Where can I find it?
CONFIGURATION > SYSTEM & SETUP > YOUR BOOKINGS > Cancellation policies
What does it mean?
The cancellation policy of a tour outlines the terms and conditions regarding cancelling a booking or reservation for that particular tour. Cancellation policies let TourCMS users indicate how close to departure a certain tour can be cancelled for a refund. They are expressed in the number of days/hours/minutes to departure. The policy helps both the tour operator and the customer.
Cancellation policies are configured centrally within the account and associated with each tour. This way, it is possible to have a default cancellation policy easily applied to all tours on an account.
Currently, cancellation policies are not enforced in the initial release of the API. However, it is still possible to verify them.
By default (i.e. no cancellation policies), a booking is cancellable.
It is important to note that the cancellation policy specifies the number of days, hours, or minutes prior to the tour's departure. There is currently no explicit non-refundable policy. Should you wish to implement a non-refundable policy, we recommend establishing a cancellation policy of 365 days and labelling it as "Non-refundable".
What should I do?
How to create/edit a cancellation policy?
Create your cancellation policies via Configuration > System & Setup > Cancellation Policies
By default, there will be no policies:
Here, enter a name, how many days, hours or minutes prior to departure the tour can be cancelled and also optionally set the policy as the default policy for any tours created in the future:
Additionally, if desired, you can apply the policy to any tours that currently lack a cancellation policy:
After creating the cancellation policy, it will appear like this.
In our example, the cancellation policy applies to 70 tours.
Please note that deleting the cancellation policy is only possible if the policy is not associated with any tours.
It is also recommended to configure Tour Timezones before using cancellation policies, as they are automatically adjusted for daylight savings. If not configured, TourCMS will fallback to using the account timezone.
How do you associate a cancellation policy with a tour?
It is possible to associate a specific cancellation policy with a particular tour. For that, head to the tour setup page PRODUCTS > TOURS > SETUP. Then, under the “OPERATIONS/SUPPLIERS” tab, you will find a dropdown to choose which policy applies for that tour or set it back to “none”.
If you visit the ‘Cancellation policies’ page, you can see here how many tours are associated with each policy, view the tours linked to a specific policy, identify tours with no policy, and also set a new policy for all tours that currently have none.
Where are cancellation policies enforced?
Cancellation policies are currently only enforced in the staff back office. If a member of staff views a booking which is blocked for cancellation due to a cancellation policy, they will see a warning message:
By default, staff cannot override this, however, there is a new setting on staff users to give them permission to bypass this warning:
Where else can cancellation policies be viewed
The cancellation policy for a specific tour or booking is also retrieved via the API in the 'Show tour' and 'Show booking' endpoints within the cancellation policy node.
Calling “Show Tour” returns information about the currently selected cancellation policy for that tour.
Calling “Show Booking” returns whether the booking is cancellable based on the cancellation policies of all items on the booking. By default (i.e. no cancellation policies) a booking is cancellable.
If any tour on the booking has passed the point where the cancellation policy is blocking, then the entire booking is configured as non-cancellable.
Please note, that the policies are not enforced via API, only indicated via the <cancellable> node, where ‘1' means cancellable and '0’ means not cancellable. At the moment, this is for informational purposes only.