Archived version — 2026-07-24
This is the 2026-07-24 version recorded on your booking. It shows our current live Terms of Service — the live page and this archived link stay in step, and documents whose exact wording is version-pinned (such as the Refund Policy) keep their own dated snapshot. The current live Terms of Service is at /legal/terms.
Terms of Service
Effective from 2026-07-24
Terms of Service
Last updated: 24 July 2026 · Effective: 24 July 2026
1. Who you're contracting with
local-hotel.com is operated by LOCALHOTEL LTD (registered in England and Wales, company number 17229743, registered office 167-169 Great Portland Street, 5th Floor, London W1W 5PF, United Kingdom). In these Terms, "we", "us" and "our" refer to LOCALHOTEL LTD. "You" means the person making a booking or using the site. LOCALHOTEL LTD is not currently VAT-registered (the UK threshold has not been reached); this notice will be updated when registration applies. Contact: support@local-hotel.com.
2. What we do
We're a price-comparison site for hotels. We display rates from multiple third-party suppliers — currently LiteAPI and Hotelbeds, with more in development — and, when you book, we act as a reseller of the supplier's room. The stay itself is governed by the supplier's and the hotel's own terms; we facilitate the transaction and, on most bookings, collect payment.
3. Eligibility and your account
- You must be 18 or older and able to enter into a binding contract under English law.
- One account per person. You're responsible for keeping your sign-in credentials secure and for activity on your account.
- You must give accurate guest names, contact details, and special-requirement information. Hotels rely on these on arrival; inaccuracies can cause a check-in refusal we cannot refund.
- We may suspend or close accounts that abuse the service, attempt fraud, scrape the site, or make speculative bookings.
4. How prices are calculated
The price shown next to each hotel is the total amount we charge you. It includes the room rate set by our supply partners and a service charge that covers card-payment fees, currency conversion, customer support, and platform operations. The size of the service charge varies by route, supplier, and booking, and we may adjust it from time to time without separate notice — your total price is always shown before you confirm. The one thing this total does not cover is a statutory local tax that a destination requires you to pay directly at the property, described under "Local taxes and visitor levies" below.
We never add separate booking fees, service fees, or surcharges of our own at the final step. There are no upsells or timed pop-ups. One price, one click.
Local taxes and visitor levies. A few destinations charge a statutory tourist tax, city tax or visitor levy on overnight stays — for example, Edinburgh's 5% visitor levy that began on 24 July 2026. These are set by a local authority, not by us. They are collected by the accommodation provider at the property (usually at check-in or check-out) and passed to the authority, and they sit outside the price we charge you. Where our supplier gives us the levy amount for a rate, we show it before you confirm so you can see the full cost of your stay. Two situations can arise where we cannot show it: a levy that already exists may not yet have reached our supplier's rate data, or a levy may be introduced or changed by the authority after you have booked — so that it did not exist to be disclosed when you confirmed. In either case the charge is a third-party statutory tax due directly to the property; it is not money we have collected, and it is not something we can waive. To the extent permitted by law, we are not responsible for local taxes or levies that a supplier has not disclosed to us, or that come into force or change after your booking. Your statutory rights as a consumer are not affected. If you are charged a mandatory levy at the property that we should have shown you and did not, email support@local-hotel.com and we will look into putting it right.
5. Forming a contract
Selecting a room and entering guest details is an offer. A binding contract is formed when we send you a booking confirmation by email containing a supplier reference. Until that confirmation, no contract exists and we may decline the booking — for example, if the rate is no longer available, if our fraud checks flag the transaction, or if the supplier rejects the request.
14-day cooling-off — does not apply to hotel bookings. Under regulation 28(1)(h) of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, the 14-day cancellation right does not apply to contracts for the provision of accommodation on a specific date or period. By confirming a booking you acknowledge this statutory exception. Your supplier-set cancellation policy, shown to you before you confirm and on Your Bookings, governs any post-booking changes.
