Refund and Returns Policy

This Refund and Returns Policy explains how Sun & Safari handles refunds connected to payments made for safari and beach holiday bookings, deposits, and any other services purchased through us. Because we sell travel experiences rather than physical goods, there is no “returns” process in the retail sense — nothing is shipped back to us. What this page instead covers is the far more relevant question for a travel business: under what circumstances money you’ve paid us is refunded, how much, and how quickly.

This policy should be read together with our Booking Conditions, which set out the cancellation charge scale referenced throughout this page, and our Terms & Conditions, which govern general use of our website. Where this page and the Booking Conditions overlap on cancellation charges, the Booking Conditions remain the authoritative source for the underlying charge scale; this page focuses specifically on the refund mechanics — what triggers a refund, how it’s calculated, and how it’s paid back to you.

Contents

• 1. Why “Returns” Works Differently for Travel
• 2. When You’re Entitled to a Refund
• 3. Deposits & Non-Refundable Payments
• 4. Refunds Following a Cancellation
• 5. Refunds When We Cancel or Change a Trip
• 6. Partial Refunds & Unused Services
• 7. How to Request a Refund
• 8. Refund Processing Times
• 9. Refund Method & Currency
• 10. Chargebacks & Disputed Payments
• 11. The Role of Travel Insurance
• 12. Refunds Under Force Majeure
• 13. Refunds Involving Third-Party Suppliers
• 14. Frequently Asked Questions
• 15. Changes to This Policy
• 16. How to Contact Us

1. Why “Returns” Works Differently for Travel

Most refund and returns policies exist to describe what happens when someone sends a physical product back for a refund or exchange. Sun & Safari doesn’t sell physical products — we arrange safari and beach holiday experiences across destinations like the Masai Mara, Amboseli, and the Diani and Watamu coastline, coordinating with lodges, camps, guides, and transport operators on your behalf. There’s nothing to physically return once a payment has been made; the “product,” in effect, is a confirmed reservation and a set of contractual commitments we make to third-party suppliers using your payment.

That distinction matters practically. A refund from us isn’t simply a matter of restocking an item — it depends on what we’ve already committed to suppliers on your behalf, how far in advance of travel a cancellation happens, and whether any part of your payment is genuinely non-recoverable from a third party once it’s been paid over. This page walks through exactly how that works.

2. When You’re Entitled to a Refund

You may be entitled to a full or partial refund in the following circumstances:

• You cancel a confirmed booking within the terms of our Booking Conditions, in which case a partial refund may apply depending on how far ahead of travel the cancellation is made
• We cancel or make a significant change to your confirmed itinerary and you choose not to accept the offered alternative
• A payment was taken in error, was duplicated, or does not match the amount actually confirmed on your written quote
• A specific service included in your itinerary is not delivered as booked, through no fault of your own, and cannot be reasonably substituted
• A force majeure event, described in Section 12, prevents travel and a recoverable portion of your payment exists

Refunds are not automatically granted simply because a trip didn’t unfold exactly as imagined — genuinely subjective preferences, such as a traveller deciding after the fact that a lodge wasn’t quite to their taste despite matching its description, are not refund triggers. Where a genuine service failure occurs, our complaints procedure is the right first step, and a refund or partial refund may follow from that process where warranted.

3. Deposits & Non-Refundable Payments

As explained in our Booking Conditions, deposits paid to confirm a booking are generally non-refundable, because they are used, often immediately, to secure availability with lodges, camps, and operators — many of whom require us to commit funds on your behalf well ahead of your travel dates. This is standard practice across the safari industry, and it’s the reason deposit levels are higher for high-demand migration-season camps described on pages like our Great Migration Guide, where we are ourselves committing non-refundable funds to secure your space.

Where a deposit is described as refundable on your specific written confirmation — which can happen for certain flexible-rate bookings — it will be refunded according to the terms stated on that confirmation, which take precedence over the general scale described in this policy.

4. Refunds Following a Cancellation

If you cancel a confirmed booking, the amount refunded is calculated as your total payments made to date, minus the applicable cancellation charge under our Booking Conditions. The scale is repeated here for convenience:

These figures assume no property in your itinerary applies a stricter individual cancellation policy — where one does, most commonly for a specific high-demand migration camp, that stricter figure applies to the relevant portion of your trip cost and reduces the refundable amount accordingly, exactly as described in your written booking confirmation. If you’re unsure which scenario applies to your specific booking, our team can confirm the exact refundable amount before you formally cancel, so you’re making the decision with full clarity rather than guessing at the outcome.

