The Referral program turns happy clients into your most cost-effective marketing channel. Every contact gets a unique referral link they can share; when a friend clicks it and submits your inquiry form, the lead lands in Trips already credited to the referring contact.
Turning the program on
Settings → Referrals. The program is OFF by default — flip the master switch when you are ready to start sharing links.
Required settings before you can enable it:
Public offer headline — the one-liner clients see on their referral page (e.g. "Refer a friend and get $100 off your next booking.")
Fine print / terms — your eligibility rules, payout schedule, anything legal
Inquiry form — which Trip Inquiry-kind form the referral link should drop people into
Promotion status — which trip status flips a referral from "inquiry" to "booked" (typically Confirmed, Deposit Paid, or Booked)
How a referral becomes a reward
Your client shares their referral link with a friend
Friend clicks the link, which gets tracked as a referral_link_click
Friend submits your inquiry form. A contact_referral row is created with status=inquiry, linked to the referring contact
When the referred friend's trip reaches your configured promotion status, the referral flips to status=booked automatically
You manually mark the referral as "rewarded" once you have paid out (from the contact page or the /referrals dashboard). Trips does not handle the payout itself — just the bookkeeping
Where to see referral activity
/referrals is the agency-wide dashboard. Every referral, every click, every reward state.
Per-contact tab. Open any contact and look for the Referrals section to see what this person has sent you and what credit they have earned.
Public stats page (optional). If you enabled public_stats_enabled, referring contacts see their own progress bar on their referral landing page.
Getting a referral link
Every contact automatically has a referral link generated the first time it is requested. To grab a link for a specific client, open their contact card — the link sits near the top. The URL format is /r/{code}; that short code is the contact_referral_links row tied to that contact.
Common questions
Can I run more than one promotion at a time?
Not today. The program is single-tier — one headline, one set of rules. Multi-tier programs are on the roadmap.
What if the referred friend was already in my contacts?
The inquiry form still creates a contact_referral row tracking the click. The referral is credited based on whoever shared the link, regardless of whether the new lead was previously known to you.
Does Trips automatically pay the reward?
No — payouts are off-platform. Trips tracks the inquiry → booked → rewarded lifecycle so you can see who is owed; you handle the actual reward (gift card, statement credit, cash) yourself.
Related guides
Groups
Hosted travel groups: create a group, attach trips, manage members, publish a public booking page that auto-creates trips from sign-ups.
Surveys
Auto-dispatch post-trip surveys, send them manually from any trip, and read results in the dashboard.
The portal sign-in prompt
What the "Sign in to your portal, or continue without signing in" splash is, when it appears on public share links, and the 7-day per-token skip cookie that keeps it from nagging clients.