The days between a booking and an Experience are when trust is built. A Traveler who has traded a few notes with you through Fernwayer Chat arrives feeling like they're meeting someone they already know.
Many travel agencies and platforms refer to Travelers as clients. Meeting a guide cold on the day of a tour makes the encounter feel transactional. At Fernwayer, we think of Travelers as guests and friends.
That is also why all transactional matters for a Fernwayer booking end before the tour starts — our experiences are designed to be "wallet-free on the day", and Travelers are guests from the moment they meet you. A few exchanges beforehand — a warm welcome, a question about their interests, a photo of the meeting point — turns the encounter into something closer to being received by a friend.
We have learned that Experience Makers, and Travelers, who use Fernwayer Chat tend to get more out of the Experience. Travelers who ignore every message until the last minute often miss the fuller version of what you offer. The way you lean in, and open the conversation, sets the tone for what follows.
Using Fernwayer Chat
Fernwayer Chat is our messaging system built into the Fernwayer platform where all communication with a Traveler should happen. It was designed to do five things at once:
Build rapport before the day — the small exchanges that turn a booking into a hosted encounter
Keep a complete conversational record — every question, agreement, information and preferences provided in one place, in the sequence it happened
Handle sensitive information safely — end-to-end encryption for anything you'd rather not send by email (passport numbers, personal details)
Hold context you can look back on — a Traveler's dietary needs or family composition shared weeks earlier stays searchable when you're preparing for the day
Give Fernwayer Support what it needs to help — while we don't monitor conversations, if anything ever needs escalating, we can see the full conversation and step in with context to help both you and the Traveler.
Every Fernwayer Chat notification is also delivered to the Traveler's email, with a partial message preview — so short messages are often almost fully visible there — and they receive it whether or not they're logged into Fernwayer at that moment.
How to open Chat: from the booking confirmation email (Chat with Traveler button in the email), from Notifications (find and click the booking, then the chat icon next to the person's name), or on the Booking Calendar by clicking the Traveler's name in the calendar entry for the day of the booking. All three open the same conversation.
What you can send via Chat: text, and JPEG photos (useful for the meeting point, a welcome photo of yourself, a document photographed with your phone). PDFs aren't currently supported.
Fernwayer Chat also has a channel where you communicate with Fernwayer Support about each of your Experiences. See About Getting Help from Fernwayer for how that channel works and when to use it.