How To Personalize Vacation Countdowns with your own Photos

Do you like counting down the days until you jet off on your adventures? We do! It makes the whole process of travelling that much more exciting when it’s something you’ve been looking forward to in the weeks and days leading up to your trip. This is exactly what vacation countdown apps were made for 😀

There are a few vacation and holiday countdown apps out there, but very few of them allow you to personalise your countdowns with your own photos. We previously told you about the CAN’T WAIT! app and all of its’ features, so you’ll know that this app can personalise your countdowns really well. Wanna try it out for yourself? You can download the app on your iPhone or Android device and let us know what you think 😉

Table of Contents

What is a personalised vacation or holiday countdown?

A vacation countdown is designed to make you feel more excited about your upcoming trip. It’s a ticking countdown that counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the start of your vacation or holiday in real-time. These countdowns usually come in the form of an iOS or Android home screen widget; or more commonly a list of countdowns within a vacation countdown app.

The CAN’T WAIT! app allows you to personalise your vacation and holiday countdowns using your own photos. This makes your countdown much nicer to look at and interact with than a countdown with a plain, solid-coloured background.

Why would you want to personalise a vacation or holiday countdown?

You’d personalise your vacation countdown for the same reason someone would wear a personalised t-shirt… drink out of a personalised mug… drive a car with a personalised licence plate… put their smartphone in a personalised case.

Personalisation makes any t-shirt, drinking mug, car licence plate or smartphone case waaay more interesting (and personal), that’s why. When we came up with the idea for the CAN’T WAIT! app, we wanted your vacation and holiday countdowns to be exciting, nice to look at, and shareable. Personalisation played a key role in achieving this.

What does a personalised vacation countdown look like?

Some might call it a countdown widget, and some (like us) may call it a countdown card. Let us know what you call yours! At the time of writing, the CAN’T WAIT! app lets us know that it’s been precisely 324 days, 7 hours, 5 minutes and 16 seconds since we jetted off to Dubai for Mase’s birthday. We chose the background photo below to represent our trip because it was taken during a desert safari tour on Mase’s actual birthday. It’s perfect for reminiscing on an amazing day and an even better week!

What does a personalised vacation countdown look like with a social media template applied?

Using the CAN’T WAIT! app, simply tapping the share icon in the top-right corner of a countdown card allows you to share your countdown with a ready-made, built-in template applied. Once you’ve chosen your preferred template, you can either save your personalised countdown as an image or share it directly to your Instagram, Facebook or Twitter feeds. The template applied below is called “Proceed to Departures” and it’s also available in the app as a vertical Insta story template. Every social media template that you see in the CAN’T WAIT! app was designed, created and named by us.

What if I don’t have a photo of the destination I’m counting down to?

The CAN’T WAIT! app will always assign an appropriate background photo to your countdown card. However, if you want to personalise a vacation countdown for a destination you haven’t been to yet, you still have quite a few options.

Ski or Snowboarding Trip: use a generic photo of yourself in the snow, preferably wearing protective ski gear
Beach Vacation or Holiday: use a generic photo or yourself on a beach or in the sea, one which doesn’t give away the destination
Safari Holiday: use a photo of yourself on a previous safari (see below), or maybe use a selfie taken at a zoo with some zebras or elephants in the background (!!)

To demonstrate this… Once again, we have Mase and Layla on 4 wheels, driving along a sandy terrain 😀 !! We’ve never been to Kruger National Park, so in order to personalise this “Kountdown to Kruger” (below) we’re using a photo of ourselves at Inverdoorn Game Reserve in South Africa. We also applied the “Turkish Coffee” template in the CAN’T WAIT! app for that extra dusty look.

So, how easy is it to create a personalised vacation or holiday countdown?

It’s super easy to create a personalised countdown using your own photos, and you can achieve this from scratch in just 3 simple steps.

Step 1: Download the CAN’T WAIT! app

If you haven’t yet downloaded the world’s best vacation & holiday countdown app, what are you waiting for? Please download it on your iPhone or Android device and then you can follow the next steps.

Step 2: Add your trip

Tap the big, round, turquoise button at the bottom of the app’s home screen. This will bring up a form for you to add your trip’s details (shown below).

Select whether it’s an upcoming trip or a past trip
Enter the real name of the city or country you’re going to
Give your trip a friendly name, e.g. our first wedding anniversary in the sunshine
Select the date and time you’re departing for this trip
Select what type of trip it is, e.g. beach
Select whether you’re travelling with someone else or on a solo trip
Tap the large, turquoise “CREATE TRIP” button at the bottom of the screen

As you can see, the CAN’T WAIT! app has decided to give our new countdown card a Caribbean beach background (photographed by us in Turks and Caicos). This background has been assigned to the countdown card because “Saint Lucia” (a Caribbean beach destination) was entered as the vacation destination that we’re counting down to.

Step 3: Change your countdown’s background photo

We’ve never been to Saint Lucia before so we don’t have any photos of it. However, we do know that it’s a Caribbean island with beaches and lush green mountains. So, let us try and find a photo of ourselves on a Caribbean island (preferably) that has beaches and lush, green mountains. Oh yes, Antigua! That’s the first place we travelled to after releasing the CAN’T WAIT! app.

Tap the three dots in the top-right corner of your new countdown card, this will bring up five card options (shown below)
Tap the middle option (3rd from the left), this will prompt you to choose a photo from your camera roll or photo gallery
Select a photo
Voila! Your countdown card has a new background photo

Extras: Share your personalised countdown

After creating your beautiful, personalised vacation countdown, you’ll want to show it off on your social media feeds.

Tap the “share” icon in the top-right corner of the countdown card, and this will show you your countdown card with a ready-made template applied
Tap the image to change the template… tap it again to change it again (and again) until you’ve found the template that you want to use
Tap the green “SHARE COUNTDOWN” button to save your image or share it directly to your social media feeds (Instagram, Facebook etc.)

There you have it. You can now make your very own personalised vacation and holiday countdowns, using your own photos. This will also give you a ton of new travel content to share with your social media followers. If that isn’t enough, the CAN’T WAIT! app also contains ready-made, travel-themed Instagram story templates for you to share your travels in style.

If you like the CAN’T WAIT! app, please give it a 5-star rating, we really appreciate your support!