6. Cancellations and refunds
Cancellation rules are set by the supplier and the hotel and are shown to you before you confirm. The refundable status and the cancellation policy are saved against your booking at the moment of confirmation, and are the rules that will apply if you later cancel — even if the supplier later updates their standard policy. The exact refund amount is shown to you on Your Bookings before you commit to a cancellation. Our full refund policy sits at /legal/refunds.
7. Payment
Card payments are processed by Stripe, a regulated payment services provider, or in some cases by our supplier's hosted payment SDK. We do not see or store your full card number. By confirming a booking you authorise us (and, where applicable, the supplier) to charge the card for the total displayed at the time of the transaction.
Payment is taken in full at the time of booking unless a specific rate offers pay-at-property. The currency of the actual charge is set by the payment processor and shown at checkout; any visible currency conversion elsewhere on the site is an approximation for display only.
We send a confirmation email after each successful booking; this serves as your receipt. If you raise a chargeback with your card issuer without first contacting us, we may treat the booking as cancelled and pursue the disputed amount as a debt. Please email us first — most issues resolve faster directly.
8. The hotel stay and supplier responsibility
We don't own or operate the hotels and aren't responsible for the on-site experience: room condition, cleanliness, noise, staff conduct, on-property services, or any incident during your stay. For those matters, contact the hotel first and the supplier's customer-service line second; we will assist where we can.
If a hotel turns out to be materially "not as described" at the booking screen (for example: wrong star rating shown, absent advertised amenities, or overbooking), let the hotel know first, then contact us within 48 hours of check-in. Under the supplier's commercial terms with the hotel they may issue a partial or full refund; we will escalate the request on your behalf and pass through any refund the supplier issues.
9. Site content and third-party information
Hotel details shown on the site — descriptions, photographs, amenity lists, star classifications and review scores — are supplied by our supply partners and their hotel sources; landmark, airport, map and other travel-planning information comes from public datasets. We pass this content through in good faith and correct errors when we find them, but we do not independently verify it and cannot promise it is accurate, complete or current. Review scores are aggregates of third-party guest ratings, not our opinion. Maps and distances are approximate and for orientation only. What you buy is the room and rate shown at checkout (sections 4 to 6); if a hotel proves materially not as described, section 8 applies.
Some of our editorial and travel-planning content — including event, venue, landmark and airport descriptions and "where to stay and how to get there" guidance — is generated or drafted with the assistance of AI. We take reasonable care with it, but it may contain mistakes or be out of date. Please treat it as general guidance and confirm anything you rely on — dates, start times, transport, distances and prices — with the relevant official source (the event organiser, venue, airport or transport operator) before you book or travel.
10. Event listings and travel-planning content
Parts of the site list sports fixtures, cultural events and similar happenings ("event content") to help you decide where and when to stay. Event content is provided for general guidance only. Dates, kick-off times, venues and programmes are set by the event's organiser, league or broadcaster — not by us — and can change, move or be cancelled at any time, sometimes at short notice (for example, fixtures rescheduled for television).
We take reasonable care in sourcing event content, but we do not verify it with organisers and make no promise that it is accurate, complete or current. To the extent permitted by law, we are not responsible for any loss arising from a change, postponement or cancellation of an event, or from inaccuracies in event content. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for any event organiser, club, league or governing body, and we do not sell event tickets.
A hotel booking made from an event page is an ordinary hotel booking: it is not conditional on the event taking place, and the cancellation terms that apply are the rate conditions shown at checkout. If your stay depends on an event going ahead, we recommend choosing a rate with free cancellation.
11. Automated access and AI agents
We publish a documented machine-readable interface (an MCP server at /api/mcp, described at /llms.txt) so AI assistants and booking agents can search hotels and live rates on a user's behalf. Automated access through that interface is permitted for the purpose of assisting an individual end user. The following are not permitted, whether through the interface or by scraping the site's pages: bulk harvesting of prices or content, resale or republication of our data, traffic volumes that degrade the service for others, and circumventing rate limits or access controls. We may throttle or block traffic that breaches this section.
A booking initiated through an automated agent binds the person the agent acts for as if that person had made the booking directly, and these Terms apply to it in full.
