The 5 tools you need to plan a group trip (and the one that replaces them)

Most crews cobble together five apps and a group chat, then hand the whole mess to one person. Here's the real toolkit — and where the seams are.

Planning a trip for a group is less a task than a supply chain. Here's what you actually need, and the tool most people reach for.

1. A way to find the date

The first fight. A poll (Doodle) or a shared calendar gets you a weekend that works — assuming everyone answers. This is where most trips die: no date, no trip.

2. A way to compare places to stay

Airbnb, VRBO, Booking, Google. Six links get pasted into the chat and scroll away by Tuesday, and nobody's sure which one the group actually liked.

3. A way to split the money

Splitwise or a spreadsheet. Someone fronts the house and the groceries, then spends a month reminding people to pay them back.

4. A group thread

iMessage, WhatsApp, a group text. Great for jokes, terrible for decisions — the important stuff gets buried under memes within the hour.

5. An info hub

A Google Doc or Notion page for the address, the door code, who's cooking, the loose itinerary. If it exists at all, one person made it, and half the group never opens it.

The seam

None of these tools talk to each other. The date lives in one app, the money in another, the house in the chat, the plan in a doc — and one person stitches it together by hand and holds it all in their head. That person is doing a second job nobody assigned them.

Five tools, one human bottleneck. That's the actual problem.

Kompani is the sixth option: one place that does all five, so no one has to be the glue. Dates, stay voting, fair money and settle-up, and an on-the-ground hub — free, invite by link. You can keep the group chat for the jokes.