Photo credit: Vinitaa Jayson for Fernwayer
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 25, 2024 – Fernwayer announced the launch of its new marketplace designed to connect discerning travelers with meticulously curated, high-end private tours, addressing a growing need in the travel market. The company debuts with a carefully selected collection of experiences across five countries: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, and Croatia, with more countries to follow rapidly.
Founded by San Francisco-based entrepreneurs Vinitaa Jayson and Alok Singh, Fernwayer aims to redefine luxury in travel by emphasizing authentic connection, exclusive access, and immersive storytelling.
“We aim to flip the itinerary: adventures first, logistics later,” explains Jayson. “Most travelers secure accommodation and flights months in advance but often leave booking experiences until the last minute. By then, the best experiences are sold out, and they end up settling for the ordinary. We’re changing that by offering highly differentiated experiences, available for booking months in advance, easily and instantly.”
“We choose to partner with Experience Makers based on their storytelling skills, cultural insight, and welcomingness—our goal is to offer experiences where the expertise of a professional truly makes the difference,” adds Jayson.
Imagine stepping into Venice’s Carnevale with an expert, capturing the elegance of timeless masks and costumes through your lens. Or watching sunrise from the slopes of Mount Etna, followed by a homemade Sicilian lunch with locals. In Porto, feel the thrill of negotiating the day’s catch with fishermen. Hike through Toubkal National Park with a mountain guide who has deep connections with the Berber community, or dance through Seville’s Feria de Abril, complete with a Sevillana masterclass and a horse-drawn carriage ride.
“Uncurated platforms overwhelm travelers with endless, lookalike options, reducing experiences to bare-bones offerings and turning tours into transactions,” says Singh. “Travel agencies inflate prices with opaque, marked-up packages, while layers of intermediaries drive up costs and force weeks of email back-and-forth—only to push generic options from the agent’s playbook in the end, instead of the differentiation that travelers crave. At Fernwayer, we cut through the noise with curated, one-of-a-kind experiences, transparent pricing, instant booking, and a commitment to equitable practices.”
Fernwayer’s experiences span arts and crafts, design and architecture, cultural immersion, gastronomy, photography, social impact initiatives, and outdoor adventures. Most experiences are private and limited to two to eight participants, ensuring intimate and meaningful connections.
“We’ve learned that true luxury is about the richness of experience rather than traditional comforts. It isn’t defined by ‘stars’—not a 5-star hotel, not a first-class flight,” says Jayson. “It’s about unrateable moments: being welcomed like a friend in places typically inaccessible to tourists, engaging in heartfelt conversations that reveal new perspectives, or capturing the perfect photo with guidance from a local expert. Travel should be more than just a journey from point A to point B. It should touch the heart, inspire curiosity, create empathy and foster real human connection.”
Travelers can now book experiences through the Fernwayer website (fernwayer.com) or with a companion mobile app, available for iOS devices, that includes unique planning features such as Travel Goals, Dreamboards for saving favorite experiences, and an itinerary builder called Journeys.