Trip planner & favorites
Logged-in members can save businesses to favorites and build them into day-plans or road trips with a shared map view.
The trip planner at /trips turns the directory into a personal "places I want to go" list — useful for both day-outings and multi-stop road trips.
Saving a favorite
On any business listing page, look for the ❤️ Save to favorites button. Tap it and the business is added to /favorites. Tap again to remove. All your saved businesses show up there in a card grid.
Building a trip
- Go to /trips/new and give it a title (e.g. "Saturday brunch crawl", "Drive to the lake").
- Optionally set a planned date and description.
- On the trip page, add stops two ways:
- From favorites — pick from your saved list (one click).
- Custom stop — type a name and address. Useful for spots not yet in the directory (a friend's house, a trailhead, a viewpoint). Hit 🔍 Look up on the map to confirm the address resolves to a pin; if it doesn't, you can paste exact coordinates from openstreetmap.org, Google Maps, or latlong.net (right-click the spot in any of those to copy the coords).
- Drag stops to reorder them.
- Add per-stop notes ("try the lemon pie") and planned times.
- Mark stops visited or skipped as you go.
The map
Every trip page renders all stops on an interactive map (OpenStreetMap via Leaflet). Stops are numbered in the order you've set, with a dashed route line connecting them. The map auto-fits to show all stops.
Sharing
From the right sidebar, hit Make shareable to generate a public URL. Anyone with the link can view the trip (read-only) without an account — useful for sharing with friends or family.
Completing a trip
When the day's done, hit Mark complete. Completed trips stay in your list with a green checkmark. You earn the Road Tripper badge after planning your first trip, and the silver tier after 10 completed trips.
How it helps the directory
Every time someone favorites a business or adds it to a trip, that business's saved + trip counts go up. These power three new sort orders site-wide:
- Most saved — businesses with the highest favorite count.
- Most tripped — businesses people actually plan visits to.
- Community pick — combined score that rewards both signals.
So as more members use the trip planner, the "best of" rankings on every category page improve organically.
Privacy
Trips are private by default. They only become visible to others if you explicitly share. Your favorites list is always private to you.