Building a Travel Tracker App for Couples (Because We Needed One)

My girlfriend and I travel a lot together.

Nothing crazy. We're not influencers flying to Bali every other month. But we take trips when we can. Weekend getaways. Holiday vacations. The occasional spontaneous road trip because we found cheap flights somewhere.

A few months ago, we were trying to remember all the places we'd visited together. We started listing them on paper and realized we couldn't agree on half of them.

"We went to Barcelona in 2023, right?"

"No, that was 2022. 2023 was Lisbon."

"Wait, did we actually go to Lisbon or just talk about it?"

That conversation made me realize we needed a way to track this stuff. So I did what I always do. I looked for an app.

The Problem With Existing Travel Apps

I found a bunch of travel tracker apps. Some were pretty good actually. But none of them did exactly what we wanted.

Most apps focus on countries.

You pin countries you've visited on a world map. Cool visual. But it doesn't capture the detail we cared about. We haven't just visited "Spain." We've been to Barcelona, Madrid, and Seville. Each city was a different trip, different memories, different experience.

Marking "Spain" as visited feels incomplete.

Most apps are built for solo travelers.

The whole vibe is personal achievement. "I've visited 47 countries!" That's great, but we wanted something that felt like ours. A shared record of places we've explored together.

Some apps let you share your profile, but it's still your map with your stats. Not a couple's thing.

Some apps are just too complex.

I don't need full trip planning, expense tracking, itinerary management, and social features. I just want to mark places we've been and maybe add a note or photo. Simple.

So I'm building my own.

What I'm Actually Building

Here's the concept. A travel tracker designed specifically for couples.

Countries AND cities.

When you visit somewhere, you mark both the country and the specific cities. Want to mark that you've been to Japan? Great. But you can also mark Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka as separate entries with their own notes.

Over time, you build a detailed map of everywhere you've traveled. Not just "we've been to 12 countries" but "we've been to 12 countries and 34 cities."

Shared between partners.

The app is built for two people. You and your partner share the same map, the same entries, the same memories. When one of you adds a place, it shows up for both.

No "invite your friend to view your profile" nonsense. It's genuinely shared from the start.

Notes and memories for each place.

Each city can have notes attached. Where you stayed. What you ate. That random thing that happened. Photos from the trip.

The goal is that in 10 years, you can open the app and remember not just that you went to Amsterdam, but what that trip was actually like.

Simple by design.

No trip planning. No expense tracking. No social features or public profiles. Just marking places, adding memories, and seeing your map grow over time.

The Business Model (No Subscriptions)

I've been thinking a lot about how to monetize this.

Look, I hate subscriptions for personal apps. Especially for something like a travel tracker that you might open once a month. Paying $5/month for an app you use occasionally? That math doesn't work for users.

Here's my plan..

Free tier. You can use the core features for free. Track countries, add a limited number of cities, see your map. Enough to be genuinely useful without paying anything.

One-time lifetime payment. Pay once, unlock everything forever. Unlimited cities, full export, all future features. No recurring charges.

I'm drawn to this model because it aligns incentives correctly. I don't want to nickel and dime users with premium features hidden behind a paywall. I want to build something good enough that people want to pay for it once and own it forever.

The lifetime payment thing is risky from a business perspective. Subscription revenue is more predictable. But it feels right for this kind of app. Personal tools shouldn't require ongoing tribute.

Where I Am Right Now

Honest status update. I've made progress, but there's still a lot to do.

The core architecture is in place. The basic UI flows are working. You can add places, view your map, switch between countries and cities view. The foundation is solid.

But I'm not showing screenshots yet.

Why not?

Because it's not ready enough. I've got ugly placeholder UI, missing features, and rough edges everywhere. I'd rather wait until I have something that actually looks good and demonstrates the vision properly.

This is something I learned from past projects. Showing something too early, when it looks half-baked, creates the wrong impression. People see the rough version and that becomes their mental image of the product.

I want the first real reveal to be something I'm proud of.

Update 2 will have the goods.

In the next update on this project, I'll include actual screenshots. Maybe a short video walkthrough. Enough that you can see what I'm going for and whether it resonates.

For now, trust that work is happening in the background.

Why This Project Excites Me

I'm building a lot of things right now. The Life OS project. Backend experiments. Various side things.

But this travel tracker gets me genuinely excited in a way some projects don't.

It's personal.

This isn't some abstract "maybe someone will use this" product. My girlfriend and I will use this. We're the target users. Every feature I build is something we actually want.

That makes development so much more motivating. When you're scratching your own itch, you don't have to guess what features matter. You know.

It's shareable.

Unlike some of my more technical projects, this is something I can show to normal people. "Look, here's everywhere we've traveled together." Friends and family get it immediately.

There's something satisfying about building tools that non-developers can appreciate.

The market exists.

I'm not inventing a new category here. Travel tracker apps exist. People use them. The question is just whether I can build a better version of what's out there.

That's a different kind of challenge than building something completely novel. The demand is proven. I just need to execute well.

2026 Is Going to Be a Big Year

I keep saying this, but it's true.

I've got multiple projects in various stages of development. This travel tracker. Rembiti (my birthday reminder app). The Life OS. Some smaller experiments.

2026 is when I want to actually ship these things. Not "launch a beta" or "soft release to friends." Actually ship. Put them in app stores. Market them. See if real people want to use them.

Building side projects while working is slow. Progress happens in evenings and weekends. But it compounds. The hours I'm putting in now will pay off when I have multiple finished products to show for it.

I'm excited. Genuinely.

What's Coming in Update 2

Here's what to expect in the next post about this project..

Screenshots. Actual UI, not mockups. The real app running on a real device.

Demo video. A quick walkthrough of adding a trip, viewing the map, and seeing how the couples sharing works.

Launch timeline. By Update 2, I should have a better sense of when this thing will actually be ready for real users.

Technical details. For the developers reading, I'll share more about the stack, architecture decisions, and lessons learned.

For now, the work continues in the background.

If you're interested in following along, I'll be posting updates here as the project progresses. There's something fun about building in public, even when "public" means a blog post every month or two.

Stay tuned.

FAQ

What platforms will it be on?

iOS and Android. Building with React Native so I can ship to both from the same codebase.

Can it sync with my partner automatically?

Yes, that's the core feature. You both log into the same shared account, and everything syncs between your devices.

What if we break up?

Good question that I haven't fully solved yet. Probably an option to duplicate the data to a personal account so you don't lose your travel history. Relationships end, but the memories of the trips you took are still yours.

How much will the lifetime payment cost?

Haven't decided yet. Probably somewhere in the $15-30 range. Enough to be meaningful revenue, cheap enough to be an impulse purchase for people who travel.

When will it launch?

Targeting sometime in 2026. I'll have more specifics in Update 2.

Can I use it solo, not as a couple?

Probably, yeah. The core functionality works for individuals too. But the design and marketing will focus on couples since that's the gap I'm trying to fill.