Cancellation and refunds

A holiday is assembled from commitments Dreamvaca makes to other people on your behalf — a room blocked, a seat ticketed, a guide booked, a visa fee paid to a government. A cancellation charge is not a penalty; it is what those commitments have already cost by the time you cancel. The closer to departure, the more of it is already spent.

Where a supplier returns money to us, it reaches you. Where a supplier keeps it, we cannot refund it, and we will show you the supplier’s own charge rather than assert one.

Calculated on the total package value, per traveller, from the date we receive your cancellation in writing.

Group departures, cruises, chartered products and peak-period travel (Diwali, Christmas–New Year, and the destination’s own festival weeks) carry stricter supplier terms, which are stated on the booking confirmation and override this table.

• Government and consular visa fees, from the moment the application is lodged — including on a refusal.
• Air tickets on non-refundable fare families, and the airline’s own cancellation charge on refundable ones.
• Insurance premium once the policy has been issued.
• Non-refundable hotel deposits taken for peak-season or promotional rates.
• Any service already delivered — a night stayed, a transfer taken, an excursion attended.

Refunds are made only to the account or instrument the payment came from, never to a third party. We aim to release an approved refund within seven working days; the bank or card network usually takes a further five to seven working days to credit it.

Where a refund depends on a supplier returning money to us — most commonly an airline — the timeline is the airline’s, not ours. We will tell you what has been claimed, when, and where it currently sits.

If Dreamvaca cancels a confirmed departure for any reason other than force majeure, you may take an alternative of comparable standard or receive a full refund of everything paid to us for that trip, without deduction.

Where a trip becomes impossible through force majeure — closed airspace, a natural event, an epidemic, a government order — we will recover everything recoverable from suppliers and pass it on in full. Amounts a supplier lawfully retains cannot be refunded, and this is precisely what travel insurance exists to cover.

Send the cancellation in writing, quoting the booking reference and the travellers it applies to. The date we receive that written instruction is the date the slab is calculated from — a phone call does not stop the clock.