If you CAN’T WAIT until your next holiday or vacation, then don’t worry… we can definitely relate! It’s this very feeling that prompted us to create a vacation & holiday countdown app for iPhone and Android – to get us (and YOU) excited about upcoming travels.
These countdowns and Instagram stories were created with the CAN’T WAIT! app, giving you a visual reminder of your upcoming trips and letting you reminisce on your past adventures.
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Why did we create the CAN’T WAIT! Vacation Countdown App?
Tech entrepreneurs and investors will always stress that every app should solve a painful problem. Well, this app was born as a result of us trying to solve our own problem (keep reading…)
How did the idea of this vacation & holiday countdown app come about?
During the lockdowns in 2020, like everybody, we were itching to get out and enjoy travelling like we used to. We were sat indoors 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, telling each other that we “CAN’T WAIT to travel again” once the pandemic was over, or had started to ease at least.
It was during this time in mid-to-late 2020 that we started planning imaginary trips in our heads. Trips to the Caribbean that we had mentally begun to count down to! You see, July 2021 would see us celebrating our 10-year wedding anniversary and we always had our hearts set on celebrating this special occasion on a Caribbean island. To make it feel real, we had to really start counting down. We knew that having an epic trip to look forward to would help us through these lockdowns.
How did we create the CAN’T WAIT! app?
Mase designs and develops websites and apps for a living, and it’s all he’s done for the past 20+ years. Fortunately, we’re able to design and develop apps in-house without having to outsource anything. As you may well know, we already have a number of travel guide apps in Apple’s App Store and on Google Play – helping 200,000 of you guys and gals to make the most of your travels! 😊
Anyway… one day, Mase looked at Nat with his eyes wiiide open and said “I know! Let’s make a holiday countdown app, we can’t be the only people who are eager to count down to trips!”. So we sat down and brainstormed how we could do this in a fun and creative way.
Mase loves photography and planning trips. Nat loves creating Instagram stories and reels. So, in order to make our countdown app different to others, we incorporated those very things that we love:
- Photography: countdown cards with beautiful destination backgrounds
- Trip planning: offering guided tours and activities in the destinations our users are counting down to
- Social media sharing: the ability to share countdown cards on social media
- Content creation: the ability to turn holiday countdowns into social posts, Insta stories and throwbacks (with ready-made story templates)
Just like architects armed with the sharpest pencils… here, you can see some of our first hand-drawn wireframes for the app! 😜
After drawing these basic wireframes/sketches on paper and creating UI (User Interface) designs using our favourite Adobe design software, the coding commenced and the app was developed! We won’t go into the gory geeky details, but let’s just say there were a lot of late nights during the app development process.
p.s. inspired by our first countdown, we also made it to the Caribbean island of Antigua in July 2021 to celebrate our 10-year wedding anniversary with our daughter (pictured)
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Create personalized vacation countdowns
You can enjoy seeing your past and upcoming trips listed on one screen, and take pleasure in choosing your own background photo for each countdown card.
There’s no limit to the number of trips you can add, so you can easily get carried away creating and personalising these widget-style countdown cards. Reminisce by counting the seconds since your most memorable vacations and holidays. Build excitement by counting down the days until your upcoming travels.
Further information: How to make personalized vacation & holiday countdowns using your own photos
Turn vacation countdowns into social media stories
We designed several social media templates from scratch, so that you guys can show off your upcoming travels and past trips on your socials. By simply tapping on a countdown card, the app instantly creates a vertical story and a square feed post for you. Tapping on a template thumbnail image at the bottom of the screen changes your story template design.
The clever thing about these ready-made templates is that they’re already pre-filled with all the information about your trip; from the destination name and your chosen photo, to the days/hours/minutes until (or since) the trip. You can also edit any of this information or resize the text by tapping on it. When you’re ready, tap the share icon (in the top-right corner of the screen) to save the story in your photo gallery or camera roll, or share it directly to the social media platform of your choice.
Further reading: The 10 best Instagram story templates for your 2024 travels
Wherever you like to share your travels, we’ve got you covered… Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Twitter, you can share your travel stories literally anywhere. When you use any of our built-in social media templates, you can save (or export) both a square and vertical version of your new image. We personally love to save both versions. First, we share the square posts on our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter feeds; then we share the vertical images as Instagram stories, Facebook stories, WhatsApp stories and Snapchat “snaps”.
Resize social media posts and stories
The CAN’T WAIT! vacation and holiday countdown app features dozens of built-in, ready-made social media templates. Each of these templates can instantly be resized from square to vertical and vice versa, with the single tap of a button. When resizing your template, you don’t lose any information, details or formatting. All of your photos and text remain intact and ready to be shared.
If you want to share your actual vacation countdown cards (rather than vertical stories or story templates) then you can do that too! When we released the first version of the CAN’T WAIT! app, although our users enjoyed turning their countdowns into social media stories, we soon noticed people on Instagram sharing screenshots of their actual countdown cards. We messaged a couple of these people, who quickly responded, saying that it would be great if they could share their actual countdown cards directly from the app. You asked, and we listened 🙂
When you’re looking for something different to share on your social media feeds, then these work great as travel throwbacks.
Build excitement in messaging apps
When you’re planning a group trip with your friends or family members, you will no doubt be sharing messages amongst yourselves about “who’s sharing a room with who” and “how much spending money we need to bring” etc. If not, then what are you playing at? Set up a WhatsApp group right away 😀 !! Once your trip is booked and you’re all looking forward to it, there’s no better way to build the excitement than counting down the days, hours and minutes with your travel buddies.
Impress your friends (be like Kylie, above). Share beautiful, personalised countdowns with the exact number of days, hours and minutes until you all set off on the adventure of a lifetime. The app includes so many templates, you could share a new countdown with your friends every day for several weeks.
See the CAN’T WAIT! app in action
Why should you download the CAN’T WAIT! vacation countdown app?
If you like counting down your trips, taking photos of your travels and sharing your travels on social media, then you’ve answered the question!
Furthermore, we can think of 6 more reasons why you should download the app. The CAN’T WAIT! vacation & holiday countdown app…
- Counts down to your upcoming trips in real-time AND counts the days, hours, minutes and seconds since your previous, memorable trips
- Allows you to create personalised countdowns with your own photos
- Instantly turns your vacation and holiday countdowns into social media stories and posts for Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat and TikTok
- Gives you lots of new travel content to share on social media, with very little effort required
- Gives you lists of activities and guided tours in the destinations you’re counting down to
- Is free to download. You can create beautiful countdowns and social media stories without paying
Are you convinced? Great! Now go and download the CAN’T WAIT! app on your iPhone or Android device 🙂 let us know what you think.
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