The problem

When you plan a multi-day trip, most tools spread the places unevenly across the days — cramming 20 stops into one day until the timings mean nothing, ignoring lunch, and not counting the distances back.

The solution

A planner built on nearest-neighbour route optimisation that distributes days evenly: an equal share per day plus at most one extra stop, a morning-to-evening order, an automatic 45-minute lunch break at 12:30, and an evening cut-off based on your preferred pace. The accommodation step has real-time location validation and live suggestions (Google Maps style, debounced).

When the plan is done, the screen holds more than a list — it also holds the reasoning: how many stops were split across how many days, which day is busiest, and which places need tickets bought in advance. A planner's real job is not ordering places but answering the question "will this actually fit?"

Technology

Expo / React NativeCustom Route AlgorithmOpenStreetMap Nominatimexpo-location

A detail worth highlighting

In the first version, real place names such as "Karaköy Güllüoğlu" came back empty from search. I diagnosed the root cause live in the simulator: Apple's CLGeocoder only resolves full street addresses and almost always failed on POI (business or venue) names — the reason behind "it just does not work" was not a bug in the code but the wrong geocoding service. The fix was moving search to OpenStreetMap Nominatim and pinning it to the city's bounds.

Screens

Rota Planlayıcı's home screen — the Create New Route button, counters for the countries, cities and points of interest covered, and ready-made popular route cards for Istanbul and Cappadocia
Home screen — build a route from scratch or start from a ready-made city.
Rota Planlayıcı's place selection step — the Spice Bazaar card with shopping and duration tags, swipe-left to skip and swipe-right to add, and the number of selected places with an estimated total time at the bottom
Choosing places — swipe to add, with the total time adding up below.
Rota Planlayıcı's plan summary screen — a map preview with numbered stops, a button to open it in Google Maps, a summary of how the stops are spread across the days along with ticket warnings, and city-specific tips
Plan summary — which day is busy, and where you need tickets in advance.
Rota Planlayıcı's daily schedule screen — stops with time slots, the walking time and distance between them, the automatically added 45-minute lunch break, and the header card for day two
The day's schedule — times, the walks in between, and an automatic lunch break.

Let's talk about a similar problem

If you have a product idea involving location, maps or optimisation, an email is enough.