5. Refunds When We Cancel or Change a Trip

If we need to cancel or make a significant change to your confirmed itinerary — for reasons within our control, such as an administrative error on our part — and you choose not to accept a comparable alternative, you are entitled to a full refund of all amounts paid, without any cancellation charge applying. This reflects the basic principle that the cancellation scale in Section 4 exists to cover costs arising from your decision to cancel, not from ours.

Where the change or cancellation results from circumstances outside our control — a force majeure event, described in Section 12 — the refund position differs slightly, since we may not be able to recover every amount already committed to third-party suppliers on your behalf. We will always be transparent about which amounts we’ve been able to recover and refund accordingly, rather than withholding funds we have genuinely reclaimed.

6. Partial Refunds & Unused Services

If your trip has already begun and a specific portion becomes unusable through no fault of your own — for example, a coastal extension in Lamu that has to be cut short due to a genuine operational issue with a partner property — we will assess a fair partial refund for the specific unused portion, based on what we’re able to recover from the relevant supplier and the proportion of the overall trip value that portion represented. This is assessed case by case, since travel disruptions rarely map neatly onto a fixed formula, and we aim to reach a fair outcome reflecting what actually happened rather than defaulting to the smallest possible figure.

Refunds are not generally available for services included in your itinerary that you personally choose not to use while travelling — a game drive skipped by personal choice, or a meal not eaten — since these represent services genuinely made available to you and already paid for on your behalf, rather than a failure of delivery on our part.

7. How to Request a Refund

To request a refund, contact us in writing via our contact page, quoting your booking reference and the reason for the request. Please include:

• Your full name as it appears on the booking, and your booking reference number
• The date and amount of the original payment
• A brief explanation of the reason for the refund request
• Your preferred refund method, where relevant (see Section 9)

We will acknowledge your request within two business days and confirm the refundable amount, calculated according to the relevant section of this policy, before processing payment. Where a request requires input from a third-party supplier — for instance, confirming exactly how much a specific lodge is able to refund on a cancelled booking — we will keep you updated on progress rather than leaving the request unanswered while we wait to hear back.

8. Refund Processing Times

Once a refund amount has been confirmed and approved, we aim to process it promptly, though the exact timeline depends on your original payment method and, where relevant, how quickly a third-party supplier processes its own portion of the refund back to us.

These are typical timeframes rather than guarantees, since banks and card networks each apply their own internal processing schedules once a refund leaves us, and we have no ability to speed up that final leg. If a refund is taking noticeably longer than the ranges above, please get back in touch and we’ll check the status with our payment processor or the relevant supplier directly.

9. Refund Method & Currency

Refunds are made using the same method you used to pay wherever technically possible — a card payment is refunded back to the same card, and a bank transfer is refunded back to the account it was sent from. This is standard practice among payment processors and also serves as a basic anti-fraud safeguard, confirming the refund reaches the person who actually made the original payment.

Refunds are issued in the same currency the original payment was made in, generally US Dollars as described in our Booking Conditions. If your card or bank account is denominated in a different currency, the amount you see credited may differ slightly from the amount we refund, due to exchange rate movements and conversion fees applied by your own bank rather than by us — this is outside our control, and we’re not able to compensate for currency fluctuations that occur between the original payment and the refund.

10. Chargebacks & Disputed Payments

If you believe a payment was taken in error or a refund you’re entitled to hasn’t been processed, we would genuinely rather you contact us directly first, via our contact page, so we can investigate and resolve the issue quickly — this is almost always faster than a formal chargeback through your card provider, and it avoids the administrative complications a chargeback can create for a booking that may still be active with third-party suppliers.

Where a chargeback is filed without first raising the issue with us, we will still respond promptly and provide our payment processor with the relevant booking records, correspondence, and terms accepted at the time of payment. Repeated or clearly unwarranted chargebacks connected to a genuine, delivered booking may affect our ability to accept future bookings from the same traveller, consistent with standard industry practice around payment fraud prevention.

11. The Role of Travel Insurance

As set out in our Booking Conditions, comprehensive travel insurance is a mandatory condition of booking with us, and it plays a meaningful role in the refund picture. Our cancellation charge scale reflects costs we are often unable to recover from third-party suppliers regardless of the reason for your cancellation — but a good travel insurance policy with cancellation cover can often reimburse you for exactly that gap, provided your reason for cancelling falls within your policy’s covered circumstances (illness, bereavement, and similar insurable events are typically covered; a simple change of mind generally is not).

