What is Tourist ID?
A nickname, a page with your name on it, and a card that gets you in. That's the whole idea.
Tourist ID, in one breath
Tourist ID is simply who you are on Tourist. You pick a nickname, and that nickname becomes your address on the platform, a public page that says "this person is a traveler", and a digital Tourist Card that a café or a guesthouse recognises the second you hold it up.
If you've ever had a handle on a social network you already get it, except this one is built for the road. It tells the bar, the tour guide, the little hotel that you're a guest in their city, and it opens the doors our partners keep open for Tourist members. Nothing more complicated than that.
The page with your name on it
Every Tourist ID comes with a public page at tourist.com/nickname. What goes on it is entirely up to you, and most people put some mix of:
- a name, a photo, a cover image, a couple of lines about yourself
- the countries you've been to and the cities you actually know
- the languages you speak, badly or otherwise, and what you're into
- whichever contacts and social links you feel like sharing
- a gallery, if you're the kind of person who takes photos
You also choose the style, the colour and the font of both the page and the card, so it ends up looking like you rather than like a form somebody made you fill in. The link on the page and the QR code on the card lead to the same place, which saves a lot of explaining.
The card itself
The Tourist Card is the part of your Tourist ID other people actually see. It lives in the Tourist app and on the website, and you can drop it into Apple Wallet or Google Wallet so it's one swipe away. On it: your name, your nickname, a QR code. Scan the code and you land on the public page.
Tourist Plus members get two extras: a PIN to lock the card, and a free physical card with NFC inside, the kind you tap against someone's phone to hand over your Tourist ID and profile without typing anything.
What happens at a partner
Before you pay, show the card or scan the partner's QR code. The business then applies whatever discount or perk it has published for Tourist members, right there at the till. We don't sit in the middle of this: no booking through us, no voucher, no commission, the offer goes straight from the business to you. At last count the card was recognised by 55.258+ local partners in 195+ countries, and that number moves every day.
And with other travelers
Travelers use Tourist ID to find each other too. Swap cards with someone you met on a night bus, add them as a friend, check who else is in town this week, start a chat. All of it runs from your public page, so you never have to hand out your phone number to a stranger you've known for twenty minutes.
Free, and Plus
Claiming a Tourist ID costs nothing. The nickname, the public page, the digital card and the free-tier partner discounts are all included, no card fee, no subscription, no catch waiting further down the page.
Tourist Plus is a yearly subscription, entirely optional, that unlocks the deeper discount tiers at partners, the PIN-locked card and the free physical card. Plenty of people never upgrade and are perfectly happy.
Getting one
Sign up on tourist.com, or install the Tourist app from the App Store or Google Play, pick a nickname that isn't taken, and that's it, your Tourist ID is ready to show the next person who asks.