Travel Journals: How to Write, Publish and Share Your Trip Story

What a travel journal is, and what to call it

A travel journal is a personal record of a trip, written or assembled after you travel or while you are on the road. It usually answers four questions: where did we go, in what order, what was it like, and what would we do differently. The same thing goes by several names in English, and the differences are mostly about tone.

• Travel journal / trip journal: the most common names, and the ones used here. A personal record that can also be read by others.
• Travel diary / trip diary: the same idea, usually more private and more day-to-day, often written as you go.
• Travelogue: a more polished narrative of a journey, closer to a book, an article or a film than to a log.
• Trip report: a practical, detail-first account (routes, timings, conditions), popular among hikers, climbers and divers.
• Travel blog / trip story: a journal written to be published and found by strangers.

In MyTrip Builder the word is journal: you generate a travel journal from a trip, and the public gallery of published ones is called shared journals. A published journal can serve as a trip diary for you and as a real, tested itinerary for whoever reads it.

Why keep a travel journal

• You remember more. A rating and two honest sentences written the same day beat any memory a year later.
• You get a keepsake. A finished journal with photos, a cover and a route map is something you can reopen, send to family or print.
• Your next trip gets better. Notes like “too far for one afternoon” or “book this a week ahead” are the most useful input to the next plan.
• Other travelers benefit. A real itinerary, with the real timings and an honest opinion of each stop, is worth more than a list of top ten attractions.

How MyTrip Builder builds a journal from your trip

You do not start from a blank page. A journal is generated from the trip you already built in MyTrip Builder, so the structure (days, stops, hotels, transfers, times, distances) comes ready-made. What you add is the human part: a personal rating, a personal experience note and photos on each stop that mattered, plus an overall story of the trip.

1. Plan and travel. Build the trip as usual. Every stop has fields for notes, a rating and attachments.
2. Record the experience. During or after the trip, open the stops that mattered and write a line or two, give a rating and attach a photo.
3. Open the share menu of the trip and choose to generate a travel journal.
4. Fill in the journal details (see below): who traveled, the overall experience, a cover photo and the countries.
5. Publish it to the shared journals page. Before the button is enabled, the app checks that the journal meets the requirements.

What is inside a journal

The result is a single, styled web page that reads well on a phone and on a desktop, in the language of the app (including right-to-left layout for Hebrew). It contains:

• A cover with the trip name, destination and country, number of travelers and dates, followed by your cover photo, the names of the travelers and the overall story of the trip.
• A summary of the trip in numbers: days, flights, cities, hotels and nights, restaurants, destinations, walking distance, total distance traveled, flight distance, total cost and average rating (only the figures that apply to the trip).
• A cost breakdown by category, in the currency you choose.
• The days, in order. Each day has a header with its date and distance, and a row of day numbers at the top lets readers jump straight to any day. A sticky day header keeps readers oriented while they scroll.
• A card for every stop with its icon, time, length of stay, your rating, your notes and your personal experience, and photos that open in a full-screen viewer with next and previous arrows.
• Hotels as sections of their own, so a multi-city trip reads as one chapter per place.
• A route for each day: a link that opens the day’s route in Google Maps and a small map of the day, plus a link to the route map of the whole trip.
• A back-to-top button for long journeys.

Before you generate: the journal details

When you choose to generate a journal, a short window asks for the details that only you know:

• Traveler names, for example “Dana and Yoav”. Leave it empty if you prefer not to show names.
• The overall experience: a short description of the trip as a whole. This is the text that introduces your journal, so write it for a reader who has never met you.
• A cover photo. The first photo you upload becomes the cover of the journal.
• The destination country and your country of origin. These place the journal in the gallery filters and show a flag on the cover.

Publish it and share the link

A journal reaches other people in one way: you publish it. Publishing is final, and once it is published you can share it:

• Publish it to the public shared journals page, where it gets a permanent address of its own.
• Share a published journal by copying its link, or sending it through WhatsApp or Facebook. For Instagram, copy the link and paste it into your story or bio.

For sharing the plan itself, before the trip, see how to share your trip plan with travel companions.

Publishing to the shared journals page

Publishing requires an account, because the journal is saved to your account and you remain its owner. Each trip can have one published journal, and publishing is final: you cannot delete a published journal or replace it with another one, so check it before you press the button. The first five fields of the details (country of origin, destination country, traveler names, overall experience and a cover photo) are required. You can choose whether your account name appears on the journal card; by default it does not.

A published journal gets its own public page that anyone can open, with no sign-in. The page shows the journal itself, plus a short text summary (title, destination country, number of days, trip type, budget level, complexity and the overall experience). Search engines can find it, so a good title and a real story help the right readers arrive.

