Cancellation Policy
How to cancel a trip, whose terms decide what comes back, and how long the money takes to reach your card.
In short
The four things worth knowing before you pay
- Cancelling is done from your account, and costs nothing on our side
- What comes back is decided by the fare and the room you chose, not by us
- Those terms sit on the flight and on the room before you pay, and stay on the booking afterwards
- A refund returns to the card you paid with - never as credit, never as a voucher
This page explains all of it in full. It sits alongside our Terms of Service, and where the two speak about the same thing they say the same thing.
How to cancel
One button, and what happens behind it
Open the booking in your account and press Cancel. There is nobody to telephone and no form to fill in, and we charge nothing for handling it.
Pressing it sends the cancellation to the airline or the property that holds your booking. They are the ones who release the seat or the room, so the answer comes from them rather than from us. You get it there and then: either the booking turns to cancelled in your account, or you are told it could not be done and why.
Occasionally the supplier refuses - a fare already flown, a stay already begun, a booking they have closed their side. When that happens you are told, the booking stays as it was, and nothing is taken or given back. Write to us and we take it up by hand.
While a room is still free to cancel, your account shows the date that window closes, and it warns you in the last few days before it does. After that date the room's own penalty applies.
Hotels
The rate you picked is the policy
Every room is sold on its own terms, and those terms are shown on the room while you are choosing it - free cancellation until a stated date and time, or non-refundable from the moment you book. Two rooms in the same hotel can differ, and the cheaper one is usually the stricter one.
Where a room is free to cancel, cancel before that date and time and the whole of what you paid for the room comes back. We keep nothing for having made a booking that didn't happen.
Where it isn't - or where you cancel after the free window has closed - the property keeps what its terms say it keeps. Some properties charge a fixed amount, some a night, some the whole stay, and many charge more the closer you are to arrival. That figure is theirs, not ours: we pass on exactly what they charge and add nothing to it.
Deadlines are stated in the property's own local time, which is worth remembering if it is several hours ahead of you. And a room you simply don't turn up for is treated as a no-show: on most terms that costs the full stay, so cancel even when you expect nothing back.
Flights
The airline's fare rules, not ours
A ticket is governed by the rules of the fare you bought. Flexible fares can usually be refunded or changed for a fee. The cheapest fares - the ones most trips are built on - frequently give back nothing at all once the ticket has been issued, and no agent can change that.
A cancellation reaches the airline as soon as you press the button, and how much of the fare survives it depends on where you are in the airline's own timetable rather than on how long you have been thinking about it.
A misspelled name is not a cancellation, and on most fares it is not an edit either - the airline usually reissues the ticket, which costs what a new ticket costs. Tell us the moment you spot it. Before the ticket is issued it is often still a correction; afterwards it rarely is.
Where a fare gives nothing back, certain taxes and charges may still be recoverable, because they are only owed if you fly. If your fare is one of those, write to us and we will ask the airline for them on your behalf.
Flight and hotel together
Two bookings, settled one at a time
Booking a flight and a room in one go gets you one price and one payment, but it is still two bookings underneath, held by two different companies. Cancelling cancels both, and each is settled under its own terms.
That means the result is often split: a room that was free to cancel gives back everything it cost while a non-refundable fare gives back nothing, and what reaches your card is the sum of the two. Booking them together makes neither more generous than it was on its own.
One press cancels both halves. If only one of them can be released, the booking is not left half cancelled without your knowing: you are told what happened, and we take the other half up by hand.
Before a booking is confirmed
Nothing to cancel, and nothing to refund
Paying starts a booking; it doesn't finish it. Until the airline has issued a reference and the property has confirmed the room, the money is only held on your card, not taken from it. Nothing has been charged, so there is nothing to cancel and nothing to refund - the hold simply falls away and the amount your bank had set aside becomes yours to spend again.
That is what happens whenever a booking doesn't complete:
- The room is not available by the time we ask for it
- The airline releases the fare before the ticket is issued
- Your bank declines the authorisation
- You close the page part way through and never come back to it
If the room cannot be confirmed after the flight has been, we cancel the flight rather than leave you holding half a holiday, and the hold is released without ever having become a charge. How quickly it disappears from your statement is your bank's business rather than ours, and it is usually a few days.
Refunds
Where the money goes, and when
A refund goes back to the card that paid, in the currency it was taken in. We do not offer credit, vouchers or account balances in place of money, and we cannot send it to a different card or to someone else's.
We start it once the airline or the property has released the amount, and it reaches your statement within 3-5 business days of that point. Airlines in particular can take considerably longer to release a refund than they took to sell the ticket; where that happens we chase it, and we will tell you where it has got to whenever you ask.
If your card has since expired or been replaced, the refund still finds you - your bank routes it to the account behind the card. A closed account is the one case that needs a word with us.
Where your bank converted the payment into another currency, the amount that returns can differ slightly from the amount that left, because the rate has moved. That difference is between you and them; the figure we send back is the full figure we received.
If they cancel on you
A different situation entirely
None of the above applies when the cancellation isn't yours. If an airline cancels a flight or a property cannot honour a room, you are owed what you paid for it regardless of how strict the terms were, and we chase it on your behalf and pass it on in full.
For flights there are rules that go further than a refund - compensation for a cancellation at short notice, and care while you wait. That money is the airline's to pay you and we take no part of it. Tell us what happened and we will help you claim it.
Very occasionally a price reaches the site plainly wrong - a decimal in the wrong place, a fare no airline would sell. Where the mistake is obvious we may cancel rather than honour it, and you get every penny back.
The fourteen days
Why travel is the exception
Most things bought online can be sent back within fourteen days for any reason at all. Travel booked for a fixed date is one of the things the law leaves out of that right, and it applies to flights and rooms wherever you buy them.
So there is no cooling-off period on a booking, not here and not anywhere. What you can undo is what the fare and the room allow - which is exactly why we put those terms in front of you before you pay rather than after.
Nothing on this page takes away the rights the law gives you as a consumer.
Anything unclear
Ask before you cancel, not after
If you are not sure what a booking will give back, write to [email protected] with your booking reference before you press anything. A cancellation cannot be undone once the airline or the property has accepted it, and asking first costs you nothing.
We update this page as the service changes, and the date below moves with it. Whichever version was showing when you booked is the one that governs that booking.
Last updated 19 August 2026
The rest of the agreement
Who takes your booking, how the price is built, and where each of us stands.