Refund Policy

This policy explains what happens to your money when you cancel a booking made on local-hotel.com. It depends on who takes your payment. The points you tick at checkout are the ones for your booking. The line under the card form also says who takes your payment: "Payments are processed by Stripe" when we take your payment, or "Payments are processed in our payment partner's secure form" when the supplier's card form takes it.

• The supplier's card form. For hotels we book through LiteAPI, LiteAPI may take your payment in its own card form when you book; the checkout calls it our payment partner's secure form. Any refund then comes from LiteAPI.
• Our own card payment. For some bookings we take your payment ourselves, through Stripe. The price you pay includes our service charge.
• Properties that contract with us directly. We take your payment through Stripe. The host keeps their own rate in full and pays us nothing. Our service charge is added to the host's rate: 10% of it, unless the checkout shows a different amount.

What you agree to at checkout

When you tick the refund box at checkout, you agree to the points shown for your booking. They are copied word for word from the lists below; the amounts and dates in square brackets are filled in for your booking.

When the supplier's card form takes your payment, on a rate with free cancellation:

1. [total amount] will be charged to your card now.
2. Cancel before [free cancellation deadline] ([timezone label]) — what you paid is refunded in full.
3. Cancel after [free cancellation deadline] ([timezone label]) — the supplier's cancellation terms shown with this rate decide any refund, and there may be none.

When the supplier's card form takes your payment, on a non-refundable rate:

1. [total amount] will be charged to your card now.
2. This booking is non-refundable. Cancellation at any time gives no refund.

When we take your payment and charge your card later, on a rate with free cancellation:

1. [total amount] will be charged to your card on [charge date].
2. Cancel before we charge your card — full refund, we don't touch your card at all.
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] ([timezone label]) — 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 promptly, 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.

When we take your payment now, on a rate with free cancellation:

1. [total amount] will be charged to your card now.
2. Cancel before [free cancellation deadline] ([timezone label]) — the room rate is refunded in full; our [service charge] service charge is non-refundable.
3. Cancel after [free cancellation deadline] ([timezone label]) — the booking is non-refundable. No room-rate refund, no service-charge refund.

When we take your payment now, on a non-refundable rate:

1. [total amount] will be charged to your card now.
2. This booking is non-refundable. Cancellation at any time gives no refund.

The sections below explain how each point works.

When the supplier's card form takes your payment

The supplier charges your card when you book. No part of what you pay is kept back as a service charge when you cancel.

Before the free-cancellation deadline: what you paid is refunded in full. The supplier issues the refund to the card you paid with. After the deadline: the supplier's cancellation terms decide any refund. They are shown with the rate before you book and saved with your booking. There may be no refund. Non-refundable rates: there is no refund at any time.

When we take your payment

This covers bookings we take through Stripe, including bookings with properties that contract with us directly. The price you pay is the room rate plus our service charge, which covers card-payment fees, currency conversion, customer support and running the site. The checkout shows the amount. For a property that contracts with us directly, the room rate is the host's own rate, paid to the host in full, and our service charge is added to it.

When we charge your card: usually when you book. For some free-cancellation rates, when the free-cancellation deadline is at least four days away, we save your card securely at booking and charge it on [charge date], three days before the deadline. The checkout tells you which applies before you confirm. Before we charge your card: cancel and nothing is charged. After we charge your card, before the free-cancellation deadline: we refund the room rate in full. Our [service charge] service charge is non-refundable once we have charged your card, because by then we have paid the costs it covers. After the free-cancellation deadline: the booking is non-refundable. We refund neither the room rate nor the service charge. Non-refundable rates: there is no refund at any time.

Paying early

If we are due to charge your card later, you can pay sooner. Open the booking from your account, tap Pay now, and tick the confirmation box. We charge your card straight away:

• Our [service charge] service charge becomes non-refundable from the moment you pay.
• The room-rate refund window does not change. The free-cancellation deadline ([free cancellation deadline]) is set by the hotel, not by when you pay.

Paying early is optional, with no discount or penalty either way. If you do nothing, we charge on [charge date] as planned.

If your card fails when we charge it later

If we try to charge your card on [charge date] and it is declined (most often because the card has expired, been replaced, or has too little available), we will:

1. Try again a few times over the following hours. Many declines clear on their own.
2. Email you a link to update your card. The link goes to your account on local-hotel.com.
3. Hold the reservation for at least two days while you update the card.
4. Cancel the reservation if the card still has not been updated. We release the hold with the supplier so your stay does not appear on the hotel's books, and you owe nothing.

Cancelling

To cancel, open the booking from your confirmation email or from /bookings and use the cancel button. Before you confirm, the booking page shows what you will get back. One case is different: when the supplier's card form took your payment and its free-cancellation deadline has passed, the supplier works out any refund under the cancellation terms shown with your rate.

Refund timing

A refund goes back to the card you paid with, in the currency you were charged in. If your bank converted the payment into another currency, it converts the refund at its own rate on the day, so your statement may show a slightly different figure. Most refunds reach your account within 5–10 working days; some banks are faster.

If you don't see a refund within 10 working days of it being issued, email support@local-hotel.com with your booking reference and we'll help your bank trace it.

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 we can usually resolve things faster directly. Send your booking reference and a short description of the problem; we aim to reply within 1 working day and to resolve it within 14.

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

• Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974. If you paid by credit card and the booking cost between £100 and £30,000, your card issuer can be jointly liable for a breach of contract or misrepresentation by the business you paid. You can claim from them directly.
• Chargeback through your card scheme. Visa, Mastercard and Amex each run their own chargeback rules. Time limits are typically 120 days from the booking or the expected date of the stay.
• 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 keeps a finder at tradingstandards.uk/consumers/adr-scheme-finder.
• The courts. Under 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 UK consumer law, not a rule we wrote. So the cancellation rights on your booking are the ones in this policy and the rate's own terms shown at checkout.

If something has gone wrong (the hotel was not as described, you were overcharged, your card was charged twice), please contact us. This policy covers a straightforward cancellation. A mistake by us or the hotel is different, and we will put it right.

---

Version: 2026-10-25 · Last updated: 25 October 2026 · Previous version: 2026-10-13