Seven days, four towns, and the booking list has two holes in it. The first and last nights were easy, because those were the places you were going. The nights in between are still open three weeks out, because each belongs to a town you only pass through, and booking it means working out where that day actually ends.
So you open a new tab, type the town, count the dates on your fingers, type the number of people, and get a list. Then you do it again for the next night, in a fresh tab, because the first one has forgotten everything. When a booking does go through, the plan you built knows nothing about it until you go back and type that in too.
This is for the person holding that plan: a trip with more than one stop, two or three nights still unbooked, and no appetite for a fourth round of retyping.
Count the nights before you count the hotels
When this is done, every night of the trip has a place to sleep written against the day it ends, and each morning's first drive starts from the right door. The way to get there is to stop thinking in towns and start thinking in nights.
A seven-day trip has six nights. Write them down as a list, one line per night, and put each against the day it closes rather than the town it is near. Night 3 belongs to wherever Day 3 finishes, which on a driving trip is often 90 minutes past the town you had in your head.
That order, nights first and the days built around them, is the same one that makes a one-week national park RV trip work: hold the nights, then plan the days between them.
Search from the day that needs the hotel
MyTripLogix helps the person with a multi-stop trip fill the nights still open by putting Find a hotel on each day's Staying tab, with the search already filled in from the plan. The place is where that day's plan ends, its last stop. The dates are that night, or the whole trip if you are on Day 1. The guest count is the trip's party. A map of places to stay appears under the fields, with prices on the pins, and the prices on the map come from the booking sites.
Nothing leaves the page until you tap a listing or See all results on the booking site. The booking happens there, on Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com or Vrbo, and the trip is still open behind it. When it is booked, Add your hotel puts it on the plan, and every morning after check-in starts from its door.
If you have not started a trip yet, the same search runs on its own page with the fields empty, and it works signed out.
Why the retyping is where the mistakes live
Take the six-night trip and do it the old way. Each search needs four fields: the town, the check-in date, the check-out date and the number of guests. Six nights means six separate searches and 24 typed fields.
Two of those four fields are dates, and on a multi-stop trip each date is a small calculation. Day 4 is the 17th, so check in on the 17th and out on the 18th. Get one of those wrong, by one, and you have booked a room for the night you are somewhere else. Across six searches that is 12 chances to be off by a day.
The town field is worse, because the obvious thing to type is the place the trip is going. On Day 4 of a driving trip the day does not end there. It ends at the last stop you planned, and a room in the wrong town costs you the morning.
When the search opens from the day, all four fields come from the plan. Nothing is typed, so the date cannot disagree with the day, and the town is the one the day ends in. The saving is not the typing. It is that a search started from the plan cannot describe a night the plan does not contain.
The second half of the problem is the plan not learning what you booked. Where you sleep is, after the route, the largest single cost on the trip, as the RV trip cost walk-through shows. A booking that lives only in an email is a cost the plan cannot see and a start point the next morning cannot use. Add your hotel closes both gaps with one step.
Put the nights on the plan before you leave
A trip where every night has a door to start from is a trip where the mornings run themselves. Start free and build the itinerary first: the days, the stops and the drives between them, on the free plan. Then open each day's Staying tab and work down the list of open nights. If you plan to turn the trip into a printed book afterwards, the place you stayed each night is already in it.
Frequently asked questions
Does MyTripLogix book the hotel for me?
No. The search opens on the day's page with a map of places to stay and prices on the pins, and when you pick one it sends you to the booking site to book. Booking happens on Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com or Vrbo, and the trip stays open behind it. Once it is booked, Add your hotel puts it on the plan.
Where do the prices on the hotel map come from?
The prices on the map come from the booking sites. MyTripLogix shows what they list for the night and the guest count the search was opened with, and the booking site is where you see the full listing and pay.
Which town does the search use on a day with several stops?
The place where that day's plan ends, which is its last stop. On Day 1 the dates are the whole trip, and on any later day they are that night. The guest count is the trip's party.
Can the plan find flights the same way?
Yes, for a flying trip with no flights on the plan yet. A Find flights link opens Google Flights with the origin, destination and dates already entered. Once the flights are added to the plan, the link goes away.
