Day Trips as Activities
When creating a trip, you may plan to take one or more Day Trips to other locations, away from your current base location.  Your Base Location is the current location where you are spending the night.  This may be something as simple as taking a tour bus to another location or taking a train to multiple locations before returning to your base location for the night.
A Day Trip is when you travel to one or more locations that are close enough to make a round-trip within a day, but does not require an overnight stay.
Here we go through the different steps of creating a Day Trip using Activities.  Using activities as Day Trips is the easiest method and comes with additional functionality such as alternate country/city links, color highlighting and activity grouping.  There are however limitations to using activities, compared to the full-featured method of Day Trips as Locations.

In general, when building a trip, you will create a location for every place you plan to visit.  This allows you to create activities for each location and utilize the Travel Planner to view travel times, durations and route maps between locations.  Day Trips are handled a little differently, and it's possible to create a Day Trip using only activities but there are some limitations.

The below example is for a Day Trip from Florence to Pisa Italy.

1) Setting an activity as a Day Trip Easiest method to simply flag an activity as a Day Trip, but has no special functionality.
2) Setting the Alternate Country and City to define a Day Trip Setting the Alternate Country and City to link icons to the Day Trip location rather than the base location.
3) Grouping activities together with Activity Groups Activities can be grouped together, making them easily identifiable from other activities at a location.  Using the Mobile Trip Profile, you will be able to hide/show the different Activity Groups.
 
1) Setting an activity as a Day Trip

This is the quickest and easiest way of setting an activity as a Day Trip.  The Day Trip activity type that can be assigned to any activity just as you would any other type such as Train, Car, Castle, etc.  Assigning the Day Trip activity type will highlight the activity so it stands out from the other activities.  In certain lists, the Day Trip Activity will be shown beneath the location, making it easily recognizable.  There is no additional functionality when setting the Day Trip activity type.

When the 'Day Trip' activity type is selected, the activity will be highlighted to stand out for easy identification.

The Activity Type can be assigned on the Activity Details page as shown to the left, or on the 'Trip Planning - Location Activities' page where you can update all activities at once.

In this example, we have added an activity under Florence and selected the activity type of 'Day Trip'.  We also entered the activity title as 'Pisa'. 

When to use

When you only want to mark an activity as a Day Trip and are not concerned about additional functionality.

Advantages

This is the easiest method for flagging an activity as a Day Trip.

Disadvantages

Icon links for the activity will still be associated to the base location and not the Day Trip location.

 
The Mobile Trip Profile showing the highlighted Day Trip activity
The Day Trip activity will be highlighted in the list of activities under Florence, distinguishing it from other activities.
 
The Jump To Location and other lists show activities marked as a Day Trip


In different lists throughout the trip, Day Trips activities are shown beneath the location, making it easy to recognize the locations where Day Trips have been defined.  The first image shows a 'Jump To' locations list having the Day Trips listed.  The second image has the same list shown on the Mobile Trip Profile.
 
2) Setting the Alternate Country and City to define a Day Trip

Setting the Alternate Country and City indicates you are traveling away from your Base Location to another location, hence a Day Trip.  The Alternate Country and City can be set on the Activity Details page.  The Activity Type does not matter in this case and can be set to any type, such as Train, Meal, Castle, etc.

Even if the Alternate Country is the same as the Base Country Location, it should be set to indicate a Day Trip.  By doing this, another group of icons will be shown that are linked to the Day Trip location, rather than the Base Location.

When to use

When you want to create an activity as a type other than Day Trip, such as Train, Meal, Castle, etc. but it is actually a Day Trip to another location.

Advantages

Icons will be linked to the Day Trip location rather than the Base Location.

Disadvantages

As this is an activity, you must create multiple activities in the same way to encompass your Day Trip.
 
Icons are now linked to the Alternate Country/City
After the Alternate Country and City have been set, the activity icons for the Day Trip location will display and be linked to Pisa rather than the base location of Florence.
 
Day Trip Activity Checklist Icons
When an activity is added to a location, by default, the checklist icons are linked to the Base Location.  By setting the Alternate Country/City, the checklist icons will be linked to the Day Trip location.
 
Day Trip Activity Navigation using the Mobile Trip Profile
A new group of icons now display and are linked to the Day Trip location.

As an example, selecting the map icon of the Day Trip location will provide navigation from your current location to the Day Trip location.

To navigate back to your base location, select the same icon at the location level of Florence.
 
3) Grouping activities together with Activity Groups


Continuing with our Day Trip example to Pisa from Florence, we want to group all our related activities together.

We have created an Activity Group called 'Day Trip to Pisa' and assiged it to three different activities as shown by the group title and highlight color.

Activity Groups are not just for Day Trips.  You can use Activity Groups to group activities together to help identify all related activities.  Another example may be to create an assign a group called 'Museums' for all activities where you will be visiting different museums in a city.

On the Activity Groups page, you can assign the group to all activities at the same time.  You may also edit each activity individually on the Activity Details page and assign the activity.

When to use

When you want to group related activities together.  Not just for Day Trips, but for any and all related activities.

Advantages

Related activities are easy to recognize by their highlight color.

Using Using the Mobile Trip Profile, you will be able to select to show/hide the Activity Groups.

Disadvantages

As we are still using an activity, even with the Alternative Country/City being set, it's not an actual location.  You will not have full trip functionality as you would when creating Day Trips as Locations.
 
Day Trip Activity Navigation and the Mobile Trip Profile
Mobile display showing the grouped activities.

See Mobile - Activity Groups for additional details on hiding/showing the activity groups.