Getting Started
Experiences are excursions or other activities designed and led by local hosts. Hosts give guests unique access into places and communities in their city.
Experiences can range from workshops to long treks, and are available for various skill levels and interests.
For now, experiences are only available in select cities.
You’ll see information about what is or isn’t included by your host on the experience page. Inclusions vary for each experience.
Use the Tickle app on your iOS or Android phone to book an experience. When you open the app, look for the Explore section. Then, choose a specific city and dates, or browse through all experiences.
Experience availability is set by the individual host.
You can, if you are buying an experience for yourself AND any additional guests you bring and pay for.
Each host decides whether or not children can attend their experience. In the experience description, the host will specify whether or not the experience is suitable for children, and how old children must be to attend it.
You must be over 18 to make an experience reservation, but you can book additional spots for children if you’re their legal guardian. Keep in mind that you’ll be responsible for any children that you bring on an experience.
Create an Experience
To host an experience you should meet the following standards.
Credible
You’re deeply knowledgeable about your subject or skilled at your activity, and can demonstrate this to your guests. For example, you:
- Made this skill into a career or business
- Studied the subject in school
- Are an experienced hobbyist
- Have won an award in this field
- Have been featured in articles
Genuine
You’re truly passionate about hosting and meeting people. For example, you:
- Make guests feel like they belong and treat them like friends rather than customers
- Adopt a positive attitude when interacting with guests
- Give personal recommendations
Empathetic
You anticipate your guest’s needs and feelings. For example, you:
- Facilitate the conversation
- Help each guest feel included
- Adapt the experience as needed
Download the iOS or Android app to submit an experience that you’d like to host.
Once you’ve submitted your experience, you’ll receive an email from Tickle. Potential hosts typically get a response within a few days, depending on your city and type of experience.
Hosts often include things like entrance fees and equipment rentals in the price of their experiences, but it’s completely up to you. Just make sure to mention very clearly in your listing description what is and isn’t included in your experience. For example, if you’re leading a beer walk, you might choose to include only the first round of beers in the price.
All payments that guests make directly to you must be handled through the Tickle app.
The price you set for your experience is up to you, and you can change it at any time. Here are some things to keep in mind when you’re setting your price:
- New hosts often find it helpful to offer a great value when they start. This helps them attract their first few bookings and build their reputation by earning great reviews. You may want to set a lower price for your first few bookings, and then raise your price over time.
- When setting your price, factor in things like the cost of any materials you need, the time you spend setting up, and the cost of food or rentals that you include for each guest. Consider calculating these expenses based on a full group of guests, as opposed to trying to calculate it for each individual guest.
- Price can often set expectations, so keep in mind that if you set a very high price, your guests may expect an exceptionally luxurious or exclusive experience. Make sure your price reflects the service you provide.
- If you notice that different dates of your experience are more popular than others, you can customize your price by date. You can try lowering your price for dates that don’t usually get reservations, and raising your price for dates that typically sell out.
- You may be able to deduct your expenses from your income taxes, so you should keep receipts of the costs of running your experiences.
Once your experience is published on Tickle, guests can instantly book any dates you’ve made available.
They’ll have to review any guest requirements you’ve added to your experience.
When a guest books, you get an email notification with the guest’s profile and contact information.
We recommend sending your guests a message to introduce yourself and get to know them before the experience and answer any questions they may have.
To help decide if your experience is suitable for children, consider these questions:
– Will younger guests be able to physically participate? For example, a strenuous hike might not be possible for a 5-year-old.
– Is there any adult content presented during your experience by you or someone else, such as swearing or sexual references?
– Will you be going to a venue that has age restrictions?
– Will you or anyone else be serving alcohol?
– Do your other guests know that children will be attending?
Questions as a Guest
Experiences are one-of-a-kind activities that tell the story of the host’s unique perspective and passion, offering guests something that guidebooks or internet searches can’t. To help ensure all experiences meet the community’s expectations, they must meet the following standards in order to be on Tickle.
