Pin My Map for Erasmus and exchange: after everyone goes home

Erasmus, an internship abroad, a youth exchange, a training course. However you got there, the shape is the same: a few intense months with people from a dozen countries, and then everyone flies home at once. Pin My Map is what keeps that group findable afterwards.

The group chat stays busy for about three weeks. Then it goes quiet, and what is left is a list of names attached to places you have never been.

Pin My Map is built for exactly this moment. It is a private map of the people you know, showing where each one lives now, where they have travelled, and where they want to go.

A map of the group is a list of places to go

Once everyone has added their home base to Pin My Map, the group becomes something useful: twenty cities where you know someone.

That is twenty trips where you have a person to see, a local who knows where to go, and very often a sofa. It changes how you plan. Instead of picking a city and hoping, you look at where your people are and let that decide.

Free accommodation, without the awkward ask

Nobody enjoys sending the message that begins "this is a long shot but". When their city is already on your map, it stops being a favour to negotiate. It is just a thing you mention.

Use the wishlist to plan trips together

The wishlist is the Pin My Map feature made for exchange groups. Everyone adds the places they want to go, and the overlaps show up on their own.

Four people with Budapest on their wishlist is not four separate daydreams. It is a trip waiting for someone to name a weekend.

• Add every place you would go if someone else went too.
• Look at what your group already has in common before proposing anything.
• Pin a future trip as soon as the dates firm up, so anyone nearby can join.

Make a tag for the group

Give the whole cohort its own tag in Pin My Map. Now you can share future trips with them and not with your colleagues.

And when you are planning something, you can filter the map down to just that year of your life.

Do it in the last week, not later

The only reliable moment to get everyone onto Pin My Map is while you are all still in the same place.

Use the QR code on the Share screen at the goodbye party. People scan it in seconds, which is the only thing that works in a room that loud. Ten minutes on the last night is what makes the next five years of visits possible.