Terms and conditions

1 · Who we are

Trekly plans and books trips in South Africa. Our full legal details — registered name, registration number, physical address, office bearers and where legal process may be served — are on our company details page, and we publish them before you transact with us because the law requires it.

These terms are between you and us. Accepting a quote accepts the version of these terms shown on that quote, and that version stays attached to your booking whatever we publish afterwards.

2 · What we do, and what that makes us

We plan the trip and we book the suppliers. Accommodation, activities, transport and guides are delivered by independent businesses, not by us.

We contract with those suppliers ourselves and sell you one price. That makes us responsible to you for the trip we sold, and it is our job — not yours — to deal with a supplier who lets us down. One contract, one invoice, one number to call.

What is not ours. We are not responsible for loss or injury caused by something entirely outside our control and not reasonably foreseeable — weather, road closures, strikes. Nothing in these terms takes away a right you have under South African consumer law.

3 · Quotes and prices

A quote holds for the period printed on it. After that the rates behind it may have moved and we will re-price rather than honour a number we can no longer buy at.

The price is what it says. Per person sharing unless stated otherwise, including everything listed on the quote. Anything not listed is not included; meals, entrance fees and spending money are itemised where they apply and marked clearly where they do not.

No booking fees. We do not add a service charge after you accept.

If a price is obviously wrong — a missing digit, a rate loaded incorrectly — we will tell you before you pay and re-quote. We will not hold you to an error and we will not hold ourselves to one.

4 · Paying

A deposit confirms the booking. The amount and the minimum are on your quote and your invoice.

The balance falls due 15 days before you depart. We remind you well before then.

Booking inside that window means the trip is payable in full at the time of booking — any trip departing within 45 days.

How. Card or instant EFT through our payment partner, or ordinary EFT to the account on your invoice. We will never ask for card details by phone, email or WhatsApp. If someone claiming to be us does, it is not us.

Late payment. If the balance is unpaid at the due date and we have not heard from you, we may treat the booking as cancelled under clause 7 — but we will chase you several times first, because that is not an outcome anyone wants.

5 · Your money before the trip

Money you pay towards a future trip is yours until it is spent on it. It is not our income on the day it arrives and we do not treat it as such. We hold it, account for it, and can show you what has been spent and on what.

6 · Changing your dates

This is the clause we would rather you used than the next one.

Ask us to move the trip and we will ask every supplier. We do not charge you a change fee. You pay what the suppliers charge us, and we show you exactly what each one said. Moving a trip is very often a fraction of the cost of cancelling it, and sometimes free.

Rate differences go both ways. Cheaper dates, you get the difference. Dearer dates, you pay only the difference. We do not re-price the trip or take a second margin on it.

What limits it is supplier availability, not our willingness. Some suppliers will not move a booking at all, and we will tell you which.

Name changes. Names must match the ID or passport each traveller presents — a lodge will turn someone away over a mismatch. Close to departure, a name change is sometimes a cancellation and a rebooking in the supplier's system, and we will tell you if it is.

7 · If you cancel

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.

8 · If we cannot deliver

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.

9 · There is no cooling-off period on a dated trip

This surprises people, so we would rather say it plainly than have you find out later.

South African law gives consumers a seven-day cooling-off right on many things bought online. It does not apply to travel. Accommodation, transport, catering and leisure services booked for a specific date or period are written out of that right in the law itself, and that is every trip we sell.

What you do have is the right to cancel a booking made in advance against a fair charge. That is clause 7, and it is a real right: early enough, it costs you nothing.

10 · Documents, health and insurance

Travel documents are yours to hold — valid ID or passport for every traveller, and permission letters for children travelling without both parents. We will tell you what is needed; we cannot carry it for you.

Tell us anything that affects the trip — dietary requirements, mobility, a medical condition that changes what is sensible. We pass it to the suppliers holding your booking. Someone who told us about a serious allergy and arrives to no safe food is a worse failure than never asking.

Travel insurance is not included and we strongly recommend it. It is what covers the cancellation charges in clause 7 when life intervenes in a way the law does not cover.

11 · Behaviour

Suppliers can refuse service for conduct that endangers or seriously disrupts other guests. If that happens the trip ends without a refund.

12 · If something goes wrong

Tell us first, while we can still fix it. On the road, phone — the number on your trip page reaches a real person with your bookings in front of them. Most problems are fixable in an hour and unfixable in a week.

Afterwards, email hello@trekly.co.za and we will respond in writing. If we cannot resolve it between us you may take it to the National Consumer Commission, or to a relevant industry body where one applies. Nothing here requires you to come to us before exercising a legal right.

13 · Your personal information

Handled as our privacy notice describes, which forms part of these terms.

14 · These terms

South African law governs them and the South African courts have jurisdiction.

We may change them, and changes apply to bookings made after the change. Yours stays on the version printed on your quote.

If one clause fails, the rest stand.