All experiences on Tickle must meet our quality standards:
Hospitality: Hosts are friendly and welcoming to strangers or guests, and are able to facilitate connections between them.
Expertise: Hosts have skill or knowledge pertaining to the particular field relating to the experience.
Insider access: Hosts demonstrate their exclusive ability to do things the average person wouldn’t likely discover on their own such as: going to a lesser-known place, meeting a private community, ordering off-menu, going after hours, seeing backstage, etc.
In addition to our quality standards, all experiences and experience hosts must comply with the terms and conditions set forth in our Terms of Service. Here’s a summary of a few of these additional requirements:
Accuracy: Hosts must provide complete and accurate information about their experience, including the itinerary, time and date, meeting location, what they’ll provide to guests, etc.
Exclusive dates: Once a Host lists an experience for a particular date and time on Tickle, only Tickle guests can attend that instance of the experience.
Commitment to reservations: Hosts must honour all booked reservations, even if that reservation is for one person, unless they are forced to cancel due to a valid extenuating circumstance.
You must comply with local laws and regulations when you go on an experience. For example, you’ll need to meet the local drinking age laws of a city to drink alcohol on your experience.
Any other specific licence (ex: scuba certification, driver’s license) that’s required for an experience will be listed by your host in the Guest requirements section.
Skill level
Some activities require different skill levels. View the requirements section of the experience page for specific details.
You’ll find details on what to bring for each experience in your itinerary. You should also contact your host to confirm times and meeting locations.
You’ll receive a confirmation email for each experience you book. This email will go to the email address associated with your Tickle account.
You can also find your booking details by going into the Experiences section of the Tickle app.
After your experience ends, you’ll receive a reminder notification to leave a review. Guests have 30 days to write a review and leave public feedback for future guests.
No. You can’t bring additional guests unless they or you have also booked a spot for the experience.
Hosts have the right to turn away any guest who has not booked their spot through Tickle.
It’s up to you. Your host set a price they expect will fully cover your experience. If you want to show appreciation for your host, write a review encouraging other guests to book their experience.
Flexible
The experience can be canceled and fully refunded up to 24 hours before it starts.
Moderate
The experience can be canceled and fully refunded up to 5 days before it starts.
Strict
The experience can be canceled and fully refunded up to 7 days before it starts. 50% will be refunded if cancellation is made within 7 days.
Hosts plan for changes in the weather and will try to continue the experience as planned, even in bad weather. If severe weather conditions make it unsafe for you and your host to continue as scheduled, the host may adjust the itinerary. If the experience is substantially changed or cancelled altogether, you can request a refund after the experience has ended.
You can only cancel an experience using the Tickle mobile app. Log in to the app on your mobile device and follow the instructions below.
To cancel an experience you booked:
– Log in the Tickle app and tap the Experiences icon in the menu bar
– Select an experience and tap Cancel Booking
While extremely rare, should a host need to cancel an experience or event, you will be notified as soon as the cancellation is reported. You’ll be refunded in full.
We take host cancellations very seriously. If your host cancels, outside accepted exceptions, they may receive a fine or their experience could be suspended, pending a review of their account.
Hosts make every effort to continue, as scheduled, with experiences. If inclement weather creates an unsafe or uncomfortable scenario for guests, this may result in a change or partial cancellation of a booking. If an individual experience is cancelled and substantially changes the itinerary or results in a cessation of the experience, Tickle will work with your host to provide an appropriate refund. Contact us if that’s the case.
Support for Hosts
Go to Host in the Tickle app for iOS or Android and open the Submissions or Active section. For each experience, you can set the dates you’d like to make your experience available. Please note that you’ll need to resubmit it for review.
We believe hosts can get more bookings if they make their experience available at least twice a month. Guests make their plans around your experiences, so if you make an experience available for a certain day, be sure that you’re actually able to host it.
You can change your availability at any time, so long as the dates have not yet been booked by a guest. Once dates have been booked, dates, times, locations and content of experiences can’t be altered unless your guest agrees to the change.
