When planning a trip, you probably use guidebooks, Google and maybe even Facebook to get recommendations from friends, but next time you’re planning a trip add Pinterest to your list of travel tools.

We at the Wine Sisterhood regularly use Pinterest before heading out on a trip. Whenever we travel to a city for a wine tasting or special event, we start a new board to save information about our destination and get to pinning. Just last month, we traveled to Texas for 80 Sips events in Austin and Houston, filling up our “Texas Forever” board before the trip and adding to it along the way.

[New to Pinterest? Watch our Wine Sisterhood TV video from Digital Diva Aliza Sherman on how to navigate the mobile app.]

Pinterest boards can help you put your travel dreams into one place as soon as you have an idea for a trip. Create a board as general as the name of the city you’d like to visit and pin content you find both on Pinterest and the web. Did you find a great article that mentions a fabulous restaurant you want to try? Pin it! Discovered the website for the local tourism board for your destination and know you’ll want it later? Pin it!

Or build more specific boards on different aspects of a trip: where to eat in Houston, things to do in Houston, shopping in Houston, etc. Pin via the Pinterest website or on the go with the Pinterest smartphone app.

To start your search for places and related things to pin while on your computer with the Pinterest website in your browser, use the search bar in the upper left side of the window. For easier pinning, use the “Pin It” button (get the download here) on your web browser to pin images to your travel boards as you’re scouring the Internet for trip resources. When you find things online you’d like to pin – from images to articles to blog posts – just pin them to the appropriate board. To search for relevant content in Pinterest from your phone, use the magnifying glass search icon at the bottom of the app.

While searching on Pinterest, you’re bound to come across location or travel “experts” who you can follow for even more travel ideas. When you search for travel topics on Pinterest, click the “pinners” tab to find relevant travel pinners to follow.

Place Pins are a newer addition to Pinterest that show where the places you’ve pinned are on an online map. To turn on this feature, select “add map” as you’re creating a new board or when you’re within the settings of the board. Learn more about creating place pins and boards from Pinterest.

Planning a trip with other people? Make it a group board! In the same screen where you turned on mapping, you can add your Pinterest followers to your board. Remember, to invite someone to your board, you need to be following each other on Pinterest. Keep your travel planning private by inviting others to a Secret board so nobody else can see your plans. You can make a Secret board public at any time (but not the other way around).

Tip: Make sure the images you pin click through to a resource that actually exists online so your board is useful to you as you plan your trip. Sometimes images uploaded to Pinterest don’t have links or lead to the wrong information.

Happy pinning and happy traveling, Wine Sisters!