For hire businesses

How to be a Sinch host

Ride NZ lists the businesses that hire Sinch e-bikes on New Zealand's Great Rides — 8 hosts so far. It takes no bookings and no commission: every listing hands the rider straight to the host's own booking page. This is that arrangement from the host's side of it.

The short answer

A host is a business with a Sinch e-bike fleet and a booking page of its own. Each trail you hire on is a listing, with its own services, selling line, booking link and season. You get a login and fill those in yourself; Ride NZ reviews what you send before it goes live, and sets the accreditation badge. Riders book with you.

Hosts listed 8

Trails to list on 15

Great Rides covered 13 of 23

Regions covered 8

Commission on a booking None

Bookings Ride NZ holds None

What a host needs

Ride NZ can supply none of these for you. Everything else about a listing is a form you fill in.

A Sinch e-bike fleet This is the directory of businesses hiring Sinch e-bikes, so that is the one entry requirement. Every profile on the site carries the Sinch e-bike fleet badge because every business on it has one.

At least one trail you hire on The business is the host; the listing is that business on one trail. Nothing of yours is public until a listing is published — a business with no published listing is not a directory entry.

A booking page of your own Book direct opens your URL in a new tab and the rider pays you there. Ride NZ holds no booking and takes no commission, so a listing needs somewhere real to send people.

Addresses for your depots and pick-up points Depot addresses set the map pins and are read back in the sentences on trail and region pages, so each one has to be somewhere a rider can turn up to rather than a town name.

Someone who keeps it current A published listing carries the month it was last confirmed, on your card and on your profile. Publishing a change refreshes that stamp, so a listing nobody maintains ends up looking like one.

How a listing gets on the site

Nothing on this page starts it — the first conversation is with Sinch, and the login comes from Ride NZ.

Step one

Talk to Sinch about a fleet. Ride NZ is the Sinch directory, published by Sinch Bikes, so the bikes come before the listing.

Step two

Ride NZ creates your login. Back-office accounts are made by Ride NZ staff — there is no sign-up form on this site. Your account is tied to one business and can open that business only.

Step three

You fill the business in, then a listing for each trail you hire on: services, season, selling line, booking link and your own photographs.

Step four

Ride NZ reviews it, then publishes. What you write is parked as a proposal and the approved version keeps serving until an admin applies it, so an unreviewed wording change never reaches a rider. Clearing a trail off your business is the exception: that takes the listing down at once, and the form says so where you do it.

What a listing holds

Blank on a listing means: same as the business

Filled in once, for the business

The whole form. These describe the business wherever it turns up on the site.

Business name · Base town · Operating since · Website · Primary region · Booking page URL · Booking note · Season · Selling line · Best suited to · Included with hire · Shuttles · Luggage transfer · Kids' bikes · Depots & pick-up points

Of those, the ones a listing can change

A business that works the same way everywhere fills them in once on the business form and leaves them alone; a business that shuttles on one trail and not another sets these per listing.

Booking page URL · Booking note · Season · Selling line · Best suited to · Included with hire · Shuttles · Luggage transfer · Kids' bikes

Your photographs, or a labelled gap

You upload the cover shot and the gallery, and they are the only photographs the site will ever show for you. Nothing is bought in to fill a hole — where there is no photo, the slot stays a placeholder captioned with what belongs there.

What Ride NZ sets, not you

Three things: accreditation, because a business cannot award itself a trust signal; whether a record is published at all; and the confirmed month, which is stamped the moment it goes live.

See how the listings read

Questions hosts ask

Does Ride NZ take a cut of a booking?

No. Ride NZ holds no booking and takes no commission. Book direct opens your own booking page, and the rider pays you there.

Where do we come in the list?

Somewhere different every time. Hosts are shuffled on every page load, so nobody is permanently first and the running order is not a ranking. A rider looking for a business by name can still sort the directory A–Z.

Can we set our own Qualmark badge?

No. Accreditation is a trust signal the directory asserts rather than repeats, so Ride NZ sets it. Every other field on the form is yours to write.

What if we hire on more than one trail?

Then you have more than one listing — one per trail, each with its own booking link, season, services and selling line. Leave one of those blank on a listing and it uses your business-level answer. Depots are filled in once for the business, and each trail page shows the ones that sit on it.

Who writes the copy on the trail and region pages?

The site does, from your records. Every sentence that names hosts is generated from one source, which is why the visible copy, the meta description and the structured data always agree — and why nothing is claimed that a field does not say.

Which trails can we be listed on?

The 15 trails this site covers: 13 of New Zealand's 23 Great Rides, plus 2 trails that link them up. A trail nobody hires on yet is not shown to riders, so listing on one puts it back on the site. Your listings go on the ones you actually hire on, and each one gets its own page.

Start with the bikes. There is no application form on this page. A listing starts with a Sinch fleet, so the first conversation is with Sinch — and if Ride NZ has already set you up, your listings are behind the sign-in.

Talk to Sinch about a fleet

Already a host? Sign in