You’ll need to set up your payout method on your Tickle profile. We currently only support Stripe as a payout method. The Stripe service allows you to cash your earnings out to a bank account that you link to on your Stripe account.
When a guest books your experience, Tickle will send you (via Stripe) the paid amount, minus our credit card processing and platform fees.
To set cutoff times:
1. In the app, go to your hosted experience in the Host menu
2. In the experience, tap the Settings icon
3. Change your cutoff time under the field for ‘When’s the latest time guests can book’
You’ll have to change your price using the Tickle app. Open the app and follow the instructions below.
To customise your experience price by date:
1. Open the app and select an experience under Host
2. Tap Manage
3. Select the Availability icon
4. Tap on a date to edit its details
5. Save and resubmit your experience for review
Once your experience is published on Tickle, guests can instantly book any dates you’ve made available on your calendar.
When they do, you’ll get a confirmation email with the names and number of guests booked under each reservation. It will also include the guest’s email contact.
We recommend sending a message to any confirmed guests to introduce yourself, get to know them beforehand, and answer any questions they may have.
If you’d like to accommodate an extra guest, you should have that guest book through the Tickle app. Tickle can’t offer customer service for guests that don’t have an official reservation through the platform and any liability waivers won’t apply.
Please check your email records for the booking confirmation by guests. Search for the title of your experience or the date as it is listed in the email.
If your experience’s average star rating gets too low, we may be in touch through email with some successful hosting tips.
If you continue to receive low ratings, we’ll follow up and let you know next steps. If your ratings don’t improve, your experience may be temporarily or permanently removed from Tickle. We will notify you by email before temporarily or permanently removing your experience due to low ratings.
If your experience is temporarily removed, you will still be responsible for hosting guests that have booked your experience in the future. Empty instances of your experience, however, will not be able to be booked by new guests.
If your experience is permanently removed, it will no longer be available on Tickle. All future instances will be cancelled and guests will be fully refunded.
To help cover the costs of the products, services, and support we provide, we charge hosts who offer experiences a 20% booking service fee + 3.5% (+$0.50) credit card processing fee. The amount of the service fee is calculated from the price that hosts set for their experience.
The booking service fee is charged from hosts’ set price, so it’s only visible to hosts when they set their price. Guests who are looking at experiences see the total price that they’ll pay to make a booking, and no additional service fees are charged to guests at this time.
If bad weather conditions create an unsafe scenario for you or your guests, we encourage you to modify or cancel your experience.
If this happens and results in a significant change in the itinerary, Tickle will work with you to provide an appropriate refund to your guests.
This depends on the cancellation policy you have selected for your experience as a host.
Flexible
The experience can be canceled and fully refunded up to 24 hours before it starts.
Moderate
The experience can be canceled and fully refunded up to 5 days before it starts.
Strict
The experience can be canceled and fully refunded up to 7 days before it starts. 50% will be refunded if cancellation is made within 7 days.
Guests are able to cancel their booking by logging in to the app, going to the Experiences > Bookings section, tap the Settings icon and selecting Cancel Booking. Note that your selected cancellation policy applies to the amount refunded.
You’re only able to change or cancel experiences which haven’t been booked. To do so, please contact us immediately.
For any disagreement we suggest you try resolving it in person. If you and your guest are unable to resolve the issue, contact us.
At this time, please write to us at hello@trytickle.com to unpublish your experience.
Your safety is our first priority. If you’re injured or require medical attention while on an experience, you should get yourself to a safe place and contact local emergency services immediately.
Once you’re safe and your immediate concerns have been addressed, report the incident to us by going to the Profile tab of your Tickle app and tapping ‘Give us feedback’, then choosing ‘Guest issue’ as the feedback topic. Tell us what happened.
How else can we help you?
Contact Us
Do you have further questions? We’re here to help.
Write to us with your full name here: hello@trytickle.com
We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.