Tag sorting for ten ships — port and starboard, forward, midship, aft, inside corridor. A guest book that remembers every family who came back and totals what they were worth. Ship news that stays current. And the thing no porter has ever had: the guest who asked for you by name can reach you again — no phone numbers, either direction. That part is live today, not coming. Plus a set of free tools you hand the guest on arrival, so the people you helped in the morning already know how to find you on the way home.
Join the pre-launch list$20 a month. No card on file, ever — you sign up, pay on the pier in person, and the account opens the same day. The debark queue and the guest tools are free either way.
Right now the only answer is to hand over a personal phone number and hope the schedule lines up. It usually doesn't. You might be on a different pier, a different ship, or off the board entirely that week.
Meanwhile the guest steps off the bus into six people shouting at once and has no idea who's who. That's not a welcome. That's a gauntlet.
This fixes both ends of it. The guest tells you when and where they're sailing. You say yes or no. Everybody knows what's happening before the bags come off the bus.
I work the waterfront. I see these problems every single day — and every one of them is somebody's first vacation in three years going sideways over something we could have solved with a phone. — why this is getting built
Built by somebody who works the dock, for people who work the dock. Everything below is running today.
Type the cabin, get the drop. Nine Royal ships — Adventure, Allure, Harmony, Jewel, Liberty, Mariner, Radiance, Symphony and Voyager — plus MSC Seascape. Every one checked against the printed board, with lane finding, the X-ray room layout and printable 24×36 charts, and they keep working on a dead pier connection. Each line gets its own tag style, because Royal and MSC are not the same rulebook and you should know which one you are reading before you read a number. Carnival, Disney, Norwegian, Margaritaville and Regent next — tell us what you work and it moves to the front.
A guest at a bag stand scans the sign and raises a hand. It shows up live and the next porter in line claims it — a physical line of porters, working in order, quietly. Intercruise agents can raise one without hunting anybody down. No account, no name, no phone number: the call carries a station and nothing else. This part costs nothing and always will.
One entry per family. Everyone in the party, every sailing they have taken with you, what they told you, and what each trip was worth. It totals the tips, so you can see in one number what returning guests are actually worth to you. It lives on your phone — nothing is uploaded and nobody at Dockside can read it.
A guest scans your card and you are talking, with your photo and the name you chose at the top so they know it is you. No phone number changes hands in either direction. Threads close themselves eight hours after the last message, and anything you are done with can be set aside to wait out its own clock. They can save you to their own phone from that screen — a real contact, kept on their device, so finding you again next time isn't a scan or a search, it's a name they already have.
An account needs a WGMA work number and the last name it belongs to. The list is never published and never leaves the server. One number, one account, one phone.
Phone, tablet, the cracked one that lives in the truck. Big type, big buttons, readable in full sun with gloves on.
The guest you help at 9am on embarkation day is the same guest standing in a bag hall a week later with no idea who to look for. Every tool below is free, with no app and no sign-up — a guest scans a code on your card or on a bag stand and it opens.
That is the whole play. You give them something genuinely useful in the ninety seconds you have with them, they use it all week, and your name is the one attached to it when the bags come off. It costs you nothing and it costs them nothing.
Documents, and the birth-certificate mistake that turns families away at the door — the hospital one with the footprints is not accepted, and most people find that out too late. What gets confiscated, by line.
Check the safe. Tags on every bag, a photo of each one, trackers inside and switched on. The list porters wish every guest had read, because they watch the same bags go missing every week.
The stand knows where it is bolted, so a guest gets that pier's lost-luggage contact, its shuttles and its notices — not a page listing every terminal in Galveston.
One link, one QR on your card. Your photo, the name you chose, your port, and every guide above in one place. A guest in a hurry scans it, pockets their phone, and still has you a week later. Messaging you is one tap from there.
Plenty of guests carry no cash now and apologise for it. List Cash App, Venmo or PayPal on your page and they have an answer instead of an awkward moment. Pick the app, type your handle, and the link and QR build themselves. Only apps with a chosen handle — nothing that would put your phone number on a page strangers can read. Nothing about tips appears until you add a method, and the money goes straight to you: Dockside never touches it.
A cruise isn't one business. It's a chain of them, and the guest passes through every link on the way to the gangway. Look at who holds on to them, and who doesn't.
You are the first person on that whole trip who touches their bags — and the only one with no way to be asked for by name.
That's backwards, because you're the one they remember. Nobody tells a story about the parking shuttle. They tell it about the guy who saw the stroller, the walker and the four suitcases coming off the bus and made the whole thing disappear before they'd finished worrying about it.
And it isn't only the way in. The way home is where a good vacation gets undone — the elevator's jammed, nobody knows which pile their bags went to, the flight's at two. That's the ride they'll actually describe to their friends. When the guest can tell you in advance that they're back on the 14th, off the Symphony, terminal whichever — you already know where they're going and how to get them on the road.
Do that twice and you're not a stranger anymore. You're their porter. Regulars don't tip like strangers, they tip like people who planned for you, and a book of regulars is the difference between hoping the shift is good and having a fair idea before you clock in. That's what this is for.
TRY IT — PICK A SHIP, TYPE A CABIN
Type a cabin number and press Sort.
The ones you figured weren't worth the walk. Twenty of them covers the whole month — and if this lands one extra guest who came back looking for you specifically, it paid for the year.
There is no card on file and no card reader. Sign up, find Dockside on the pier, pay for the month, and the account opens that day. Nothing renews behind your back — the app warns you ten days out, again at five, and counts down the last day before it stops. Nothing is ever taken automatically, because nothing of yours is held.
When it does lapse, the debark queue keeps working and so does every guest tool. A conversation already open stays open until it ends on its own — a guest waiting on an answer should not be left hanging over somebody else's billing.
This is being built in the open, off what porters actually ask for. Say what would make it worth carrying and it goes on the board.
A guest leaves their car keys in a stateroom safe. Today that is a phone tree, a form, and a wait of hours — sometimes days, sometimes the item never surfaces. With crew on the same network, the guest goes straight to the housekeeper who cleans that deck, or the server who knows them by name, and it is minutes.
Everybody in that chain has a reason to move: a tip if there is one, and a guest who will be back on another sailing either way. That is the difference between a system and a lost-property box.
A server, a bartender, a housekeeper — a code of their own, and a guest can reach them the same way they reach you. Two letters for the country, two for them, four digits. No two codes ever the same. Know somebody aboard? Send them here →
Keys, passports, a CPAP, a wedding ring. The guest tells the one person most likely to be standing near it, instead of a desk that will call them back.
Ten built. Tell us which ones you work and they move to the front. A sorter takes days, not months, once we have a board photo.
The twenty you answer two hundred times a shift, one tap each, ready to turn the screen around. Languages after that.
There is a Suggestions box inside the app that lands straight in front of us. Most of what is already built came from a porter saying it should exist.