tab in our web browser, find something interesting to see in Palm Springs and add it to Duffel using the bookmarklet. We visited the website for the Palm Springs Follies. To add it, just highlight any text you want to copy and then click the Favorites button on Internet Explorer’s button bar and choose Add to Duffel from the list.

This opens the Add to Duffel dialogue box with the highlighted text already in place. From here use the dropdown menus to choose a category for the current item and select which Duffel (trip) you want to add it to. This is useful if you are planning several visits and you stumble across a site that has interesting information related to a different trip. It also automatically adds the web address for you. Finished? Click Add to Duffel.

Flip back to Duffel and if the new item has not appeared on the corkboard, click the browser’s refresh button to reload the page. We have got all our items in place and have worked out when we can travel so now it’s time to schedule everything. Click the pick a date range link in the left-hand panel. Type in the start and end dates (unfortunately, Duffel uses the month/day/year US format) or click the calendar icons to pick the dates. Then click the Save button to return to the corkboard view.

Now we can drag any of the items pinned to the corkboard and drop them on a date. This is simple, but if you want to make a single item occupy multiple dates you will have to copy the item repeatedly onto the specified dates. If you want one hotel for the whole trip, for example, drag the hotel to the first date, hover the mouse pointer over it and pick copy from the pop-up menu. This opens the Add to Duffel dialogue box. Use this to copy the item back to the corkboard, drag the copy to the new date and click Copy again. Repeat as necessary.

As well as the corkboard view, Duffel lets travellers look at their itinerary on a map. Look for the three little icons to the right of the categories running along the top of the main window. Click the one that looks like a folded map and Duffel will display the trip information on a Google map. Use this to check if the various trips and excursions are well grouped.

Finally, itineraries need to be portable so you can use them on the actual trip. Click the Print icon (the last of three on the right) and from here it’s easy to review the trip and then print it out. When you are finished, click the Close This Window link to return to the trip. Note that if you want to plan a trip with others, return to Step 4 and click Plan with friends instead of Plan alone.