Serge is a travel concierge for Australia that lives in WhatsApp. It's built for tourists, mostly international, mostly self-driving, mostly on a two to four week east coast road trip. You text it from your phone, and it helps you plan and book the tours, experiences, and day trips that sit around the drive.
This post explains what it does on launch, what it deliberately doesn't do, and where we're heading.
The why
The tourists who come to Australia are, in our experience, under-served by everything that exists. The OTAs commodify the operators and the operators do not scale one-to-one customer service across the thousands of conversations a good travel planner would have. A real local who knows the east coast can tell you which reef boat to avoid, which Noosa restaurant to skip, and which Byron beach to walk to instead. That's the conversation we're building, at scale, in the phone you already use.
We thought about an app. You do not need another app.
WhatsApp is on the phone of essentially every international visitor to Australia. You already use it. Serge lives there.
The product in plain English
You message Serge. Serge knows where you are in your trip, what you've already seen, and what you're about to drive into. Serge has five specific things it can do for you:
- Find the right experience. Reef boats in Cairns, surf lessons in Byron, hinterland walks on the Gold Coast. Not the whole catalogue, the right three for your dates and your kind of trip.
- Tell you the details. What's included, what the weather will likely be, what to bring, what the operator is actually like from other customers we've heard from.
- Book it, through the chat. We hold your spot, send you a secure payment link, and confirm the booking back to you. No forms, no app, no separate portal.
- Remember what you've told us. Dietary needs, what you've already booked, your partner's seasickness, the kids' ages. We write these down so you don't have to repeat them.
- Nudge you at the right time. "The weather tomorrow is better for the reef than Thursday, want to shift?" Useful, occasional, never spammy.
That's the whole product. It's deliberately small, because a focused product that works is more useful than a broad one that doesn't.
What it won't do on day one
A short list of things we've explicitly cut from the first version. We may build some of these later. Others we will never build.
- Voice notes and calls. Text only for now.
- Flights and accommodation. Serge does tours and experiences, not hotels and airlines. There are other tools that do those well.
- Food booking. We'll happily tell you where to eat. We won't book your table.
- Car and camper rental. We partner with rental operators. We don't rent vehicles ourselves.
- Every Australian experience. We focus on the east coast at launch (Sydney, Byron, Gold Coast, Noosa, Whitsundays, Cairns). The interior and the west come later.
- Pretending to be human. If you ask Serge whether it's AI, it will tell you.
Who Serge is for right now
Our first real conversations are with customers referred by RatPack, a campervan rental business that runs the east coast run. When their customers pick up a van, the RatPack team passes a basic context to Serge (name, phone, trip dates, vehicle) and the customer gets a welcome message from Serge when they're ready for it. The customer can ignore it, message back, or engage seriously. The point is they have a local in their pocket for the trip.
We'll open to more partners over the next quarter. If you're a travel operator, a rental business, or a trip planner who would like your customers to have the same concierge, contact us at partners@askserge.com.au.
When you can use Serge
If you booked with a partner that's wired up, you already have the number. If you want to try it as an individual traveller, askserge.com.au has a button that starts the conversation. We're releasing access gradually. Honest answer on when it opens fully: when we're confident we can give every customer a decent conversation. Not before.
If you'd like to be told when it opens more broadly, the email field at the bottom of the homepage will do the trick. No newsletter, no marketing. One email when we're ready.
Serge is new. It will get better every week. Tell us what it gets wrong. We read everything.
Questions, media, partnerships: hello@askserge.com.au.