12. Events outside our control (force majeure)
We are not liable for any failure or delay to perform these Terms caused by events outside our reasonable control, including but not limited to: supplier or payment-processor outages, hotel-side cancellations, natural disasters, pandemics or public-health restrictions, civil unrest, strikes or industrial action, government action, telecommunications or internet failures, or other circumstances commonly classed as force majeure. Where such an event prevents performance of your booking, we will work with the supplier to obtain a refund or alternative arrangement and pass it through to you.
13. Our liability to you
Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability for (a) fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, (b) death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or (c) any other liability which cannot be limited or excluded under English law (including under the Consumer Rights Act 2015).
Subject to the above, our total liability to you in connection with any single booking is limited to the price you paid for that booking. We are liable only for losses that are a reasonably foreseeable consequence of our breach of these Terms or our negligence. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, lost profits, loss of opportunity, or losses arising from circumstances we could not reasonably have anticipated.
Nothing in this Section affects your statutory rights as a consumer. If you'd like a plain-English summary of those rights, the Citizens Advice website at citizensadvice.org.uk is a good starting point.
14. Your obligations and indemnity
You agree to use the site lawfully, to give accurate booking information, and not to: (a) automate access to the site (scraping, bulk speculative bookings), (b) attempt to discover non-public rates or supplier-side identifiers, (c) interfere with site security or other users' use, or (d) use the site to transmit unlawful, infringing, or malicious content.
You agree to indemnify us against any third-party claim, liability, or cost (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the site, or inaccurate information you supplied at booking time. This indemnity does not apply to losses caused by our negligence or breach.
15. Complaints and dispute resolution
We want any problem resolved quickly. First, email support@local-hotel.com 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 can't resolve the complaint to your satisfaction, you may be entitled to refer the dispute to an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) provider under the ADR Regulations 2015. We don't currently subscribe to a specific ADR scheme; you may also bring a claim in the English courts (see Section 14) or, where applicable, contact your card issuer for a Section 75 Consumer Credit Act 1974 claim (credit-card purchases between £100 and £30,000) or a chargeback under your card scheme's rules.
For data-protection-specific complaints see our Privacy Policy and your right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.
16. Intellectual property
The site's brand, layout, code, and editorial content belong to LOCALHOTEL LTD or our licensors. Hotel photographs and descriptions are provided by our suppliers and remain their property. You may use the site for personal, non-commercial booking purposes only; you may not republish, scrape, or create derivative works without our written permission.
17. Governing law and jurisdiction
These Terms and any contract formed under them are governed by the law of England and Wales. Disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts, save that consumers resident in another part of the UK may bring proceedings in their local courts.
18. General
- Third-party rights. Except where expressly stated, no person other than you and us has any right to enforce these Terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
- Severability. If any clause is held unenforceable, the rest remain in force.
- Entire agreement. These Terms (together with the Refund Policy, Privacy Policy, and Cookie Policy) are the entire agreement between you and us regarding your use of the site.
- Assignment. We may transfer our rights and obligations under these Terms to another business; we'll tell you if we do.
- Accessibility. Our Accessibility Statement sets out conformance level, known limitations, and how to report an issue.
19. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms over time. The version in force at the moment of your booking is the one that applies to that booking — we keep an archive of every version we have ever shipped at /legal/v/<date>, and the exact text you accepted is permanently linked from your booking confirmation email.
Material changes — anything that affects your refund rights, payment terms, cancellation rules, fees, dispute-resolution route, liability limits, or how we use your personal data — will be notified by email to registered users at least 30 days before they take effect. If you do not want to accept the new Terms, you may cancel your account at any time before the effective date; any future bookings you make after the effective date are governed by the new Terms, but bookings already made remain on the version you originally accepted.
Minor wording fixes — typos, formatting, link updates, restructuring that does not change the meaning of any clause — are pushed silently. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page changes every time we make any edit, material or minor, so you can always see when the live version was last touched.
If you booked as a guest (no account on file): material changes appear as a banner on the booking detail page and at checkout the next time you start a booking. Your existing booking still references the version you accepted at the time, retrievable via the confirmation email.
Questions about a booking made under the 2026-07-24 Terms of Service should reference this version number — email support@local-hotel.com with your booking reference.