How TripHook works, and how to do the things people ask about most. Pick a section, or read the first article if you are new.
What the product does, and what the words on the buttons mean.
Most travel sites start by asking where you want to go. TripHook starts with how you want the trip to feel, and works out the where. The seven steps below are the whole product, in the order you would meet them.
1. Search by feeling. Set where you are starting from, pick one of six moods, cap your budget and set the temperature you want. You get back destinations ranked on their real weather, the events on your dates, and what the trip is likely to cost.
2. Open a match. Each destination opens to show the weather, what is on, and an estimated cost split between getting there and staying there. Links take you out to book flights and stays yourself. You pay providers directly. We never take your money.
3. Drop a hook. If you are taking the trip and want company, post it. Travellers whose interests match yours can ask to join, or you can send the link to friends.
4. Join a crew. Browse trips other people have posted, message the host with a question, and ask to join. The host decides.
5. Request quotes. Ask local providers for prices on a place you like. They send offers back and you compare them. Nothing is booked until you accept one.
6. Travel together, stay independent. When a crew books, each person gets their own share and their own booking reference, and each pays the provider themselves. There is no shared wallet and nobody fronts the money.
7. Social sonar. Still undecided? The map shows where other travellers are searching and posting right now. A city only lights up once enough people have looked at it, so a quiet map means quiet demand rather than a broken map.
We use fishing words in a few places. Every one of them is an ordinary action underneath, and here is the plain version of each.
Trip hook me. Runs the search. It is the button that turns your mood, budget and dates into a list of destinations.
Drop a hook. Posts a trip so other travellers can ask to join it. The button opens the form, and the same words send it.
Ask to join. Sends the host a request to come on their trip. It does not join you to anything by itself: the host approves or declines, and you are told either way.
Reel in. The host's approve button on a join request. You will also see the phrase used loosely about accepting a provider's offer, but that button is plainly labelled Accept offer.
Release. The host's decline button on a join request. It is the gentler word for saying no to someone, and it does nothing else.
Get hooked. The sign-up button. It creates your account and nothing more.
Unhook. Leaving a crew you had joined; it is the button in the trip's chat header. Removing a trip you posted yourself confirms plainly and then tells you it is unhooked, and signing out is just called Sign out.
Crew. The people travelling with you on a trip. Everyone books their own flights and their own room.
Request quotes. Asks local providers for prices. The marketplace deliberately uses plain commercial words, so you will see request, quote, offer and booked rather than fishing words.
Social sonar. The demand layer on the map. It shows where travellers are searching, and only once enough of them have, so no single person can be picked out of it.
Catch of the day. One destination picked each day, on its own page, for when you want an idea rather than a search.
No, not to look. You can search destinations, open a match and read what is on without signing in.
You need an account, with a verified email, to post a trip, ask to join one, message a host or request quotes. Those all involve another person, which is why they need a real address behind them.
Searching by how you want a trip to feel, and reading what comes back.
Open the MOOD panel in the search bar and pick one of six: somewhere warm, cultural immersion, active outdoors, quiet and remote, a break from routine, or surprise me. The mood is a filter, not a tiebreaker, so places that contradict it are left out rather than pushed down. Cold cities do not appear in a warm search.
If you added interests when you signed up, they tilt the ranking as well. You can change them any time in your account.
Set a cap, then say what it is for: getting there, staying there, or both. That choice changes the ranking and the figure on every card, so a cheap flight and a cheap place to stay each get their moment instead of hiding inside one total.
Trips you can afford are listed first. Tick the flexibility box to let slightly pricier options through, which is useful when nothing fits exactly.
If nothing fits your cap at all, the page says so rather than quietly showing you things you cannot afford.
They are estimates. We calculate a likely flight cost and a likely nightly rate from the route, the season and the destination. They are not live availability, and they are not a price you can book at.
Estimates are marked with a tilde, like ~350 EUR, and captioned to say whether the figure covers the flight, the stay, or both. When we cannot estimate a leg at all, the card says so instead of showing a number.
The real price is whatever the airline, the hotel or the provider charges when you book with them. Quotes from providers in the marketplace are different: those are real prices offered by a real business.
The month picker shows the temperature each destination typically sees in that month, so you can pick by what it will feel like. If you asked for a temperature, matching months are marked; if none match, the closest one is marked instead.
Those numbers are typical averages for the month, not a forecast for your dates. Live weather appears on the results once you search.
Yes. Type the name of a town or village and it is pinned as your first result. Small places are the point: if a place has no airport of its own we look for airports nearby, try each in turn, and tell you which ones we tried.
If none of them have a route on your dates we say so plainly and suggest changing dates, because that is the only thing left that can help.
Tap the heart on any result. Saved places stay with your account and are waiting for you next time, and you can switch the results between everything and just your saved places.
