Refund Policy

Quick summary

• We don't charge your card at booking time — we wait until [charge date] (3 days before the supplier's cancellation deadline). If you cancel before [charge date], your card is never touched. That's the "free" in free cancellation.
• If you cancel between [charge date] and [free cancellation deadline] ([timezone label]), the room rate is refunded in full; our [service charge] service charge is non-refundable from the moment we charge.
• If you cancel after [free cancellation deadline], the service charge is still non-refundable and the room-rate refund follows the hotel's cancellation policy shown on the booking.

At checkout — what you're agreeing to

When you tick "I agree" at checkout, you are confirming that you understand:

1. [total amount] will be charged to your card[charge date clause].
2. Cancel before we charge your card — full refund, we don't touch your card.
3. Cancel after we charge but before [free cancellation deadline] ([timezone label]) — the room rate is refunded in full; our [service charge] service charge is non-refundable.
4. Cancel after [free cancellation deadline] — the service charge is still non-refundable and any room-rate refund follows the hotel's cancellation policy shown on this booking.
5. If your card is declined when we try to charge it, we'll email you a link to update it. If you don't update by [update payment deadline], we'll cancel your reservation.

These five points are the substance of this policy. The sections below explain how each one works in practice.

When we charge your card

Free-cancellation bookings on most suppliers: we save your card details securely at booking, but we don't charge anything yet. We charge [charge date] — three days before the supplier's cancellation deadline. This gives you the maximum free-cancellation window and means a cancellation before [charge date] costs you literally nothing. Non-refundable bookings, short-window bookings, and a few supplier rates: we charge at booking time. This is shown clearly on the checkout page before you confirm. Bookings via our LiteAPI in-app card form: LiteAPI takes payment directly through their own processor. The above timings don't apply — LiteAPI charges according to their own rules, which are shown to you in the card form.

In all cases the checkout page tells you which model applies before you click Confirm.

Cancelling

To cancel, use the link in your booking confirmation email or the cancel button on the booking detail page at /bookings.

Before [charge date] (we haven't charged your card yet): nothing is charged — your card is never touched. Full refund of zero, because there's nothing to refund. This is the "free" in free cancellation. Between [charge date] and [free cancellation deadline] (we've charged your card, you're still inside the hotel's free-cxl window): we refund the room rate in full. Our [service charge] service charge is non-refundable from the moment we charged — by then we've paid the costs it covers: card processing, currency conversion, customer-support staffing, and the cost of holding the reservation with the supplier. You'll see the original charge and a separate refund line on your statement; some banks render the refund within hours, others up to 10 working days. After [free cancellation deadline]: the hotel's cancellation policy now applies to the room rate. Depending on the policy this might be:

• a full room-rate refund (rare after the free-cancellation deadline),
• a partial room-rate refund (often the first night charged),
• no refund (most common close to the stay date).

The exact policy is shown on this booking page above. Our [service charge] service charge remains non-refundable for the same reason as above.

If your card fails when we try to charge it

If we try to charge your card on [charge date] and it's declined (most commonly because the card has expired, been replaced, or has insufficient funds), we will:

1. Retry several times over the following few hours. Many declines are temporary issuer-side blocks that clear on their own.
2. Email you with a link to update your payment method. The link goes to your account on local-hotel.com.
3. Hold the reservation until [update payment deadline] — two days after the initial failure.
4. Cancel the reservation if you haven't updated the card by [update payment deadline]. We void the hold with the supplier so your stay doesn't appear on the hotel's books.

If your reservation is cancelled this way, we don't charge any fees for the cancellation — the supplier hold is voided and you owe nothing.

Chargebacks and disputes

Please email support@local-hotel.com before you raise a chargeback with your card issuer. Chargebacks cost both sides in dispute fees, and in our experience we can almost always resolve faster directly. Email us with your booking reference and a short description of the issue; we aim to acknowledge within 1 working day and resolve within 14.

If we genuinely can't agree, you have several routes that we will never try to take away from you:

• Section 75 Consumer Credit Act 1974. If you paid by credit card and the booking cost between £100 and £30,000, your card issuer is jointly liable with us for any breach of contract or misrepresentation. You can claim directly from them, independently of anything we do.
• Chargeback via your card scheme. Visa, Mastercard, and Amex each operate their own chargeback rules. Time limits typically run 120 days from the booking or the expected service date.
• Alternative Dispute Resolution. Under the ADR Regulations 2015 you can refer an unresolved consumer dispute to an approved ADR provider. The Chartered Trading Standards Institute maintains a finder at tradingstandards.uk/consumers/adr-scheme-finder.
• The English courts. Per our Terms of Service, you may bring a claim in the English courts, or in your local UK court if you live outside England and Wales.

Nothing in this policy affects your statutory rights as a consumer under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 or any other UK law.

Your statutory rights — one thing worth knowing

The 14-day cooling-off period that applies to most online purchases under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 does not apply to accommodation bookings (regulation 28(1)(h)). This is not a rule we wrote — it's UK consumer law. So the cancellation rights you have on this booking are the ones shown above: the supplier's policy on the room rate, and our policy on the service charge.

If something has gone wrong — the hotel was not as described, you were overcharged, your card was charged twice — please contact us. The above is the policy for a clean cancellation. Anything that involves us or the hotel making a mistake is different and we'll make it right.

Refund timing

Refunds are issued back to the original card you paid with, in the original currency at the FX rate that applied at the moment we issued the refund (not the booking-time rate — Stripe's refund machinery uses the current rate). Most refunds reach your statement within 5–10 working days; some issuers are faster.

If you don't see a refund within 10 working days of us telling you it was issued, please email support@local-hotel.com with the booking reference and we'll send you the Stripe acquirer reference number so your bank can locate it on their side.

---

Version: 2026-05-31 · Last updated: 31 May 2026 · Replaces: 2026-05-28