I covered briefly Visit A City in my other article on how to plan a travel itinerary. Let me share with you my review on this itinerary planner that is absolutely free and easy to use. 

Introduction

“Visit A City is all about the fun of planning the details of your trip. We believe that your own personal trip requires you to have your own personal travel guide.

Starting with one of our adjustable guides is the easiest way to decide what to do, where to dine and where to put your head down after an enjoyable day.

Planning a trip was never this easy!”

That is how Visit A City describes itself. And I think they do live up to the phrase “Planning a trip was never this easy”. Let me explain.
Assuming you are going to one of the major destinations in the world, it is highly likely that Visit A City will already have template travel guides and itineraries prepared for you. The 400+ destinations currently covered are divided into different regions:

• Europe
• United States and Canada
• Asia
• Australia and New Zealand
• Central and South America
• Africa and Middle East

You can select the larger cities on the site’s main page. However smaller villages are also available, mainly in Italy at this time but I understand that by the end of the year Visit a City will add much of France, Spain, UK and then USA and Germany to their site. So before you try to figure out how to plan that idea itinerary, why not just see if there is something you can already work with at Visit A City.
Visit a City is free (I guess) because it integrates free content (the reason why I am recommending this site) with their other services (paid tours / purchasing of tickets etc.)

Features offered by Visit a City

Let’s say I’m headed to Marrakech / Marrakesh (I have never been there before although it sounds exotic enough that I would want to visit one day). I don’t know what to see or what to do.
I go over to Visit A City’s main page and search Marrakech in the search box right at the top.
The search brings me to a page with different tabs:

But let’s focus on the free travel itinerary first for now.

Marrakech “In 1 to 3 days”

You will see that Visit a City has 3 popular guides to offer:

• Marrakech in two days Top Attractions – With the description “Spend two days exploring top attractions of Marrakech with this well planned itinerary … “
• Marrakech in three days easy going itinerary – With the description “See Marrakech in three days at your leisure with this easy going itinerary …”
• Marrakech in three days family itinerary – With the description “Use this three day Marrakech family itinerary to plan your time in the Moroccan city. Visit must-see sites …”

Off the bat, the guides to be already tailored for specific requirements. For those who are hard pressed for time, you can go for the top attractions. If you are looking for a slower pace or more family oriented itinerary there are also other options available to you. The best part is that you don’t have to figure out where to go and how best to plan out your itinerary each day.
Assuming I’m in a bit of rush and am interested in the top attractions, clicking on the full itinerary will bring me to sort of an explanation (with a tips section on the right) together with an itinerary and an accompanying map you can fiddle with.

This is a sample itinerary helpfully setting out a convenient route covering the various attractions across two days. If you are happy with that route, you are good to go. Just download the phone app and you can bring that route with you and use it offline when you are in Marrakech. If not, fill free to modify the route by adding and deleting attractions to/from the list or swapping the attractions from Day 1 to Day 2.

Neat features

Neat features here include a brief summary of the attraction, the expected average time spent at that attraction and what’s nearby. This allows you to make somewhat informed decisions when amending the itinerary. You are also given an estimate of the travel time taken to walk from one destination to another helping with the planning. These features allow you to tweak and customise any itinerary to suit your needs and interests while allowing you to get a quick sample of the sites available so you won’t miss them as a result of poor research skills.

When I first started using this site, the selection of cities was not as much but I had a blast using it for my trip to Paris (which was one of the few cities available then). Screenshots of the app on my phone showing my customised itineraries for London and Paris:

Edit: I have been informed of another interesting feature introduced by Visit a City: “Places to Eat”. While planning your itinerary, you can for some cities (at present about 50 larges cities around the world) select an option to show different recommended places to dine in. These places will be marked on your map so you can decide whether to include a particular restaurant into your itinerary.

When using the itinerary planner, you will see another tab titled “Day Trips”. This will set out the various day trips being offered by Visit a City. These are paid services and you may or may not want to engage Visit A City. However, it provides you a (free) summary of the different side trips you can take while in Marrakech. Neat feature right?

Conclusion
I will recommend this site and also its accompanying phone app to all travellers. It value adds to any travel itinerary and should be a reference point when planning any itinerary. The free parts of the site are by themselves good enough a reason to make use of that site each time you travel.
Have you used Visit a City before? Let me know in the comments below.
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