What happens to my deposit if….

Unpredictable events, tour cancellation, security deposits & refunds

Unfortunately this year we are witnessing the spread of the Coronavirus. Quite rightly, some of our customers raised a few concerns and asked about the situation with upcoming tours.

Last year in April we had a terrible event in Sri Lanka – where we are based – and this affected all the tourism in the country as well as some of our tours. Luckily, nothing else has happened and Sri Lanka has returned to its normal island life in a very short period.

This time we cannot yet say what’s going to happen but we are optimistic and all the 2020/2021 scheduled tours are confirmed. These kind of events are unpredictable but if we take a look at the recent global history, there has been precedents that were contained (SARS, MERS, etc.).

Nevertheless, we have to be realistic and any of the tours could be cancelled last minute or you could not feel comfortable enough to travel.

The question is: What happens to the deposit?

Since this is a very important topic, we’d like to take the opportunity to explain how we handle deposit refund requests.

By our Terms & Conditions (“Point 3.6 Booking charges, cancellations and refunds”), generally deposits are non-refundable unless we cancel a tour.

However as many of our customers can confirm, we are very reasonable and evaluate case by case.

Here are the main scenarios:

• We cancel the tour.
  
  We will refund the deposit in full but if you are still keen to do a different tour or the same the next year with us, we will keep the funds as deposit for the tour of your choice and offer you a discount on the second tour.
  
  
• You decide to cancel your trip.
  
  
  • Cancellation with 4+ months in advance
    
    If you notify us 4 or more months in advance, most likely we haven’t yet made payments to hotels, logistics, etc. and we will be happy to listen to your reason for the cancellation and decide whether to refund you or not.
    
    In general if there are all the conditions for you to do the ride and it’s just a personal decision, we won’t be able to refund you but we will propose you to use the same deposit for another tour.
    
    If the reason for cancelling the tour is something out of your control we will refund you (eg. Travel insurance will not cover your trip due to unpredictable events such as the current Coronavirus situation).
    
    Alternatively you can keep the funds with us for another tour or the same tour next year. Naturally the latter would be our preferred option: we would still love to have you on a tour with us.
    
    
  • Cancellation with less than 4 months in advance
    
    If you decide to cancel with less than 4 months in advance, we will not be able to refund you. By then we would have most likely done all the arrangements and it will not possible to obtain refunds from hotels and other parties that make our motorcycle adventures possible.
    
    To compensate however, we will offer you a discount on a different tour and that will cover part of the original deposit.
    
    
• Extraordinary Scenarios
  
  Unfortunately we are not able to foresee all possible scenarios and there might be situations which are not covered by our refund policy. In such a case just contact us and we will do our best to find a solution, whether that is a full or partial refund, a discount or even a flight fare.

If you have any questions please leave a comment below and we will reply as soon as we turn off our bike engines.

Ps. Don’t forget to have a look at our upcoming motorcycle tours