Our policies

Before anything else: ask us to move it.

Almost nobody who calls to cancel actually wants to cancel. They want to not travel on that date. Those are different problems and they cost very different amounts.

Moving your dates costs you what it costs us — nothing more. We do not add a change fee. Some suppliers move a booking for free, some charge, and some will not move it at all; we ask all of them, show you exactly what came back, and you decide. In most cases, moving a trip more than two weeks out costs a fraction of cancelling it. Sometimes it costs nothing.

If the new dates are cheaper, you get the difference back. If they are dearer, you pay only the difference. We do not re-price the trip to today's rates and we do not take a second margin on a trip we already sold you.

Tell us as early as you can, either way. The charge below depends almost entirely on notice, because notice is what decides whether five different suppliers can still resell what we booked for you.

If you do cancel

More than 60 days before departure — no charge from us, and your deposit comes back. 31 to 60 days — 25% of the trip total. 15 to 30 days — 50% of the trip total. 7 to 14 days — 75% of the trip total. Less than 7 days before departure — 100%.

Your deposit is the minimum once a charge applies. From 60 days out, the charge is never less than the deposit you paid — by then we have committed it. More than 60 days out there is no charge at all and the deposit is refunded in full.

Why this is steeper than a hotel's. A Trekly trip is not one booking. It is a coach seat, a room, a game drive, a spa slot and a guide, each with its own deadline and its own refund rules. By the time one of them is inside its cancellation window, we have already paid or committed. The ladder tracks when that money stops being recoverable — it is not a fee we invented to discourage you.

The table is a ceiling on our own charge. What comes back to you also depends on your suppliers.

Two separate things decide the final figure, and it is fairer to say both than to let one imply the other.

The first is our charge, and the table above is the most of it. Above the deposit we do not charge the full percentage where we do not need to — if we resell your trip, or a supplier releases us, the charge comes down.

The second is what we can actually recover. We can only refund you what the suppliers give back to us. A lodge, a coach operator or a game park that keeps your money under its own cancellation terms is money we do not have to return, and no percentage on our table can conjure it back. Even where our own charge is nothing — more than 60 days out, say — a supplier who keeps a deposit means you get back what we recovered rather than every rand you paid.

We will show you the working, every time and without being asked: what each supplier kept, what we recovered, and what our own charge is on top of it. You should never have to take a cancellation figure on trust.

Which is exactly what travel insurance is for. The charges on this page are the ordinary cost of unwinding five bookings at short notice. Insurance is what covers them when life intervenes, and it costs a great deal less than the ladder above.

If someone has died or is in hospital, there is no charge at all. Where the person the trip was booked for dies or is admitted to hospital, there is no cancellation charge and no deposit retained — everything paid comes back. The law removes our right to charge in those circumstances, and we would not want one. Send us what you reasonably can and we will handle the rest.

Why we may charge anything. South African consumer law lets you cancel a booking made in advance, and lets us charge a fair amount for doing it. What counts as fair depends on the kind of trip, how much notice you gave, whether we could realistically find someone else, and what is normal in this industry. The table is where that starts, not where it ends.

Refunds go back to the account the money came from, within 10 working days of the amount being agreed.

No-shows and unused parts. Not arriving, or leaving early, is a cancellation with no notice. Unused nights and activities are not refundable, because the supplier has already been paid for them.

The version that governs you is the one in force when you booked. It is printed on your quote and does not change afterwards, whatever we publish later.

This is the other kind of refund: not you changing your mind, but us failing to deliver what you paid for. A lodge loses your booking. An operator closes. We change something material and you do not want the trip that is left.

What you get back. The part we did not deliver, in full, at what you actually paid for it — not at cost, not less a fee. Three nights became two, the third night comes back. The whole trip falls over, all of it does. We do not deduct an administration charge for our own failure.

Or something else, if you would rather. Where we can replace what was lost with something of the same standard, we will offer it and show you both prices. Cheaper, you get the difference. Dearer, we carry it. Taking a substitute is your choice and never the default — saying no still gets you the refund.

If we sell you something we cannot supply, you are entitled to your money back and to be compensated for what our failure actually cost you. Tell us what it cost.

When. We start the refund the day the position is clear and pay within 10 working days, to the account the money came from. If a supplier is slow refunding us, that is ours to chase, not yours to wait for.

How to raise it. Message us on WhatsApp or email hello@trekly.co.za. From the road, phone — the number is on your trip page and a real person answers it.