Affiliate Programme Rules

1. What it is

Valsa do Horizonte, Lda. (Tax ID 519436806, trading as "1818 Tours") runs an affiliate programme through which individuals or businesses can promote our experiences and earn a commission on the bookings they generate.

These rules apply to all affiliates. Joining the programme means accepting them in full. This is not an employment, agency or partnership agreement: affiliates act on their own account and do not represent 1818 Tours.

2. Joining and requirements

• Joining is subject to prior approval and may be refused without justification.
• Applicants must be 18 or over and tax resident in Portugal. This is a limitation for now: paying someone resident elsewhere brings different withholding rules that we are not yet set up to handle.
• Before the first payment, affiliates must provide in the portal their tax number, tax address and an IBAN for an account in their own name, and declare whether they are registered as self-employed, whether they are VAT exempt, and whether they are exempt from withholding tax. This information determines how and when they are paid.
• Each affiliate receives a personal, non-transferable code linked to their account.
• Affiliates are responsible for keeping these details up to date. Commissions that cannot be paid because of incorrect or missing details are held until corrected.

3. Commissions

• The customer discount and the affiliate commission are agreed individually and can be checked at any time in the affiliate portal.
• Commission is calculated on the final booking value, after the discount and excluding VAT.
• Commission only becomes payable once the tour has taken place, and once the period in which the customer's payment can still be refunded or charged back has passed. Until then it shows in the portal as expected, not as due.
• No commission is due on bookings that are cancelled, no-shows, refunded, or voided for any reason.
• If a booking is charged back or refunded after the commission has been paid, the amount is offset against later commissions or, if there are none, returned by the affiliate.
• There is a €75 minimum accumulated balance before a payment is made ahead of the annual settlement. Below that, commissions keep accumulating and are not lost.
• Regardless of the minimum, we settle everything accumulated once a year. The minimum exists to avoid transfers and invoices for a few euros, not to postpone payment indefinitely.
• Payments are made exclusively by bank transfer or another traceable method agreed in writing, to the details provided by the affiliate in the portal.
• Commissions are never paid in cash, under any circumstances, nor can they be converted or exchanged for cash in hand, whether at the affiliate's request or anyone else's. Such requests will not be met.
• Commissions are not transferable to third parties and cannot be assigned; they are paid only to the holder of the affiliate account.

4. Invoicing and tax

No commission is paid without a tax document. Which document must be issued — and therefore how often payment is made — depends on the affiliate's tax status:

• Registered as self-employed: issues a fatura-recibo (the Portuguese self-employed invoice-receipt) for each payment, and may be paid through the year, subject to the minimum in the previous section.
• Not registered: may only issue an ato isolado (isolated act), which is intended for occasional acts rather than recurring income. In that case payment is annual, in a single amount covering the year.

In addition:

• The document must be issued within 30 days of the payment request. Until it is issued, no payment is made.
• The agreed commission is the net amount the affiliate receives. If the affiliate is registered for VAT, tax is added at the rate in force, borne by 1818 Tours. If they are exempt, they receive the agreed amount with nothing added. Either way, the affiliate receives the same for the same work.
• Payments are subject to any Portuguese income tax withholding required by law at the time, which 1818 Tours deducts and pays over to the tax authority. Affiliates exempt from withholding must declare this and state it on the document they issue.
• Amounts shown in the portal are before VAT and before withholding.
• Affiliates are solely responsible for meeting their own reporting obligations on the amounts received.
• Any amount shown in the portal may be disputed within 60 days of it appearing there. After that it is treated as accepted.

5. Changes to the terms

1818 Tours may change at any time, without prior notice, the customer discount, the affiliate commission, the programme rules, or the tours covered.

Changes take effect for bookings made from the moment of the change onwards. Commissions already earned on bookings completed before the change remain on the terms under which they were generated.

6. Ending the partnership

1818 Tours may end the partnership at any time, without notice and without justification, by deactivating the affiliate's code and portal access. Affiliates may likewise leave the programme at any time by telling us.

If the partnership ends, commissions already earned on completed and paid bookings are settled in the following payment cycle — except in the situations set out in section 7, where they may be withheld.

Deactivating a code does not affect bookings customers have already completed: those go ahead as normal.

7. Misuse and fraud

The following constitute misuse, among other conduct:

• Using one's own code on one's own bookings, those of family members, or of third parties on the affiliate's behalf, in order to obtain a discount or commission;
• Creating fictitious bookings, or bookings known not to be going ahead;
• Sharing, reselling or publishing the code on coupon platforms, discount sites or channels that were not agreed;
• Buying paid advertising on the "1818 Tours" brand name or variants, or creating pages that pass themselves off as 1818 Tours;
• Spreading false or misleading information about the tours, prices, safety conditions or availability;
• Sending unsolicited bulk communications (spam);
• Any conduct that damages the reputation of 1818 Tours.

Where there is reasonable suspicion of any of these, 1818 Tours may, immediately and without notice: suspend the code and portal access; withhold payment of the commissions concerned while the matter is reviewed; void the bookings involved; and, if the irregularity is confirmed, end the partnership and refuse payment of the commissions linked to those bookings.

The affiliate will be informed of the decision and may put their case. 1818 Tours reserves the right to compensation for any loss caused.

8. Disclosure and advertising

Anyone promoting our experiences in exchange for commission is publishing commercial content, and Portuguese law requires this to be clearly identified.

• Every post made with an affiliate code must identify the commercial nature of the partnership, visibly and not buried among hashtags — for example #ad, "paid partnership", or the equivalent label the platform provides.
• The obligation is the affiliate's, but the risk is not theirs alone: before the authorities, it is 1818 Tours that answers as the advertiser. Failure to disclose is therefore treated as misuse, under section 7.
• Affiliates may not present themselves as an agent, representative or seller of 1818 Tours, nor imply that the booking is made through them. Bookings are always made with us.

9. Brand and content

Affiliates may use the 1818 Tours name, logo and photographs solely to promote the experiences, and without altering them. This permission ends automatically when the partnership ends, and the affiliate must then remove the content.

10. Personal data

To run the programme and pay commissions we process, alongside contact details, the affiliate's tax number, tax address and IBAN, together with information about their tax status. This data is collected because the law and our accounting require it, and is kept for as long as tax law requires. All as described in our Privacy Policy.

Affiliates have no access to the personal data of customers who book with their code — only to the number of bookings and the commission amounts.

11. Governing law

These rules are governed by Portuguese law. Any dispute shall be subject to the courts of Madeira, to the exclusion of any other.

12. Contact

1818 Tours · Valsa do Horizonte, Lda. · Tax ID: 519436806
Caminho do Palheiro 72A-D, 9060-022 Funchal, Madeira, Portugal
Email: [email protected]