Help

FAQ

Getting started, how email parsing works, and answers to the common questions.

Getting started

What is Bashō?

Bashō is a place to plan, share, and remember your trips. You create a Trip, add Plans (flights, hotels, restaurants, activities, and more), upload Memories (photos, video, audio, text), and end up with a beautifully designed Bashō book you can share with the people you traveled with.

What's the fastest way to start?

  1. Click New trip on the Trips page. Give it a name (e.g. “Lisbon, June”) and a destination. Dates help us auto-group memories by day later, but you can leave them blank.
  2. Add a plan from the picker — or, much easier, forward your booking confirmation email to your magic Bashō address (see below) and we’ll pull out the details for you.
  3. Open Memories on the trip to upload photos, videos, voice memos, or text cards as you travel.
  4. When you’re back, click View Book on the trip detail page to see the magazine-style keepsake view.

Do I need to add things manually?

No. The easiest way is to forward your booking emails (or connect Gmail, see below) and let Bashō parse them for you. Manual entry is always available too.

Forwarding confirmation emails

How does email forwarding work?

You forward your airline / hotel / restaurant confirmation emails to a personal Bashō address. We read the email, pull out the relevant details (provider, dates, addresses, confirmation numbers), and place them in your Inbox as “unfiled” plans. You pick which trip each plan belongs to.

We never auto-file. The user always confirms which trip a plan goes on.

Step-by-step: forward your first confirmation

  1. Open Settings from the menu in the top-right. Find Your forwarding address — it looks like res+abc123@basho.travel where the part after res+ is unique to your account.
  2. Copy that address to your clipboard. You can also save it as a contact in your phone — name it Bashō so it’s one tap away when you’re forwarding from your phone.
  3. Open the booking confirmation email (in Gmail, Apple Mail, Outlook, whatever you use).
  4. Hit Forward. Paste your forwarding address in the To: field. You don’t need to add a subject or body — the email is the payload.
  5. Hit Send. Within about 30 seconds, the plan will appear in your Inbox tab. Tap it, pick the trip it belongs to, and it’s filed.

Tip: forward as soon as you book. The longer you wait, the more emails pile up at the end of the trip.

Which providers does the parser understand?

We support all 23 plan types (flights, hotels, car rentals, restaurants, bars, cafés, museums, concerts, tours, spas, and more) from any sender. The parser reads the body and extracts what it can. If it can’t confidently classify a plan, it lands in your Inbox as a generic note for you to edit.

What if the parser gets something wrong?

Tap the plan in your Inbox or in the trip and choose Edit. All extracted fields are editable. Hit Save — nothing is overwritten in the original email.

Where do my forwarded emails go?

The raw email body and the extracted plan details are stored on your account. We process the body once through our OpenAI-powered parser to extract the structured data. We don’t share or sell this content. See the Privacy Policy for full detail.

Connecting Gmail (optional fast path)

What does connecting Gmail do?

Instead of forwarding every booking by hand, you can connect a Gmail account once and let Bashō scan your inbox for travel emails. We only fetch messages that match common travel keywords (airlines, hotels, big booking platforms), run them through the same parser as forwarded mail, and drop the results in your Inbox to file.

What permission are you asking for?

Read-only access to your Gmail (the gmail.readonly scope). We can read your messages; we cannot send, delete, or modify anything.

We only fetch messages that match a travel-keyword search. We do not read your personal correspondence, financial accounts, or anything outside the travel-keyword filter.

What do you store from Gmail?

An encrypted refresh token (so we can keep scanning), your Gmail address, the bodies of the messages we’ve actually fetched and parsed (so we can show you what they were), the plans extracted from them, and timestamps. We do not store your Google password — OAuth doesn’t give us one.

How do I connect?

  1. Open Settings from the top-right menu.
  2. Find the Gmail section. Click Connect Gmail.
  3. Google will ask you to confirm. Approve the read-only scope. You’ll return to Settings with Connected as you@gmail.com.
  4. Click Scan now. We’ll pull up to 50 travel-keyword messages from the last 90 days. They land in your Inbox.

How do I disconnect?

In Settings, click Disconnect Gmail. We immediately delete the refresh token and stop all future scans. You can also revoke access from your Google Account permissions page.

Should I use Gmail or forwarding?

Forwarding has zero permission cost and works with any email provider. Gmail is faster once it’s set up because you don’t have to think about it. Many testers start with forwarding for the first trip or two, then connect Gmail once they trust the parser.

Trips & plans

What are plans?

A plan is anything you do on a trip — a flight, a hotel night, a restaurant reservation, a museum visit, a concert. We support 23 types organized into seven categories: Getting there, On the ground, Eat & drink, Health & wellness, Experiences, Shopping, and Other.

Do plans need dates and times?

They’re much more useful with dates — that’s what powers the day-by-day itinerary, the map, and the Bashō book. But you can leave date fields blank and fill them in later.

Will plans appear on the map?

