Refunds: how much, and when it arrives

The policy on your booking is the one that counts

Kabora gives every host five standard cancellation policies, and most stays use one of them. A host can also build their own, with a different free window and a different rate. So read the policy named on your booking rather than assuming it is one of the five.

The five standard ones:

• Flexible — full refund until 1 day before check-in; nothing after.
• Moderate — full until 5 days before; 50% after.
• Firm — full until 30 days before; 50% until 7 days; nothing after.
• Strict — full 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.

Your booking records its terms at the moment you book, and a host editing their policy afterwards does not rewrite what was recorded. If your trip page shows no cancellation terms at all, your booking never recorded any. Ask your host what applies before you cancel.

What the percentage is a percentage of

When you are the one cancelling a booking that recorded terms, the Kabora platform fee and the card processing do not come back. Everything else follows the band after those two have already come off the top. So a 50% band is not half of what you paid; it is half of what was left once the fees came out.

Tax comes back whole inside the free window and at the band's rate after it, so a partial refund brings part of the tax back with it.

If you are paying in parts, the band is a share of the whole stay rather than of what you have paid so far: the policy keeps its share, you get back whatever you have paid over that, and you are never asked for the rest.

The exact figure for your dates is on the booking screen before you confirm, and on your trip page afterwards. Both come from the same code that pays it.

If the host cancels

No band applies. Everything you paid through Kabora toward the stay comes back in full, the platform fee and the card processing included — you did nothing, and you lost your trip. In that case the host carries those fees, not you.

When it arrives

Refunds go back to the card you paid with and usually take five to ten days to appear, depending on your bank.

If you cancelled the stay yourself and money is due back, an email tells you it has been sent. When your host cancels, the email telling you says what comes back. Every refund also shows on your trip page against the payment it came off.

Two things do not work this way. Money you handed your host directly — cash, a transfer, a cheque — cannot go back through a card processor, so returning it is between you and the host. And a booking you made on another site is refunded by that site under its own terms; Kabora will not quote somebody else's refund.