Become a Host in Cairns

Rent out your car in Cairns and Port Douglas without running a rental business. You keep the car, your business and your rates; Drive Tribe finds the guests, verifies every driver, holds the bond, signs the contract and pays you a statement each period.

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We are a Sydney prestige car hire business with a host network, and Cairns is on our list as part of our Queensland network.

Is your car a fit?

Tropical North Queensland is a holiday market: most visitors are there to relax, and many want a convertible for the coast road. We want:

• Prestige and performance: the German and British badges, M, AMG and RS models, and the V8 coupes.
• Luxury SUVs: Range Rover, G-Class, X7, Q7, Cayenne. An SUV suits the Tablelands and the road to the Daintree.
• Exotics and supercars, if you are prepared to hire yours.
• Small rental operators running a few cars on a spreadsheet and bank transfers.

You own the car or have the legal right to hire it out, it is registered and roadworthy, and you can show some history. Ask Transport and Main Roads and your insurer whether hiring the car out changes anything on your Queensland registration.

What Drive Tribe does

We run everything around the car, from Sydney, as we do for our Sydney hosts.

• Finds guests. Your car on drivetribe.com.au, bookable around the clock, and in front of a network of hosts who send each other clients.
• Verifies every driver. Identity and licence checked through trusted third-party providers, including against the Australian Government Document Verification Service, before the keys move. You can still refuse a driver.
• Takes payment and holds the bond. Card payments through trusted third-party providers, and a bond equal to the guest's excess held on their card: a hold, not a charge, released after the return inspection.
• Signs the contract. A digital rental agreement between your business and the guest, signed before release.
• Tracks the car. GPS tracking and a starter-interrupt immobiliser where a supported device is fitted. It can stop a parked car restarting, never a moving one.
• Records the handover. Pick-up and drop-off walkthroughs in the Host Portal on your phone: every panel, fuel and odometer, with the guest present.
• Settles damage. Damage is priced up to the guest's excess; fuel, kilometres, tolls, fines and cleaning go on top, never capped.

What you do

• Keep the car clean, serviced to the manufacturer's schedule, and registered.
• Keep the calendar honest. Blocking dates for yourself takes two taps.
• Hand the car over at your pick-up point in Cairns, or offer delivery within a radius you set.
• Keep your insurance in force while the car is listed.

Every rental is between the guest and your business, under your own company or ABN. Drive Tribe handles booking and payment for you as the platform, not the rental company.

How you get paid

Per payout period, weekly, fortnightly or monthly, not per trip. Each statement shows what was collected, your share, every fee against its booking, and the net amount paid to you. No trip is ever paid twice.

Commission depends on where the booking came from. A guest you bring yourself costs you less than one we find for you. The full schedule is shown before you sign.

If a guest pays you in cash or by transfer, record it in the app; it is squared up on your next statement.

How the money works

There is no listing fee. On a booking we find for you, you keep 80% of the rental, and a platform fee of 2.2% plus GST on the rental total is itemised against it. On guests you bring yourself, the fee is lower, so it pays to put your own clients through the platform too. The first seven hosts on the platform also get 30 days of hands-on onboarding and training: we photograph and list the car, set rates with you and do the first handovers alongside you. The full fee schedule is in the Host Portal before you sign, and the Sydney host page has a worked example.

Registration and insurance in Queensland

Queensland treats a car that is offered for hire without a driver as a hire vehicle, so its compulsory third party insurance moves to the hire class (Class 4) and the registration purpose of use changes. That costs roughly $320 to $340 a year more in CTP and about 8.5% more in registration, and it applies on every platform, not just ours. Your comprehensive policy must also permit hire to the public. We do not bundle insurance: you keep your own hire-use policy, and we will point you to cover that suits a prestige car before you list.

Why Cairns, and why now

Cairns is a holiday gateway with a busy international airport, and most of its visitors are there for leisure.

• Cairns Airport takes domestic and international flights, and the reef and rainforest are what visitors came for.
• The Captain Cook Highway to Port Douglas is a coast road that people hire a convertible for.
• Port Douglas weddings and resort stays bring guests who want something better than a hire-desk sedan.
• The Tablelands and the Daintree are day trips inland and north.

Founding hosts

There are no Drive Tribe cars in Cairns yet. We are opening Cairns and Port Douglas with a founding group of hosts, and guests will be able to book there once the first cars are listed. Founding hosts get priority placement when Cairns and Port Douglas opens and a direct line to James, who onboards each one personally. We do not promise bookings or income figures.

The Queensland rental agreement for host cars is published. Registration and insurance are confirmed with each founding host before the first car goes live.

Read how hosting works in Sydney, or how a booking works from the guest's side.

Hosting somewhere else? Gold Coast, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Sunshine Coast, Newcastle, Geelong, Adelaide, Hobart, Wollongong, Canberra or Darwin.