Cancelling, and what comes back

Open the trip, choose Manage reservation, then Cancel reservation. When cancelling is yours to do, the sheet names your policy, says where today falls in it, and shows before you confirm what cancelling costs you, what your host keeps, and where everything you paid goes — back to you, kept by your host, or the fees that never come back.

The five standard policies

Every host on Kabora starts with the same five, and most stays run on one of them:

• Flexible — everything back until 1 day before check-in; nothing after.
• Moderate — everything back until 5 days before; 50% after.
• Firm — everything back until 30 days before; 50% until 7 days; nothing after.
• Strict — everything back until 14 days before; 50% until 7 days; nothing after.
• Non-refundable — nothing back at any point, and cancelling at all needs the host's agreement.

This is not a closed list. A host can write their own terms — any name, any free window, any late percentage — and can delete the standard ones. So the policy named on your booking is the one that counts, even when it shares a name with something above. Read the terms on the booking itself rather than going by the name.

The policy that governs your stay is the one that was in force when you booked, frozen onto the reservation. A host changing their terms afterwards never rewrites yours.

What "everything back" leaves out

The platform fee and the card processing are not returned, whenever you cancel. A percentage band is a percentage of what is left after those come off the top — so a 50% band is not half of what you paid. Tax inside your total comes back whole inside the free window and at the band's rate after it.

If you are paying in parts, the band is a share of the whole stay, not of what you have paid so far: the policy keeps its share of the stay, you get back whatever you have paid over that, and you are never asked for the rest. Your trip page says the figure for today before you confirm.

If the card kept for a later part is declined three times — on its day, three days later and seven days later — Kabora cancels the stay for you and the same policy applies for that day; you are told by email and on your trip page, and you can pay the part or change the card from the trip page at any point before the third try.

Non-refundable is never yours to cancel

Non-refundable is the only policy that needs the host's agreement, and it has no free window at all. From the moment you book, the button reads Ask the host to cancel rather than Cancel reservation. There is no early period where you can still do it yourself.

Asking ends nothing on its own. Your stay stays booked while the host decides: the nights stay held, the money stays put, and your door code keeps working.

What the host agreeing is worth

How much comes back depends on how your host ends the booking, and there are two ways.

• If they answer your request from your message thread, your policy's band applies — the same arithmetic you would have got cancelling yourself.
• If they cancel the booking outright from their own screens, everything you paid comes back, fees included, with no band applied.

You do not choose which, and nothing tells you in advance which one your host will use. What you can count on is the floor: never less than your policy allows.

That same full refund is the rule when a host cancels on you without being asked. None of the bands apply, because you did not cancel and you have lost your trip.

Taking back a booking request

If you asked to book somewhere that needs the host's approval and they have not answered yet, this is not a cancellation at all — the row says Withdraw request. Nothing was agreed and nothing was charged, so there is nothing to refund, and you can ask again for these or other dates.

One gap to know about: if the place is Non-refundable, withdrawing does not work yet. The sheet offers to ask the host to cancel instead, and that comes back with an error saying the stay cannot be cancelled. Message the host and ask them to turn the request down.

Once a cancellation request has gone in on a confirmed stay, there is no button to take it back. Message the host and ask them to keep the booking — they have a Keep this booking control that leaves it exactly as it was.

The rest of it

• Money goes back to the card it came from.
• You get an email only when there is money to tell you about. A cancellation that refunds nothing sends none.
• Bookings made on Airbnb, Vrbo or Booking.com are cancelled there, not here.