Guides
Whoever leads the group on the ground gets their own mode of the same app: the roster with care notes, headcounts, group messages and the emergency numbers, all working offline. This page covers the guide's join code, what the guide actually sees, and how to cut off access the day it needs cutting off.
Guide codes vs. traveler codes
Every departure has exactly one guide join code, shown on the departure page as "Guide's join code — for the tour host's phone", with a Copy button beside it. It's a six-character code like a traveler's, but it is not a traveler's: joining with it puts the phone in guide mode ("You are set up as the guide"), while a traveler's personal code opens the guest app. Same download, same Enter your trip code screen — the code decides the role.
| Traveler code | Guide code | |
|---|---|---|
| How many | One per traveler | One per departure |
| Where it lives | The Travelers tab, one per row | The departure page, on the Offline bundle card |
| What it opens | The guest app: itinerary, hotels, flights, packing, inbox | Guide mode: roster, headcount, group messages, locations, emergency |
| Cutting it off | Remove the traveler from the departure | Rotate the departure's guide code (below) |
Never hand the guide code to a traveler. It opens the whole group's care notes and contact details. Guides join with their own code — never the travelers', and never the other way around.
What the guide sees
Guide mode opens on six oversized tools, not a dashboard: Message Group, Headcount, Roster, Locations, Today and Emergency. Everything is saved on the phone after the first sync, so a parking lot with no signal changes nothing.
- Roster — every traveler with their party, phone number, dietary and mobility notes, and emergency contacts, searchable and filterable by Dietary, Mobility and Not joined. Each entry also carries that traveler's join code, so the guide can help a guest reinstall on the road.
- Headcount — tap names instead of counting heads twice. Counts live entirely on the guide's phone: no server round trip, so it works mid-mountain.
- Message Group — the megaphone; see the next section.
- Locations — whoever is currently sharing, on a map, under the same consent rules as your dashboard's Locations tab. See Locations & safety.
- Today — the day's plan, same itinerary the guests carry.
- Emergency — every number they might need in one place.
Care notes: entered at the office, carried on the road
The roster shows exactly what your office typed into the dashboard — the dietary notes, mobility notes and emergency contact fields on each traveler's row of the Travelers tab. There is no separate guide-side data entry: keep the dashboard accurate and the guide's phone is accurate.
Because that data is sensitive, the Roster and Emergency screens sit behind a four-digit PIN the guide creates the first time they open them. Forgotten PIN? The only reset is honest: leave the trip and rejoin with the guide code, which removes the cached care data the PIN was protecting.
Group messages: from the office, or from the coach
Two places can send an update to the whole group, and they land identically in every traveler's inbox:
- From the dashboard — the departure's Broadcasts tab: a title, optional detail, Normal or Urgent priority, and Send to all travelers. Sent updates list who was reached, with per-traveler delivered and seen detail behind Who has seen it?.
- From the guide's phone — Message Group, with tap-to-fill starters like "Bus leaves at ___". The guide sees the same read receipts: "Seen by 8 of 12", and how many phones haven't been reached yet.
Both paths follow the same rules. The title is required (on a locked phone it may be the only line a guest sees); the detail is optional — "Bus leaves at 2:00" is a whole message. A starter whose ___ blank hasn't been filled in refuses to send, on the phone and at the server, because a broadcast can't be unsent. Urgent messages are highlighted on guests' phones — the guide app says it plainly: use it sparingly.
A message composed with no signal queues on the guide's phone — labeled plainly as waiting for internet — and sends itself on reconnect, without duplicating if the first attempt half-landed. Every message records who sent it, so office and guide always know whose words the group is reading.
Rotating the guide code: the kill switch
A guide's phone gets lost, a season ends, a code ends up on a slide it shouldn't have been on. Rotation is the answer: the departure gets a fresh guide code, and in the same stroke every guide session on that departure is signed out — the old code stops resolving and any phone joined with it can no longer reach the server. Travelers are untouched; no guest notices anything.
Rotate it yourself, right from the departure page. Next to the guide's join code there's a New code button: one click issues a fresh code and signs the old one out everywhere. Hand the new code to the right person and they rejoin with it.
A signed-out guide phone fails safe, not dark: it shows "Your guide code has expired", keeps everything already saved readable, and can't send anything new. The app tells the guide to ask the office for a new code, then leave the trip and join again — and warns that leaving discards any unsent queued messages.
Two rotations happen by design without asking: copying a departure for next season mints a fresh guide code (last season's guide phone opens nothing on the copy), and deleting a departure ends its guide code along with everything else.
Pointing your guide at their own instructions
This help center has a guide-facing section written for the road, in plain short sentences: joining as a guide, messages, roster & headcount, locations and emergency. Send those links with the guide code.
Questions about a guide's setup? Write to [email protected].