Yes, automatically, if the plan has an address. We geocode addresses in the background. The trip Map tab shows color-coded pins; the global /map page shows one pin per trip.

Can I rate the places I went?

Yes — on review-eligible plan types (restaurants, bars, hotels, activities, concerts, cafés, museums, workouts, spas, and a few more), the edit dialog includes 1–3 hearts, a vibe tag picker, a price level, an insider tip field, and a hidden-gem flag.

Memories

What's a memory?

Anything you want to remember from the trip: photos, videos, voice memos recorded in-app, or text cards (a quote you heard, a thought you had). All four kinds live together on the trip’s Memories tab.

How do I add a memory?

On any trip, open the Memories tab and click Add a memory. Pick photo, video, audio (records in your browser), or text. You can also add memories from a specific plan’s detail page — those auto-tag to that plan.

Do memories get organized by day?

Photos and videos with EXIF / metadata timestamps are auto-grouped into the right day. Anything we can’t date lands in an “Unsorted” bucket; tap the day chip in the lightbox to move it.

What's the cap per trip?

200 memories per trip during beta.

Faves

What is Faves?

Your personal city guide. The places you’d recommend to a friend. Each fave is a restaurant, bar, or hotel with hearts (1–3), vibe tags, price level, an insider tip, and a personal review.

How do I add a fave?

Open Faves from the menu. Click Add a fave. You can search Google Places, import from an existing plan on one of your trips, or enter it manually.

Can I share my faves with someone?

Yes — share a single fave or a whole city’s worth. From /faves, pick a city chip, then click Share {city}. From a fave detail page, click Share. The recipient gets a read-only view.

Sharing & collaborators

How does trip sharing work?

Each trip has a Share tab (visible only to the trip owner). You can:
  • Create a public share link — anyone with the URL can view the trip read-only, no account needed.
  • Invite collaborators by email with viewer or editor permission. Editors can add plans, upload memories, and edit details.

What can collaborators see?

Everything on the trip — itinerary, memories, map. They cannot see your other trips, your faves, or your account settings.

Can I revoke a share link or remove a collaborator?

Yes. The Share tab lists active links and collaborators; each row has a remove button.

The Bashō book

What's the Bashō book?

The Bashō book is the magazine-style keepsake view of a finished trip. A cover, a map of the places you went, a spread per day with auto-summary, and a masonry of photos / videos / audio / text cards.

How do I see it?

Open any trip and click View Book in the top-right of the overlay hero, or next to the Memories heading.

Can I customize it?

Yes — as the trip owner. You can edit per-day descriptions inline, resize tiles (S / M / L / Hero), reorder memories with the arrows, and delete tiles. Everything is saved automatically.

Beta, privacy & support

What does “closed beta” mean?

Bashō is invite-only right now. You got in because someone vouched for you. We may add or remove testers at any time. The service is functional but you should expect rough edges and occasional changes.

Does the operator look at my account?

During the closed beta, yes — specifically when you’ve reported a bug we’re investigating, or when we’re tracking down a problem affecting multiple users. We do not sell your data, use it for advertising, or use it to train models. Full detail in the Privacy Policy.

If you’d prefer your account not be inspected, email hello@basho.travel and we’ll honor that — with the caveat that we may not be able to debug specific issues you report without seeing what you’re seeing.

How do I report a bug or suggest a feature?

Use the Feedback button in the bottom-left of every page. Pick Bug / UX / Feature, describe what you saw, optionally drop in a contact email if you want a reply. We triage submissions within 48 hours and ship fixes weekly.

How do I delete my account?

Email hello@basho.travel and we’ll remove your account and content within 30 days. We’re working on a self-serve delete in Settings — not finished yet.

Troubleshooting

My forwarded email never showed up.

A few things to check:

  • Did you forward to the exact address from Settings? Auto-correct on phones sometimes mangles res+ into res +.
  • Wait 30–60 seconds — parsing isn’t always instant, especially for long emails.
  • Check that you forwarded the original confirmation, not a reply or a calendar invite. Plain HTML/text emails parse best.
  • If it still doesn’t show up, hit the Feedback button and tell us — include the airline / sender so we can investigate.

Gmail scan returned 0 results.

The keyword search is intentionally narrow to avoid pulling non-travel mail. If your bookings come from a provider we don’t match yet, forward one or two manually first — you can still use forwarding even with Gmail connected.

A plan ended up on the wrong day.

On the Itinerary tab, open the plan, edit the date / time, and save. The day grouping recalculates.

A memory is on the wrong day.

Open it in the lightbox and use the day picker in the bottom bar to reassign it.

I deleted a plan and it came back.

That bug was fixed in late April — if you’re still seeing it, please report via Feedback with the trip name and the plan that won’t stay deleted.

Page won't load / something broke.

Try a hard refresh (Cmd+Shift+R on Mac, Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows). If the problem persists, hit Feedback and tell us what you were doing.

I can't find what I'm looking for here.

Email hello@basho.travel or use the in-app Feedback button. We read everything.