How Planning a Costa Rica Trip Accidentally Inspired Me to Build a Travel App

A few months ago, my friends and I started planning a trip together that honestly felt long overdue.

There are three of us — all coworkers who became real friends over the years — but we live in completely different parts of the world. One friend lives in Texas, another lives on a small island off the coast of the UK, and I’m in Florida.

What’s funny is that despite working closely together for nearly five years, I had never actually met one of them in person. Time zones, schedules, distance, and visa complications always seemed to get in the way. We’d spent years talking through screens and Slack messages, but never shared an actual trip together.

This summer, everything finally aligned.

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The Challenge: Where Do We Even Stay?

We decided to meet in Costa Rica and bring our partners along too. And that’s when the real challenge started: figuring out where to stay.

At first, it sounded simple.

We found beautiful houses near the Playa Hermosa and Jacó areas — incredible views, infinity pools overlooking the ocean, the kind of Airbnbs that immediately make you imagine yourself already there.

But the more we researched, the more complicated the decision became.

Some locations had amazing scenery but fewer activities nearby. Others were close to adventure destinations like La Fortuna, but didn’t have the same “wow factor” for the house itself.

There were multiple airports to consider. Drive times mattered. Beaches mattered. Excursions mattered. House quality mattered.

Every option felt like a tradeoff.

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Everyone Wanted Something Different

One friend wanted adventure and excursions.

Another wanted relaxation and scenic views.

I wanted a place that felt memorable the second we walked through the door.

And honestly? Trying to balance all of those priorities at once became overwhelming surprisingly fast.

So I did what I usually do when I hit a complicated problem:

I opened ChatGPT.

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Turning ChatGPT Into a Travel Decision Tool

At first, I was just asking questions manually.

Then I started building comparison tables.

Then visual summaries.

Then infographic-style breakdowns I could send to the group so we could compare locations side-by-side.

I had ChatGPT help compare things like:

• Distance from the airport
• Nearby activities
• Beach access
• Airbnb quality and views
• Drive times
• Group logistics
• Overall “wow factor”

And honestly… it worked really well.

What normally would have taken hours of scattered research suddenly became visual and easy to understand.

Instead of opening 40 browser tabs and mentally juggling tradeoffs, we could actually see the differences between locations.

That changed everything.

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The Realization

While doing all of this, I realized something:

There really wasn’t an easy tool built specifically for this kind of travel decision-making.

Especially for groups.

Even using ChatGPT directly still required a lot of prompt tweaking, organization, and manual work to get useful comparisons.

The process worked — but it wasn’t streamlined.

So I decided to build one.

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Building VoyageBlitz

The app I’m creating uses the same process and logic that helped us plan our Costa Rica trip.

The goal is simple:

Help people compare destinations visually, understand tradeoffs quickly, and make travel decisions with far less stress.

Since building the first version, I’ve already started using it for other trips my husband and I are planning too.

Because it turns out that choosing where to go is often harder than choosing whether to go at all.

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Final Thoughts

Sometimes the best ideas don’t start as businesses.

Sometimes they start as a frustrating spreadsheet, too many browser tabs, and a group chat trying to answer one deceptively simple question:

“So… where should we stay?”

And sometimes solving your own problem turns into something worth building for everyone else.