Getting Close: February Progress Update
It's been a busy week on Tripsdock, and with go-live approaching, I wanted to share what's landed recently.
The short version: room sharing now works properly, organisers can recover their running costs, and the platform finally supports the kinds of trips I've been building towards — not just group holidays, but properly organised tours too.
Room and cabin assignments
This was the big push. Participants can now indicate whether they want a single room, are travelling as a couple, or are happy to share a twin with someone else. The system matches sharers, handles couples (whether one partner is a passenger or registering independently), and lets organisers manually assign everyone to actual rooms.
The same logic applies to overnight ferry crossings. Cabin types, occupancy, cost splitting — it all works the same way. And crucially, costs are calculated per person based on their actual assignment, not an averaged lump sum. If you're in the premium single, you pay for the premium single.
I also added breakfast and parking costs as optional extras on accommodations. Small thing, but organisers kept asking for it.
Organiser Cost Recovery
This one's been on my mind for a while. Some groups are genuinely just friends going on holiday together — everyone pays their share and that's that. But others are more like organised tours, where one person is actively the "tour guide", is the point of contact for issues/advice during the trip, puts serious miles on their vehicle, wears through tyres, and covers expenses that don't neatly fit into "hotel + ferry."
Tripsdock now supports optional cost recovery. The platform admin manages cost tiers (economy, standard, premium) with itemised per-mile costs — tyres, chain, servicing — and per-day costs like insurance. The organiser picks a tier, enters estimated mileage, and the system calculates a per-participant surcharge. It's transparent: everyone sees the breakdown, and the organiser isn't left out of pocket.
There's more configurability coming, but even now it handles the core use case: letting organisers recover genuine running costs without the awkwardness of asking directly.
ICE Rework
The emergency contact system used to enforce mutual pairs — A holds B's details, B holds A's. That works for some groups, but not all. I've reworked it to support three models:
Pairs — the classic buddy system
Hub and spoke — one person (usually the organiser) holds everyone's details
Round-robin — A→B→C→A, so everyone's covered without anyone holding too much, and handling the "three friends coming along" scenario
Every view of ICE details is still audit-logged. Privacy hasn't changed — just flexibility.
And the rest
A few other things that shipped this week:
Group types — motorcycle, car, cycling, walking, general — each with tailored registration fields. Groundwork for future customisation and more group types.
Minimum participants — organisers can set a threshold so everyone knows the numbers needed to make the trip viable, and the consequences - i.e. likely cancellation - if not.
Register Interest — public visitors can express interest in a trip, with email verification, and organisers can convert them to invitations.
Revenue model simplified — £2 per participant per night, £3 minimum, first trip free. This means we can cover costs and keep building in improvements and new features.
Trip page layout overhaul — panels, better information density, required vs booked comparisons at a glance.
Payment request flexibility — removed the +7 day limit on due dates for short-notice trips.
What's next
Go-live. I'm close — the platform does what it needs to do for real groups to run real trips. The next step is getting it in front of organisers and seeing what breaks.
More soon.