Loading
Build a refund ladder in the panel, see how it is quoted to buyers before they book, and handle the cancellation when it comes.
Short answer
Cancellation terms are set per option, during the wizard's Cancellation and validity step and visible afterwards on the product page. A policy is a ladder of tiers, each a number of hours before departure and a refund percentage. The system quotes the exact refund to the traveller before they cancel and applies it automatically, so you are not doing the arithmetic under pressure.
Decide where your costs commit
The hour at which your guide, vehicle or permit is paid for whether the trip runs or not. That is the hinge your ladder is built around.
Set the tiers
In the wizard's Cancellation and validity step. Each tier is hours before departure plus a refund percentage.
Check it on the product page
Open the product and the Cancellation block lists the tiers in plain language, exactly as a buyer will see them.
Let the system handle the cancellation
The traveller is quoted the refund before confirming. You do not have to calculate or argue it.
Cancel from your side only when you must
An operator cancellation refunds in full regardless of the ladder, because the traveller did nothing wrong.
Your cancellation policy is a commercial decision that the panel then enforces for you. Getting the decision right is the hard part. Entering it takes two minutes.
The common shape is a single cutoff: free until 24 hours, nothing after. It generates disputes, because a traveller cancelling at 25 hours pays nothing and one cancelling at 23 hours pays everything, and that gap does not match your actual costs, which ramp rather than jump.
A ladder has several tiers. Something like this, for a tour where the guide is confirmed two days out:
| Cancelled more than | Refund | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 168 hours before, so a week | 100% | Nothing is committed. The seat resells easily. |
| 48 hours before | 75% | Guide is provisionally booked. Resale is still likely. |
| 24 hours before | 50% | Guide is confirmed and paid. Resale is unlikely. |
| Under 24 hours | 0% | The cost is fully committed and the seat is gone. |
Four tiers is plenty. Beyond that nobody reads it and you are pricing precision nobody values.
This lives in the wizard, at the Cancellation and validity step, and it is set per option rather than per product. That matters: a private charter and a shared seat on the same product can reasonably have different terms, because their costs commit at different moments.
Each tier takes a number of hours before departure and a refund percentage. Enter them in any order; they are sorted and displayed largest window first.
Open the product afterwards and the Cancellation block reads them back as sentences, in the form more than 48 hours before: 75% refunded. If that block says something you did not intend, fix it now rather than discovering it during a cancellation.
Some inventory genuinely cannot be refunded. A ticket you buy in from an attraction on a named date, a concert seat, an e-sim that has been activated.
Mark it non-refundable and the product page says so prominently, before the booking rather than after it. Travellers accept non-refundable terms far more readily than they accept being surprised by them, and the refund requests you get afterwards drop close to zero.
Do not mark something non-refundable to discourage cancellations
It converts worse, and it removes your own flexibility, since a non-refundable product gives you nothing to offer when you want to be generous about a genuine emergency. Use a ladder that ends at 0% instead. The outcome inside 24 hours is identical and you keep the room to move.
Before booking, the terms appear on the product page and again at checkout. After booking, the exact refund is quoted to them before they confirm the cancellation, calculated against the departure time and the hour they are cancelling at.
So there is no negotiation, and no situation where you and the traveller have read the same policy differently. The number is computed from your tiers and shown to both of you.
Weather, illness, a boat that will not start. Cancel the booking from the Bookings screen and choose the operator reason.
An operator cancellation refunds in full whatever your ladder says, and our commission is reversed with it. Your ladder governs the traveller changing their mind, not you being unable to run.
Do it as early as you know. A traveller told on Tuesday that Saturday is cancelled rebooks with you. One told on Saturday morning writes a review.
The same wizard step sets how long a voucher stays valid, and the choice depends on the product rather than your preference.
A mismatch here shows up at the gate, which is the worst place to find it. A flexible ticket marked date-only gets refused on the traveller's second day.
Yes, and they often should. Terms are set per option precisely so a private booking and a shared seat can differ.
It comes out of the booking, so out of your share and our commission in the proportion the sale was split. What the buyer did not get back is shared out the same way. Nobody keeps their share of what was refunded.
Yes. Cancel from the Bookings screen with an operator reason and it refunds in full. That is the override, and it is yours to use.
They get your terms, and they are delivered with every price through the API so their own systems can display and enforce them. Some agency contracts layer their own terms on top for their customer, which is between them and their customer.
Hours before the departure time in the product's local timezone, which is the timezone shown on the product page. Not your timezone and not the traveller's.
Next in this sequence
Handling Bookings on the Day and Before
Where sales land, what the statuses mean, how to read a voucher at the gate, and what to do when someone does not turn up.