Just a head’s up: My husband and I just got back from the Best of Italy 17-day tour. At our welcome meeting, our tour leader let us know we’d be using What’s App for tour communications, in addition to the schedules posted at each hotel. This took us by surprise, as it hadn’t been mentioned in any of our pre-tour planning materials. Apparently it is something RS Tours is testing out with select tours, perhaps to see whether it's feasible to use with more tours in the future. My husband and I both had issues getting on What’s App; the app refused to validate me, saying I was a security concern, which confounded me. I had used What’s App once or twice before, but not for like 10 years. My husband is not technologically adept, and it took him quite a bit of time to understand how to get the app and use it.
Our tour leader told me to delete and re-download the app and wait 24 hours. Did this; the problem with authentication persisted. Nothing the tour leader suggested helped. I spent quite a bit of time trying to locate customer service help for the app…because there is nothing but a generic “help” guide in the app (which was of course not helpful.) I finally found a link to contact customer service in the app store, under reviews. Sent messages appealing to them and telling them I did not understand why I was being told I was a security concern. Even contacted my phone provider (Verizon), which was no help. Three days later, the app finally sent me an authentication code, then one hour later banned me from using the app. I appealed this decision (you have to do all this online, and there is no actual person to talk to, the app seems to be run by bots). After a few hours, my appeal was granted, and both my husband and I were finally able to get up and running on the app.
But we missed more than three days of group communications. Announcements, scheduling updates/reminders, lunch and dinner restaurant suggestions, details about what we would be seeing on our walking tours, the matrix of photos/names of all tour participants, and shared photos and comments between our fellow tour participants - we had to ask the tour leader to AirDrop this info separately to our phones. (Couldn’t get the conversations/comments from other participants). I felt we were missing out on an important shared group experience.
So you might want to ask the tour office a few days before your tour whether your particular tour will be using What’s App. If so, it would be far easier to download the app and go through the validation process when still at home.