Cancellation policies and refunds

Kabora gives every host five standard cancellation policies, and a standard name means the same thing on every listing. A host can also write their own terms under another name:

• Flexible — full refund until 1 day before check-in; nothing after.
• Moderate — full refund until 5 days before; 50% after.
• Firm — full refund until 30 days before; 50% until 7 days; nothing after.
• Strict — full refund until 14 days before; 50% until 7 days; nothing after.
• Non-refundable — no refund, and cancelling at all needs the host's agreement.

Terms are frozen at booking

The policy in force when a stay is booked is the policy that governs it, snapshotted onto the reservation. A host changing a property's policy later never rewrites an existing booking's terms — the sheet always shows the terms as booked.

What a percentage is a percentage of

The platform fee and the card processing are never given back, whoever cancels and whatever the reason. Everything else follows the policy — after those two have already come off the top.

That order is the whole difference. A "50%" band is not half of what the guest paid; it is half of what was left once the fees came out. On a $2,000 booking carrying $98.30 of fees, a 50% band returns $950.85, not $901.70. The guest is shown that exact number before they pay and again before they confirm the cancellation.

On a stay paid in parts, the band is a share of the whole stay, not of the part paid so far: the policy keeps its share of the stay net of the fees, the guest gets back whatever they have paid over that share, and never less than nothing — nobody is asked to pay the rest of a stay they have cancelled. On a $16,912 stay with $11,446 paid, a 50% band keeps about $7,900 for you and returns about $2,450; on the same stay paid in full it returns half of what is left after fees, as above.

Who cancelled changes the answer

• The guest cancels — the policy band above applies, and the guest is the one who absorbs the two fees.
• The host cancels — the guest gets back every cent they paid, in full, with no band applied at all. The guest did nothing and has lost their trip. The fees are still not returned, so it is the host who absorbs them. And the nights stay closed on the host's calendar, marked "A booking you cancelled" — nothing reopens them, so a cancellation can never be a way to sell the same dates again.
• A card dispute — a guest going to their bank instead does not unwind the stay. It opens a case for a person to answer, with the card network's own deadline.

How cancelling works

When the policy allows it, travelers cancel themselves from the reservation sheet: the refund preview shows the exact number before confirming, computed from the booked terms and the calendar date — the same math the server runs. When a policy requires the host's agreement, the sheet sends a cancellation request instead, and the host's "Cancel with policy refund" button applies precisely what the booked policy owes. A stay booked on another site is cancelled there — the guest paid that site, that site holds the money, and Kabora will not quote somebody else's refund.