Usually the mood, the temperature or the budget is narrower than the month allows. The page tells you which one it was, so you can widen that rather than guessing.
For a place you named, the reason is often that its nearest airports have no route on those dates. Changing the month is usually the fastest fix.
Open the MOOD panel in the search bar and tick Show neutral results. The ranking then uses only what you typed into this search, and ignores your saved interests. This is how you object to personalised ranking under Article 21 of the GDPR.
Posting a trip, joining someone else's, and what happens after.
From a destination, or from the NetWork page, choose Drop a hook. Set the month, how many people can come, your rough budget band and the vibe. Posting needs a verified email.
Decide who can see it. A public trip gets its own page that anyone can open, showing the destination, the month, your budget band, your display name and photo. It does not show your exact dates or your contact details. A private trip has no public page and is reachable only by a link you send.
Everyone on the trip books their own flights and their own room. You are not collecting anyone's money.
Open a trip on the NetWork feed and choose Ask to join. You can add a short message. Asking needs a verified email.
Your request sits as requested until the host decides. You will see approved, declined, or that the trip filled up. If two people ask for the last place at the same moment, exactly one gets it and the other is told the trip is full.
Asking to join is not a booking. You arrange and pay for your own travel either way.
Open the trip in My trips and use Reel in to approve or Release to decline. You can give a reason when declining.
Approving someone onto the last place fills the trip, and the remaining requests are declined for you with the reason that the trip filled up.
Yes, and it is usually the right order. Use the message icon on a trip to ask the host a question first. The thread is between the two of you, and you can send the join request from inside it once you are sure.
A public trip has a page anyone can open without an account, and search engines can list it. It shows the destination, the month, your budget band, the vibe tags you chose, any event you anchored it to, how many places are left, whether it is still open, your display name, your photo and your trust signals. It does not show your exact dates, your email or any contact details.
You can switch off search engine listing when you post, and you can post privately instead. Deleting a public trip stops its page working immediately, though a search engine may keep showing an old copy for a while, which you can ask them to remove with their own tools.
Planning is where a trip starts. Booked means it is locked in, and it becomes Booked by itself when you accept a provider's offer, so you only ever mark it yourself if you arranged the trip somewhere else. Completed happens on its own after the trip ends. Cancelled means it is not happening.
While you are getting quotes the card also shows where that has got to: finding quotes, then offers in, then booked. A booked trip stays in My trips until it actually happens, because that is when there is most left to organise.
If you joined someone else's trip, Unhook leaves it. The host is not left guessing: your place opens up again.
If you posted the trip, you can cancel it. Everyone on it sees that it is cancelled, and it moves to your History.
Once the host approves you. Before that there is only the direct thread with the host, which keeps the group private to people who are actually going.
You can mute a trip's chat without leaving the trip. Messages are kept for a limited period after the trip finishes and are then deleted, which is set out in the privacy policy.
Getting prices from local providers and booking with them directly.
Open a destination and choose Request quotes, or search a place by name from your requests page. Say when, how many of you there are and your budget. You can add a short message, and any phone number or email in it is removed before providers see it.
Local providers serving that place get your request and send offers back. It is free, it takes no card, and nothing is booked until you accept something.
It works for small places too, not only cities with airports. Those are the ones the big sites tend to miss.
Offers arrive on your requests page. Each one shows the price, the dates, what is included, the cancellation terms and any note the provider wrote. Prices show in the provider's own currency with a rough euro figure beside them.
Offers expire, and the expiry is shown. You can decline one with a reason in a single tap, and the provider can come straight back with a better offer rather than the conversation just stopping.
Tell the provider which window works instead. Your suggestion arrives on their side ready to confirm, and they send back a real offer for those dates. They always confirm availability first, so you never end up holding dates they never agreed to.
Yes. Ask about the room, the dates or a late arrival from the offer itself, before you commit. If the offer expires or you decline it, the conversation stays readable, and it picks up again if they send an updated offer.
Phone numbers and email addresses are removed from these messages automatically, in both directions. Keeping the conversation here is what lets us help if something goes wrong.
The booking appears on your requests page and on the provider's side, with the dates you chose. If the offer had several date options, you book the one you picked.
You pay the provider directly. TripHook never handles the money, so there is nothing to refund through us: cancellations and refunds are between you and the provider, on the terms shown with the offer.
The organiser requests quotes once for the whole trip, and every approved member sees the same offers. Only the organiser can accept or withdraw the request.
When an offer is accepted, each member gets their own share and their own booking reference, and each pays the provider themselves. The split is even by default and the provider can adjust it when rooms do not divide evenly. The card tracks how many of you have booked.
Open the booking on your requests page and cancel it there, before the trip starts. It stays in your history marked as cancelled rather than disappearing.
Whether you get money back is between you and the provider, under the cancellation terms that came with the offer. We do not hold the payment, so we cannot refund it.
