GuardTrails
A serious review of a tour comes down to eight checks. This page is for whoever designs or sells the tour. If you are a traveller and your programme came from an AI assistant, the reader and the checks are not the same: see check a ChatGPT itinerary.
1. Geography
Every stage and every night is within the zone the tour announces, and every country has been checked against its travel advice. This is the check we applied to 41 itineraries on 16 September 2026: 3 real defects, 0 false positives (the cost of not checking an itinerary).
Go back if: a stage is not in the country named in the title.
2. Distances and driving times
For each leg: real distance and time, feasibility, stops and detours.
Go back if: the driving time actually lived in a day eats into the visit.
3. Rhythm and nights per base
Count nights by zone, not by bed (stage or lodging), and consecutive full days. Any run of more than seven full days is a signal (a threshold of the engine, set per traveller): is your itinerary too packed sets out this count. The shape and rhythm of a tour are the subject of a tour is not a list of places.
Go back if: a base change is neither imposed by the map nor wanted.
4. Climate during activity hours
Stage by stage, during the hours people are outdoors, not for the whole month. It is one of the tasks that usually gets skipped when time runs short (how long to build a tour itinerary).
Go back if: a single temperature is quoted for the whole tour.
5. Activity season and closures
For each activity: season and opening, a realistic duration. This is another task that usually gets skipped.
Go back if: an activity is scheduled outside its season, or has no duration.
6. Access and gateways
Arrival and departure gateways, and access to each stage: a ferry, a mountain road, a permit.
Go back if: a ferry with limited departures or a mountain road has not been checked for the travel date.
7. Repetitions
Read the description of each stop in a single day. If you can swap them without the text changing, the stop is interchangeable too: that is register saturation.
Go back if: three stops in a row have descriptions with the same skeleton.
8. Budget and gaps
Compare the announced price with an estimate, and look for what is missing (a night, a transfer) and what repeats.
Go back if: you do not know whether the international flight is included, because the budget cannot then conclude.
What the feasibility check covers
The feasibility check on /pro, in beta, overlaps these checks. The report is confidential: a grade from A to D, six dimensions (route and driving time; rhythm and nights per base; season, climate and closures; access and gateways; budget; gaps and redundancies), written assumptions and, when data is missing, the question to ask the operator rather than a guess. It also places the tour against operators' tours for the same zone: duration, rhythm, number of bases.
The engine detects that a constraint exists, never whether it is compatible with a precise date: that last check stays with you.
To learn to read the report, see Reading a feasibility check; for what the engine proposes for an overloaded tour, see the corrected variant.
To have one of your tours checked
Fill in the beta form on /pro and tick “Check an existing circuit”. We are the ones who run the tour through the engine.
What we do not know
Eight is our way of cutting it: another review would count more, or fewer.
The threshold of seven full days in a row is a parameter of the engine, set per traveller: it is not a rule.
The “go back if” lines are signals, not proofs: they say where to look.
Eight checks: method definition. Feasibility check: description of the service, in beta.
A check looks wrong or incomplete to you? Write to us — corrections are published.