Leaving a reservation early, and whose terms decide what it costs

Whose terms these are

This office arranges reservations. It does not run trips and it takes no money, so it has no cancellation terms of its own to impose. What binds you is the operating company's contract, which you receive in writing at step six, before you agree to anything.

Nothing you can cancel exists until you have said yes to that document. Writing to this desk, being quoted, changing your mind about a departure: none of it costs anything and none of it commits you.

The usual shape of operator terms

Most set out a ladder against the departure date. A deposit that stops being refundable at some point, then a rising share of the total as the date approaches, then the whole of it inside a few weeks. The share the operator asks for at booking, shown by the mark on every departure page, is a fair guide to how early that ladder starts biting.

The departures where the operator wants the whole figure up front are the ones where it is committing scarce beds a long way ahead, and those terms are usually the least forgiving. That is stated on those pages rather than left to be discovered.

What this desk actually does when you cancel

It puts your cancellation to the operating company the day it reaches us, in writing, and it asks for anything discretionary the operator is willing to give: a date moved instead of a booking lost, a deposit held against a future departure, a name changed rather than a place released.

Those things are the operator's to grant. This office asks; it cannot promise, and it will not pretend otherwise.

Weather, and what nobody can undertake

Several departures on this desk exist because of something in the natural world. Nothing on this site is a promise that any of it will happen on your dates.

Operators generally treat weather as their own risk to the extent of running the trip, and as your risk to the extent of what you see. Where a departure has a real chance of being cut short by conditions, that is written on its own page rather than in a note here.