PassportsGo
Immerse yourself in the functionalities of PassportsGo, our proprietary mobile app designed to keep everyone in your group connected and informed. From daily itineraries to essential travel updates, learn how this tool can enhance your travel experience as a Group Leader.
The Basics:
PassportsGo is available for download in the App store, as well as the Google Play store.
When you log in, you can sync your profile with your online profile that you use to login to your Group Leader Portal. Once, this is synced, you will be able to see your upcoming tour (or tours, by year, if you are recruiting for multiple).
The app works with WiFi and data. We highly encourage all travelers to talk to their cellular providers about an overseas data plan.
Highlights:
Home Page: This is where you’ll see an overview of the itinerary for your upcoming trip.
Announcements: You and your Tour Director will be the only users allowed to post announcements within the app. They are in chronological order. You can include photos, meeting points, meeting times, and whatever information you need to get across to your group in announcements.
Meeting Points & Meeting Times: When posting an announcement, you can use built-in GPS to select the actual meeting point in real time. You can also include a meeting time. There will be a countdown in each participants’ app letting them know how much time they have left before the meeting deadline. Participants can use the built-in GPS to navigate to the meeting point.
GPS: As noted above, there is built-in GPS within the app. This allows you, the Tour Director, and participants to visually see the meeting place and navigate to it. This also allows you and the Tour Director to see everyone’s location, as long as everyone has their location services toggled to ‘on’. If this is important to you, you can require this in your Code of Conduct. If you do not want to use this feature, you do not have to.
Geo-Fencing: You can create a geo-fence around a certain area and get notified if a participant leaves the area you have selected. For instance, once back at the hotel, you could set a small radius around the hotel, and should anyone try to leave the geo-fence, you will be immediately notified.
Messaging: Everyone (you, your Tour Director, and participants) can message back and forth within the app. If an important message comes through that you want to bring to everyone’s attention, you can then post it as an announcement. You have full control over these messages - you can delete anyone else’s message.
Photo Log: Everyone (you, your Tour Director, and participants) are able to post photos within the app to share with one another. There is no “like” feature, as we want to motivate people to post as much as possible, however, everyone is able to comment. You have full control over this, too. You can delete any posted photo or any comment.
Daily Itinerary: Prior to the tour, you’ll see the summary of your itinerary. Once on tour, you’ll be able to see a detailed day-by-day of each day on tour.
Notifications: Please turn on push-notifications, so you can see when someone sends a message, uploads a photo, leaves a geo-fence, etc. When you log into the app, a notification tab of everything you’ve ‘missed’ since last opening the app will appear in chronological order.
Settings: Everyone (you, your Tour Director, and participants) can use this tab to edit your profile, change your password, log out, and toggle location services on/off.
Important to Note:
PassportsGo is permission-based. You and the Tour Director have full PassportsGo app access. You have the ability to delete or edit whatever you’d like within the app, post announcements and meeting places/times, and use location tracking.
GPS and geo-fencing do not have to be utilized, but they were both widely requested. The in-app GPS and geo-fencing relies on participants having their location services toggled to ‘on’. You, as the Group Leader, can see if users have their locations on/off, or turn their location on/off. You, as the Group Leader, will be able to track participants in real time (during free time, for example), or get notified if you’ve set a geo-fence that has been broken. Participants will not be able to track one another.
Location services for the app are only active while on tour, not before or after.
