Friendbuy now integrates with TRYBE. Samantha Samuels July 13, 2026 Table of contents. Join its Community! Its referral and loyalty engine now runs natively inside TRYBE - giving spa, leisure and activity operators a measurable acquisition and retention channel, without a separate tech stack. The news: Friendbuy's referral and loyalty engine now runs natively inside TRYBE, the cloud-native platform for spas, bathhouses, hotels, and leisure operators. Spa, leisure, and activity businesses can now launch and manage referral and loyalty programmes inside the platform they already use to run bookings and memberships - turning happy guests into a measurable acquisition and retention channel. Here's why it matters. Talk to operators running a growing spa, bathhouse, or activity business and you'll hear a version of the same story. Bookings are strong. Reviews are glowing. Guests leave happy. And yet the line item that keeps climbing is paid acquisition - more ad spend, more agencies, more content, for returns that flatten a little more each quarter. It's a hard spot: a business people genuinely love, running on a growth engine that gets more expensive the harder you push it. The instinct is to optimize the ads. The opportunity is somewhere else entirely. (Friendbuy, Inc. unpacked the true, often-hidden cost of that treadmill in a separate piece on the real cost of "cheap" acquisition.) Experience businesses are built on goodwill. Almost none of them have a system to capture it. Word-of-mouth is already happening. That's the problem. Ask operators where new guests come from and "a friend recommended us" sits near the top of every list. Customer surveys say the same thing, consistently. The recommendation is happening - at the dinner table, in the group chat, in the changing room - whether or not anyone is paying attention to it. What's missing isn't demand. It's infrastructure. There's no system that asks a delighted guest to refer a friend at the right moment, rewards both of them when it works, and tells you what any of it earned. So the single most trusted channel a brand has - another person's recommendation - stays invisible on the P&L, while the channels you can measure get all the budget by default. Why this gap exists in experience businesses specifically. Ecommerce brands solved this years ago. Referral and loyalty programs are standard kit, wired into the checkout and the customer record. Experience businesses got left behind for a practical reason: their world runs on bookings, memberships, and front-desk operations - not carts. The tools that systematize word-of-mouth lived somewhere else, in a separate stack no operator had time to bolt on. So the work that should be automatic stayed manual, which means it mostly didn't happen at all. A punch card here, a "tell a friend" sign there. Nothing that compounds. What changes when the system lives where you work. The fix isn't another platform to log into. It's putting referral and loyalty inside the system operators already run all day. When a guest finishes a treatment, the referral offer is right there. When they refer a friend, the reward fulfils itself. When you want to know what referrals earned this month, it sits next to your bookings - not in a spreadsheet you'll build later. That's exactly why Friendbuy, Inc. built Friendbuy's integration with TRYBE. Operators can reward referrals, drive repeat visits with points and tiers, and measure the whole thing without leaving the platform they already use to run the business. The goodwill was always there. Now there's a channel attached to it. Bathhouse went further on retention, too - using loyalty to move treatment customers into the bathing ritual and bathers into treatments, lifting lifetime value across both groups. See the full story None of this replaces a great guest experience - it runs on it. The brands that win here aren't the ones spending the most on ads. They're the ones who finally gave their happiest guests a way to do what they were already trying to do: bring a friend.

Trybe appoints Erica Martin as Sales Director to drive North American growth. Trybe, the modern, end-to-end technology platform powering spas, resorts, and wellness experiences globally, today announced the appointment of Erica Martin as Sales Director, North America. With over 15 years of experience in hospitality technology, Erica joins Trybe to further scale its rapid growth and deepen its presence across the North American market. A recognized expert in the hospitality and wellness technology space, Erica has spent her career at the forefront of digital transformation for leading hotel and spa operators. She brings a proven track record of helping enterprise and independent properties modernize their operations, unlock new revenue streams, and deliver elevated guest experiences through technology. In her new role, Erica will lead strategic sales initiatives across North America, working closely with ownership groups, operators, and partners to drive adoption of Trybe's next-generation platform. "Erica brings an exceptional depth of industry knowledge and credibility that aligns perfectly with where Trybe is headed," said Ricky Daniels, Co-Founder at Trybe. "She understands the real challenges operators face because she's spent over a decade helping solve them. As we continue to expand across North America, her leadership will be instrumental in accelerating our momentum and strengthening our relationships across the industry." Erica's career has been defined by her ability to bridge the gap between legacy systems and modern, integrated technology ecosystems. Her expertise spans complex, multi-property environments, enterprise sales strategy, and guiding organizations through large-scale digital transformation initiatives. "Trybe represents exactly where the industry is going. Modern, intuitive, and built to unify the entire guest journey," said Martin. "I'm excited to join a team that is not only innovating, but truly listening to operators and building technology that drives real results. There's a huge opportunity in North America to rethink how spas, wellness, and leisure experiences are powered, and I'm thrilled to be part of that journey." Erica's appointment marks another key milestone in Trybe's North American growth strategy, including the recent addition of Shane McMackin, who is leading the company's Customer Success function in the region. Shane brings a strong background in both hospitality and spa operations, having worked alongside leading luxury brands to deliver exceptional guest experiences. His recent experience in spa and business management software has given him a deep understanding of how technology can drive both operational efficiency and commercial performance. At Trybe, Shane is focused on launching and scaling the North American Customer Success team, working closely with clients to ensure they maximize the value of the platform, while also collaborating with the product team to align ongoing development with the specific needs of the market. Together, Erica and Shane represent a strengthened regional leadership approach, combining commercial growth with operational excellence and client success. Trybe has quickly emerged as a leading platform for hospitality and wellness operators, offering a fully integrated solution across scheduling, memberships, POS, guest communications, payments, and revenue optimization. With a growing global footprint and increasing demand for unified, cloud-based systems, the company continues to invest in top talent to support its expansion. Erica and Shane's appointments mark a significant milestone in Trybe's North American growth strategy, reinforcing its commitment to delivering both best-in-class technology and the expertise needed to help operators succeed in an increasingly competitive landscape. Technology Trybe. LondonEC1V 2NX United Kingdom Powered by