A place in a very large story about leadership
On 9 June, Fernwayer featured in the launch of Monarchy and Democracy: A History of Leadership — an official History of Parliament project — at College Garden, Westminster Abbey.
On 9 June, we were at College Garden, Westminster Abbey, as part of the launch of Monarchy and Democracy: A History of Leadership — an official History of Parliament project, produced in partnership with St James's House. Written by royal experts Robert Jobson, Russell Myers and Katie Nicholl, the book explores the evolving roles of Crown and Parliament in the leadership of the UK and the Commonwealth over the past hundred years.
If you missed our press release earlier this month, you can read it in full here.
Fernwayer is featured as a Leader in Sustainability — in recognition of a model of travel built around cultural preservation, fair economic value, and the continuity of living traditions. Here is what it looks like in practice.
A tradition survives when the person carrying it can keep doing it with dignity. That belief is at the heart of everything we build.
For us, sustainability means continuity. Helping traditions, livelihoods and knowledge systems remain visible, valued and viable. It means supporting a living wetland in Xochimilco, shaped by ancestral farming, where efforts are underway to help the axolotl return to its natural habitat. Spotlighting a community-rooted creative centre for older women in Lisbon. Co-creating experiences with a fourth-generation fisherman in Venice whose knowledge of the lagoon's fragile ecology helps keep that world intact.
More than 80% of every booking goes directly to Experience Makers and their local collaborators. Because admiration alone does not preserve a tradition. Fair value does.
The Evening
College Garden at Westminster Abbey carries a unique sense of history and continuity — which felt entirely fitting for a book of this nature and this moment. The launch also folded in the London Press Club Summer Garden Party and a tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II — several hundred senior figures from British media gathered in England's oldest cultivated garden, beside a building that has watched a thousand years of history pass through it.
For us, this evening placed travel alongside education, public policy, diplomacy, technology, stewardship — and treated them as part of the same conversation. It's a leadership conversation Fernwayer is proud to belong in.
Vinitaa, Alok, Angelo and Alice spent six hours across both events. What struck us was how many of the people we spoke with — from around the world — understood instinctively what Fernwayer is trying to do — that travel, when it is built around human connection and cultural understanding, becomes something more than extractive tourism.
Leadership can flourish outside corridors of power. Through people, culture, and human connection.
Postcards & Giveaways
Before the event, we made fifty postcards — each featuring a photograph from a real Fernwayer experience, with a line or two about it on the back. Guests could take them away, or write one on the spot and drop it into our postbox on the table.
A photograph would catch someone's eye. They would stop, pick it up, turn it over. And then a question or a story would come up — about a place they had visited themselves, or about somewhere they had never heard of but immediately wanted to find.
The most meaningful part of travel is the human side. Fifty postcards in a garden at Westminster Abbey made that case.
We posted the written ones the following day from a Royal Mail post office — with stamps for addresses from around the world.
We also offered a giveaway on the evening — and five people have since been contacted with the gift of a Fernwayer experience.
In Their Own Words
"What resonated with us about this project is that it treats heritage and global engagement as living things, not static ones. That feels very close to how we think about travel."
— Alok Singh, co-founder, Fernwayer
"Travel, at its best, is a form of cultural diplomacy at a human level. When it is rooted in curiosity and genuine connection, it leaves both travelers and communities with something of lasting value."
— Vinitaa Jayson, co-founder, Fernwayer
The Fernwayer Film: The Human Side of Travel
The evening also included the screening of the official project film — which features clips from our own Fernwayer film, shot on location in Venice, with segments from Spain, Japan, Mexico, and other parts of Italy woven through it. In Venice, three of our Experience Makers were at the heart of it: an art director and urban explorer who navigates the city through all the senses, a boatman who has spent his life on the lagoon, and a fisherman from Burano who has become, as one of our team put it, a movie star, through his conservation work.
Our film was made to tell Fernwayer's story from the point of view of what happens when you step into someone else's world for a little while. The person you spend time with is not a guide. They are a photographer. A fisherman. An artist. A human being. You can feel the difference.
Watch The Human Side of Travel
Two Years On
750+ experiences | 14 countries | 80%+ of what you pay stays local Two years on from our launch in late May 2024, we now offer more than 750 experiences across 14 countries. Every experience was co-created with someone who has real knowledge and a genuine connection to place. If this has stirred a little Fernweh of your own — that sense of far-sickness, for a place you've never been to — this summer is a great time to make it happen.