What makes a journal complete

To keep the gallery useful, only a complete journal can be published. The app checks this for you before publishing: a button runs the check and shows a list of what is met and what is missing, so there is no guessing. At the time of writing, a complete journal has:

• at least 3 days, with at least 4 stops on every day;
• an overall experience of at least 150 characters;
• at least 5 stops with both a personal note (30+ characters) and a rating;
• a cover photo;
• real writing: not filler text, repeated words or keyboard mashing, and not a copy of another journal.

If something is missing, the app marks it in red and does not let the journal be published until it is fixed. The exact thresholds can change over time, and the check in the app always shows the current ones.

After publishing: approval, credits and levels

A complete journal that stays public for 7 days is approved automatically. The journal itself is public from the moment it is published and cannot be deleted from the app (to have one removed, write to the address shown in the app). The team can hide a journal that breaks the rules.

Approved journals also count for you:

• A traveler level. Each approved journal earns points that raise your level: Certified Traveler, Guide and Ambassador. The level appears as a badge next to your name in the app and at the top of your public journals. Only the level is shown, never your name.
• Credits. An approved journal adds credit to your allowance (extra place searches for a few months and an extra trip slot). Your credits and level are listed in “My quotas” inside the app.

A journal that is frozen or removed stops counting.

Browsing the shared journals gallery

The shared journals page is a gallery of real itineraries from real trips. You can filter by city or place, budget level, trip type (solo, couple, family, friends, group) and complexity (easy, moderate, challenging), so you can find a journal that looks like the trip you are planning, and sort by most liked, most imported or most commented. The page shows the first dozen journals and loads more on request, and it works in English and Hebrew.

Under each card there is a separate strip with what other travelers did with the journal:

• Creator badge for journals by verified creators, linking to a short creator page.
• Comments: how many readers commented. The counter is a link that opens the journal and scrolls straight to its comments.
• Downloads: how many travelers imported the route into a trip of their own.
• Likes: signed-in travelers can like a journal with one tap.
• Featured: a handful of journals are highlighted by the team with a gold frame and listed first.
• Popular: a journal that readers like, comment on and import a lot gets a Popular mark automatically.
• Import route: a button on every published journal. It opens the import window in the app directly.
• Share: the share icon on the strip copies the journal’s link or sends it through WhatsApp or Facebook.

Reading, commenting, liking and reporting

Opening a journal shows it exactly as the author built it, with the day navigation, photos and route maps. Above it, a collapsed Short travel journal menu lets you hide parts of the journal (arrival-method cards, route images, check-in, check-out and transfers), and its Show summary button ticks all of them at once for a short trip summary. Beneath it readers can leave a public comment, with or without an account. Liking needs a sign-in, and you cannot like your own journal. The Share button on the journal page copies its link or sends it through WhatsApp or Facebook.

If a journal is spam, offensive or copied, the report button on the journal page sends it for review. Reported journals can be hidden or removed.

Import a route from a journal into your own trip

This is the feature that connects reading to planning. Every published journal can be imported, because publishing includes it (it is not a separate choice for the author), so the journal shows an “Import to my trip” button. Choose the day your own trip starts, and the route lands in your account as a new trip.

• What is copied: the order of the days and stops, place names, types and times, with places the author verified already verified.
• What is never copied: costs, personal notes, photos, flight numbers and bookings, traveler names and the original dates.
• What you get: a normal trip you can edit freely: change dates, add flights and hotels, rearrange days. It keeps a link back to the journal it came from.

There is a monthly limit on imports, shown in “My quotas”, and the imported trip counts toward your trip limit. Authors can earn credit when travelers import their route. For how to refine an imported route into a realistic plan, see how to plan a day-by-day itinerary.

Tips for a journal worth reading

1. Write the same day. One or two sentences and a rating while the memory is fresh.
2. Be specific and honest. “We queued 40 minutes, go before nine” helps more than “beautiful place”.
3. Say who it suits. Mention whether it worked with kids, in the heat or on a low budget.
4. Choose a cover photo that shows the trip, not just a landmark everyone has seen.
5. Write the overall story last, in a few honest paragraphs: highlights, surprises and what you would change.
6. Mind the privacy. Leave out house addresses, documents, plates and faces of people who did not agree.

Your content, your control

You own what you write. Publishing is final and the journal is public: removal goes through the team, and publishing also lets other members import your route (never your costs, notes or photos). The details are in the terms of use and the privacy policy.

Ready to start? Open the app, plan a trip, and when you are back, turn it into a journal. To see what the result can look like, browse the shared journals.