How to plan your Barkada’s Christmas Trip Stress-Free?

A brief story behind UnwindSpot’s first travel tool.

ADMIT IT. Planning a trip during the holiday season is never easy. Between friends still glued to their corpo chairs and others already booked with family gatherings, finding the perfect timing alone can feel impossible.

What makes it worse is when a trip does push through, but no one actually enjoys it. Instead of relaxing, you’re dealing with the usual barkada travel struggles: awkward singilan, and the dreaded end-of-trip computation stress.

So how do you stop these from ruining your barkada’s Christmas getaway?

Let me tell you a short story.

Two weeks ago, the UnwindSpot team visited the serene paradise of Stilts Calatagan Beach Resort. Words hardly do the place justice. The beach was surprisingly calm. There were trees along the shore, giving us shade to just hang out, talk, and cool down from the sun. It truly felt like a haven for relaxation. Despite staying for just one night, the team had an incredibly fun and refreshing experience.

Like any barkada (or team), we have our own group chat. One random Thursday afternoon, someone (let’s call him Romeo) suddenly dropped a message inviting everyone to an overnight beach trip he stumbled upon online. It was spontaneous, almost too spontaneous. Honestly, I thought we didn’t have enough time to pull it off.

Romeo, however, thought otherwise.

He took the lead, started planning, and before we knew it, the rest of us were already on board following his lead and slowly getting into the rhythm of planning what turned out to be a successful shotgun trip.

And how did he do it?

Romeo didn’t just research the resort’s location. He had already picked the perfect cabin for the team – and even better, he came prepared with food ideas for the entire overnight stay.

We were all hands-down impressed by Romeo’s initiative. Everything seemed to be falling into place… until we realized there was one last problem.

All expenses had to be shared. From accommodation to food – and even the souvenirs some of us planned to buy – how were we supposed to split everything fairly afterwards?

Romeo froze. We all know why, because we were tired of relying on spreadsheets, screenshots, and post-trip computations that always felt heavier than they should.

And that’s when it hit us.

What if we had a buddy, a tool that lets you record expenses as they happen and automatically calculates who owes whom?

No more:

• Manual computations
• Post-trip singilan
• Awkward “Uy, pwede mo na ba bayaran?” messages

For people like me, who find it stressful to follow up payments and deal with awkward singilan after the trip, this would truly make all the difference.

So the team decided to build exactly that.

Because aside from proactive planning, every spontaneous trip deserves a stress-free way to handle expenses – so you can focus on making memories, not chasing payments.