Flag the problem on the booking itself. That records it against the booking for both sides. We are not a party to the arrangement between you and the provider, so we cannot decide the outcome, but the record and the messages stay available.
Your profile, your data, and how to take it with you or remove it.
Anything involving another person needs it: posting a trip, asking to join one, messaging a host, and requesting quotes. It is the floor that keeps a real address behind every request.
We verify email and nothing else. We never ask for a passport, an identity document or a photo of you, and there is no identity check to pass.
In your account. Your display name is what other travellers see, so you can change it whenever you like. Your interests tilt which destinations and trips you are shown, and you can clear them.
Your display name, your photo, how many trips you have completed and your rating. That is the set, and it is the same on a trip card as on a public trip page.
Your email, your date of birth and your exact travel dates are never shown to other travellers. Providers see less again: the destination, the dates, the party size and your budget, and no way to identify you. That does not change when you accept an offer. You arrange the rest in the conversation here, where phone numbers and email addresses are removed automatically in both directions.
In your account, under Privacy and data, choose Export my data. It downloads everything we hold about you as a JSON file: your profile, your trips, your requests, your quotes and your messages. This is your right of access and portability under Articles 15 and 20 of the GDPR.
If you would rather ask us directly, or the download will not work for you, email privacy@triphook.me and we will send it. We answer within 30 days.
In your account, under Privacy and data, choose Delete my account. You are asked to confirm twice, because it cannot be undone. This is your right to erasure under Article 17 of the GDPR.
Your profile, your trips and your requests are removed, and your name is taken off anything that has to remain. Some records are kept in a form no longer linked to you, where the law requires it, and the privacy policy sets out which and for how long.
Deleting your account is not the same as leaving a trip. If you only want off one trip, use Unhook instead.
Emails about your own activity, such as a request to join your trip or a quote on something you asked about, and account emails like a sign-in code. That is the whole list. We send no marketing email and no newsletter, so there is nothing of that kind to switch off.
Yes. Pick a language from the menu in the navigation bar. English and German are written by people; the rest are machine translations and are marked as such, so you know when to take the wording loosely.
What the badges mean, and what to do when something goes wrong.
That the person confirmed their email address. That is all it means, and we say so plainly because a tick that looks like more than it is would be worse than none.
It is not an identity check. We do not see anyone's passport or identity document, so a tick is not a statement that someone is who they say they are.
What you see on a card is a traveller's average rating and how many trips they have completed. Both come from trips that actually finished.
A new traveller has no ratings and no completed trips, and that is shown as it is rather than dressed up as a score. Leaving a rating yourself is not something the app can do yet, so nobody is being asked for one.
Email privacy@triphook.me with the trip and what happened, and a person will read it. There is no report button in the app yet, so this is the route, and it is a real one: we can see the trip and the messages on it.
Message before you commit, and keep it here where there is a record. Nobody needs your phone number or your home address to agree a trip, and we never show them.
Book your own flights and your own room, which is how the product is meant to work anyway. Nobody on a trip should be holding your money, and no part of TripHook asks you to send money to another traveller.
Listing a place and answering the travellers who ask for prices.
Open FeedingFrenzy and switch to the Provider Hub. Register, then add a place by typing its name, even a small village. Add up to six photos while you are there; the first one travels with every quote you send.
Set the area you serve and the kinds of trip you want to hear about, so the requests that reach you are ones you can actually answer.
New requests arrive in the New tab with the dates, the party size and the traveller's budget. Send a price, what is included, your cancellation terms and a short note. You can offer up to three date windows in one quote, each with its own price.
You do not see who the traveller is, and you do not get their contact details when they accept. Everything is arranged in the conversation on the platform, which protects both sides while trust is still forming.
Every request sits in exactly one of them and moves through in order: New when it arrives, Quoted once you have priced it, Booked when it is yours, and Closed when it is finished or gone. The number on each tab is the real count, so nothing is waiting in two places at once.
Yes, from the Inventory tab. Change the price for a season, widen the area you serve, fix a typo, or pause a place that is full. Archiving is reversible: an archived place can be brought back with one click.
You see the booking broken down by traveller, with who has confirmed their share. When rooms do not divide evenly you can set each person's amount, and the total still has to add up to the price you agreed. Tick people off as they book.
Nothing today. We do not charge providers a commission. If that ever changes we will tell providers before it takes effect, and the terms of service is where it would be written down.
The documents, and how to reach us.
The privacy policy is at /privacy, the terms of service at /terms, and the legal notice with our company details at /impressum. The privacy policy is the authoritative account of what we collect and how long we keep it; this page only summarises it.
Email privacy@triphook.me. There is no contact form on purpose: a form would mean collecting more about you than an email already tells us. Write in any language and we will manage.
Cannot find it? Email privacy@triphook.me and a person will read it.