We’re not able to process an insurance claim on your behalf, since the contract for that cover sits between you and your insurer, but we’re always glad to provide the booking documentation, invoices, and confirmation of amounts paid that your insurer is likely to request as part of a claim.

12. Refunds Under Force Majeure

Where a force majeure event — a natural disaster, government travel restriction, civil unrest, or similar circumstance beyond either party’s reasonable control — prevents your trip from proceeding, we will refund whatever portion of your payment we are genuinely able to recover from the suppliers involved, after any costs that have already been irrecoverably committed on your behalf. We do not treat force majeure as a reason to withhold funds we have actually reclaimed, but we equally cannot manufacture a refund for money that a third-party supplier is contractually entitled to retain under its own force majeure terms.

In practice, our first preference in a force majeure scenario is always to explore rescheduling your trip to new dates rather than cancelling outright, since this often preserves value that a straight cancellation would otherwise lose — but the choice remains yours, and we will explain the refund position clearly for whichever option you prefer.

13. Refunds Involving Third-Party Suppliers

Many of the services included in a Sun & Safari itinerary — accommodation at a specific lodge, a light aircraft charter, a specialist activity such as a guided walk — are ultimately delivered by an independent third-party supplier, even though you book and pay through us. Where a refund depends on that supplier’s own cancellation policy, we act as an intermediary, applying to the supplier for a refund on your behalf and passing on whatever amount we successfully recover, minus any charge we’ve separately disclosed on your written confirmation.

We negotiate on your behalf in good faith and push for the most favourable outcome a supplier’s own terms allow, but we cannot guarantee a specific outcome from a third party we don’t control, and in rare cases a specific supplier’s policy may be stricter than our own general cancellation scale — this will always be disclosed at the time of booking wherever it applies, most commonly for the highest-demand migration-season camps referenced throughout our travel guide.

14. Frequently Asked Questions

Can I get a refund if I simply change my mind about travelling to Kenya?

Yes, this is treated as a standard cancellation, and the refund is calculated according to the scale in Section 4, based on how far ahead of departure you cancel. A simple change of mind is not typically a covered reason under most travel insurance cancellation cover, so the earlier you’re able to make the decision, the more favourable your refund position under our own scale is likely to be.

What if I paid in full and then decide to reduce my group size?

Removing a traveller from a confirmed booking is generally treated as a partial cancellation for that person’s share of the trip cost, and refunded according to the same notice-based scale, since per-person pricing and room or vehicle configurations are usually affected by a change in group size. Your consultant will confirm the exact recalculated cost before any refund is processed.

Do you refund the payment processing or card surcharge I was charged?

Card processing surcharges disclosed at the time of payment are generally not refundable, since they reflect a genuine cost charged to us by the payment network regardless of what happens to the underlying booking afterward. Where a payment was taken in error entirely — for example, a duplicate charge — the full amount, including any surcharge, is refunded.

How will I know a refund has actually been processed?

We will always confirm in writing once a refund has been submitted to our payment processor or bank, including the amount and expected timeframe from Section 8. We’d encourage you to treat that written confirmation, rather than an assumption based on the calendar, as the point from which to start counting toward your bank’s own processing window.

Is the deposit refundable if I cancel the very next day?

Generally, no — as explained in Section 3, deposits are used to secure your booking with third-party suppliers essentially immediately, so even a cancellation made shortly after booking does not typically make the deposit recoverable, unless your specific written confirmation states otherwise or the cancellation results from an error on our part.

What happens to a refund if my original payment method no longer exists — for example, an expired card?

If the card or account used for the original payment is no longer active, let us know as soon as possible when requesting your refund. We will work with our payment processor to find an appropriate alternative method to return your funds securely, though this can sometimes extend the processing timeframe described in Section 8 while the alternative arrangement is set up and verified.

15. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Refund and Returns Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our payment processing arrangements, supplier relationships, or applicable law. The “last updated” date at the top of this page reflects the current version, and the policy in effect at the time you make a payment is the version that applies to that specific transaction, alongside the cancellation terms stated on your written booking confirmation.

16. How to Contact Us

If you have a question about a refund, need to request one, or simply want to understand how this policy applies to your specific booking before you make a decision, our team is glad to talk it through directly rather than have you interpret a general policy against your own particular circumstances alone. Reach us through our contact page, where you’ll find our current phone, email, and WhatsApp details, or check our FAQ for answers to the questions we’re asked most often. This policy should be read alongside our Booking Conditions, Terms & Conditions, and Privacy Policy, which together set out the full basis on which we work with every traveller.