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.
• You can choose to pay early from your booking page if you'd rather settle up before [charge date]. Paying early simply moves the moment we charge forward; the cancellation windows below still hinge on whether we've charged your card, not on a calendar date.
• 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 booking is non-refundable — no room-rate refund and no service-charge refund.

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 booking is non-refundable. No room-rate refund, no service-charge refund.
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.
6. You may pay early from your booking page at any time. The service charge becomes non-refundable from the moment you pay; the room-rate refund window doesn't change.

These six 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.

Paying early

If your card is about to expire, change, or you'd simply rather have the payment off your plate, you can settle the booking early. Open the booking from your account, tap Pay now, and tick the confirmation box. We charge the card immediately and treat that moment as if it were [charge date]:

• Our [service charge] service charge becomes non-refundable from the moment you pay early.
• The room-rate refund window does not change — the hotel's free-cancellation deadline ([free cancellation deadline]) is set by the hotel and isn't affected by when you choose to pay.
• You'll receive the same confirmation email you would normally have got on [charge date].

Paying early is entirely optional — there's no discount or penalty either way. If you do nothing, we charge on [charge date] as usual.

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.

If you paid early, the same rule applies — the service charge becomes non-refundable from the moment you tapped Pay now, not from the original [charge date].

After [free cancellation deadline]: the booking is non-refundable. We don't refund the room rate (the hotel has charged us in full and won't release the funds back), and our [service charge] service charge remains non-refundable as well. This is the cliff edge of the cancellation window — past it, the money is gone.

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: 2026-06-01 · Last updated: 1 June 2026 · Replaces: 2026-05-31