How LBS Trips works
Assistants do the legwork: they chase, remind, refill spots and collect quotes. People make every decision about money and commitments. This page shows what that looks like for members and for organisers.
One trip, from first idea to departure
For members
Mostly on your phone: Telegram for everyday things, the app for anything binding. You are never asked for the same information twice.
A plane, a hotel and coaches cost the same whether 80 or 240 people share them. You book at today’s price. When more people are confirmed and the price drops, everyone already booked gets the difference back as credit. It never goes up again.
Example costs: a chartered plane, a whole hotel, coaches and £210 per person, plus a 5% buffer, rounded up to £5, with a floor of £600. The curve comes from the same calculation the app charges with.
When a trip is full you queue, and you see your position. A freed spot goes to the next person within minutes and is held for them.
One deadline per trip, shown before you book and on your booking. No small print to find.
Trip news, reminders and answers from the trip’s own information. Anything binding happens in the app, one tap away.
Form a room with friends, name who you would like to share with, and privately who you would rather not. The rest is placed fairly.
The organiser asks, you answer with a voice note or a line of text. Everyone’s opinions become one clear overview.
Scan your passport once and confirm what was read. Diet and allergies are yours to share. Bookings fill themselves in.
For organisers
Whoever creates a trip is its organiser. You set the rules once: price, deposit, deadlines. The assistants work inside them, write down everything they do, and hand over what needs a person.
The assistants
Every assistant has a written mandate. What it may do is on the left of the line, what it never does on the right.
DoesTurns interest into a paid reservation: reminds on Telegram, calls if you allowed it, then hands the case to the organiser.
NeverNever cancels a paid booking and never calls during quiet hours.
DoesOffers a freed spot to the next person within minutes, holds it for the offer window, then moves on.
NeverNever skips the queue. The organiser can take any offer back.
DoesReads the supplier’s terms and suggests the free-cancellation deadline, with the passage it is based on.
NeverNothing applies until the organiser confirms the deadline.
DoesE-mails hotels, coaches and restaurants from the club’s own mailbox, tracks every enquiry, and collects group quotes side by side. Calling suppliers by phone is next on the roadmap.
NeverNever commits, reserves or books. Respects “do not contact” for good.
DoesPlaces everyone who has not organised themselves, first come first served, fulfilling as many wishes as possible.
NeverNever splits a group you formed, never puts you with someone you ruled out, never reveals that list.
DoesAnnounces trips, takes “I’m interested”, answers questions from the published trip information. WhatsApp is next on the roadmap.
NeverNever books, pays or accepts terms in chat: it sends the link to the right page. If it does not know, it says so.
DoesTurns sixty voice notes into one overview per option: share of support, what people like, what they would change.
NeverThe result is advice. The organiser decides.
DoesReads your passport photo once, you confirm the details, and it warns about expiry and visas per trip.
NeverThe photo is not kept. Visa answers always link to the official source.
Trust
Assistants prepare, suggest, contact and chase. Anything binding is confirmed by a person, or follows rules a person confirmed before.
Your status, your deadline, what you pay and why: on every booking, with a history of what happened and who did it.
Prices, rules, visa requirements and supplier terms come with their source. If something is unknown, the app says so.
Clear rules such as first come, first served, instead of clever optimisation nobody can check.
Only what a trip needs is collected. Allergies need your explicit consent, and withdrawing it deletes them.
Every automatic step is written to the trip’s log, and organisers can undo what an assistant did.
Four roles, enforced on the server for every page and every action. Opening something that is not yours gives a 403, whether you clicked a link or typed the address.
Nothing of other members, no organiser pages
Other organisers’ trips, their own booking’s money, club money and settings
Other clubs
Nothing is hidden, everything is logged
Under the hood
Because it does. Amounts are whole pence, never floating point. Seats, balances and refunds change inside database transactions. Scheduled jobs can run twice without doing anything twice.
Next.js 16 and React 19. Pages are rendered on the server; every change goes through a typed server action that checks who is asking.
Firestore, with one access layer in front of it: club, then trip, then booking. A record that is not yours is a 403 before anything is read.
One tick every ten minutes runs small jobs that are safe to repeat: offers, reminders, releases, price drops, refunds, room deadlines.
In-app notifications, e-mail, Telegram and calls through one outbox with opt-in, quiet hours and a test mode in which nothing leaves the app.
Claude reads documents and drafts suggestions. Its output is checked against a schema, quotes are verified against the source text, and a person confirms.
Money rules are covered by unit and database tests; every role’s journey and the permission matrix run as browser tests against a full test data set.
// price per head for a group of N travellers price(N) = roundUp( ( fixedCosts ÷ N + costsPerPerson ) × ( 1 + buffer ), step ) // never below the floor, never for fewer than the minimum group, and it only ever goes down credit(booking) = ( pricePaid − price(N) ) × tickets
Questions
Members of the LBS community. Create an account on the front page; an admin approves new accounts, usually within a day.
By bank transfer or Revolut to the club that runs the trip. You upload the confirmation, the organiser confirms it, and credit you hold with that club is used first.
You get the difference back as credit with the club, automatically. The price never goes up again because someone drops out.
Until the trip’s free-cancellation deadline you get everything back. After it, you get your money back once someone else takes your spot, as credit or by bank transfer. You see the rule before you book and on your booking.
No. Assistants remind, offer freed spots in queue order and prepare suggestions. Confirming payments, deadlines, refunds and anything else that is binding is done by people, or by rules they set beforehand.
No. Everything works in the app and by e-mail. Telegram is opt-in, you choose what you receive, and “stop” switches it off. WhatsApp will work the same way once it is live.
Create your account in a minute and see what is coming up. An admin approves new accounts.