I traveled 65 countries and built my own travel tracker

(play.google.com)

1 points | by leeahn137 10 hours ago ago

1 comments

  • leeahn137 10 hours ago

    I’m a medical student from South Korea and a heavy traveler who has been exploring the world almost every month since 2024. After a gap year spent visiting 10 countries in 20 days and 18 countries in a single month—including remote places like the Faroe Islands—I realized that for me, traveling had become a "mission" or a "game."

    I wanted an app that could track more than just country counts, such as the combined population of visited areas or specific themes like Muslim-majority countries. When I couldn't find one, I built my own. Despite no prior coding experience, I integrated massive databases of 15,000+ cities and global airports. I manually reviewed over 10,000 entries over three months to ensure accuracy for less famous locations. I finally launched the app this March, and the Android version has already surpassed 20,000 downloads.

    Core Features Gamified ranking system: Earn badges for achievements like visiting 10 countries, flying with every SkyTeam airline, or completing all major landmarks in Kuala Lumpur. Your global rank is based on the rarity and difficulty of the badges you collect.

    Personalized country profiles: Every country page combines travel information (history, economy, safety, etc.) with your own travel history, including visit dates, transport methods, and explored landmarks.

    Random but fun travel statistics: Track things like what percentage of former empires you’ve explored or how many cities you’ve visited where Cristiano Ronaldo has played.

    AI traveler personality analysis: Uses survey responses and your travel history to identify your travel style and recommend destinations that fit you.

    AI diary parsing: Automatically extracts countries, cities, landmarks, flights, trains, and buses from natural-language diary entries and logs them into your database.

    Landmark & UNESCO database: Includes thousands of attractions worldwide, including all 1,200+ UNESCO World Heritage Sites, along with historical information and custom illustrations for major landmarks.

    Activity tracking: Beyond countries and landmarks, the app also lets you track unique travel activities such as cruises, cable cars, amusement parks, famous local foods, global restaurant chains, and even major artworks you’ve seen around the world.

    Flight tracking map: Visualizes your entire flight history with detailed statistics such as aircraft types, mileage, seat classes, layovers, lounges, and pricing. Recent flights can be added quickly using only the flight number and date.

    Travel sharing profiles: Share your travel history with others, including visited countries, cities, flight routes, landmarks, timelines, and personal ratings for each destination.

    Future Roadmap Comparative analytics: Compare your stats and achievements with other travelers and discover destinations popular among users with similar travel styles.

    Public traveler profiles: Let users share their travel history, ratings, timelines, and visited destinations with others.

    As a traveler myself, I am always looking for ways to improve the experience. If there’s anything you’ve always wanted from a travel app, I’d genuinely love to hear it.