Travel itinerary template: copy it, with example

Most itinerary spreadsheets die of too many columns. If every activity gets a time, address, price, opening hours, link and note, you give up by day two, and on the road you still can't find the one thing you need. This template separates what behaves differently while planning and travelling: the rough route, the individual days and the bookings. That makes three small tables, each shown once empty for copying and once filled in. There is no file to download; you can select the tables on this page and paste them straight into Excel, Google Sheets, Word or a notes app.

The example is a week in Italy on an open-jaw ticket: land in Rome, fly home from Venice, with Florence in between.

Table 1: the legs

Start here, not with the daily plan. This table answers one question only: does the route work with the nights you have? Add up the nights at the end. If the total doesn't match your days off, a night is missing or a place has to go.

To copy:

Filled in:

Train times come from Italo's route overview and refer to its high-speed trains. At this stage the neighbourhood is enough; the actual hotel goes into table 3 later. Staying close to the station is deliberate: with only two nights in Florence you don't want to drag a suitcase across town.

1. Rome
2. Florence
3. Venice

Base map: Natural Earth

The map also shows why this order makes sense: the three cities sit almost on one line. Flying into Venice and home from Rome uses the same trains in reverse. Zigzagging, say Rome, Venice, Florence, costs you about half a travel day, since Italo lists around 4 hours from Rome to Venice.

Table 2: the days

This is where most itinerary templates go wrong: an hourly grid from 8 am to 10 pm. It looks tidy and survives until the first delay. Five fields per day work better, one row per day instead of one row per hour.

To copy:

Filled in:

Why these fields:

• Area: keeps walking short, because you never put places that are far apart on the same day. How much really fits is covered in How many sights per day?
• Fixed appointment: one a day at most. Anything with a time slot goes here, and it pays to book as soon as your dates are set, for example tickets for the Colosseum and Vatican^* at Tiqets. Check the terms and current times on the official site.
• If there is time: non-binding by design. If it falls away, nothing has gone wrong.
• If it rains: one keyword is enough. The point is not having to look it up on a wet pavement.

What's missing is on purpose. Opening hours and prices change and quietly go stale in your table, so check them on the official site the evening before.

Table 3: the bookings

This is the table you will open most often on the road, usually at a counter with poor signal. Keep it offline on your phone.

To copy:

Filled in (codes and dates invented for illustration):

The "cancel by" column is the most valuable one. When plans change it shows at once which change still costs nothing. Sort by date and you also get your sequence of events. You can compare and book trains with Omio's train search^* or directly with the railway; How to book trains and buses in Europe explains what to book when.

Excel, Word or Google Sheets?

All three work with this template. The difference is what you want to do with it.

To transfer a table: select it on this page, copy, and paste into the first cell. In Excel and Sheets the columns usually survive; in Word you get a Word table. One formula is worth adding in Excel, the sum of the "Nights" column. An itinerary rarely needs more automation than that.

There is one thing no table can do: tell you whether a day's stops are close together. You still need a map for that, for example as described in Plan a trip with Google Maps.

Fill the tables in this order

• Table 1 first: enter places and nights, compare the total with your days off
• Book your transport and enter the code in table 3 straight away
• Book places to stay and note the cancellation deadline
• Rough out table 2: only an area and one fixed appointment per day
• Book timed tickets for the fixed appointments
• Put all three tables offline on your phone

This is the same order as our guide How to plan a trip: step by step, which also covers documents, budget and packing. This page just gives you the form to go with it.

The same template as an app

If you'd rather not type all that: YesTrip has the same three levels. You enter a destination and dates, the AI suggests a day-by-day plan with times, walking legs and a map, and you decide what stays. A trip can include several cities. Forward confirmation emails to your personal YesTrip address, paste them in or open the booking PDF; flights, hotels, trains and tours are recognised and only join the trip after you confirm. The plan can go out as a PDF or a calendar subscription, so you can still print it.

What the app can't do is freely designed columns like Excel. If you want to run your own budget next to the plan, a spreadsheet is often faster. And YesTrip never books anything itself; you always book with the provider.

Coming from outside the EU, an eSIM for Italy^* is one way to keep your tables and maps reachable on the road; our eSIM price index compares the prices.

* Ad – Partner link: if you book there, we earn a commission. Your price stays the same.