Refund & Cancellation Policy

Nothing you do on this website charges you. Submitting a booking is a request for a consultation, and no payment is taken at that moment — so up until the point where you and an Orbitrek specialist agree on a final itinerary and price, there is nothing to cancel and nothing to refund. Once a trip is confirmed and a deposit has been paid, the cancellation terms below apply.

A request you send through the trip planner, a tour page, or the contact form places no financial obligation on you. You may withdraw or abandon a request at any time, at no cost and with no penalty, simply by telling us you would rather not proceed — or by not proceeding at all. We will not invoice you for planning conversations, quotes, or draft itineraries.

Prices shown before confirmation are non-binding estimates. If a quote comes back higher than you expected, or dates no longer work, you are free to walk away. See our Terms of Service for how estimates and specialist finalization work.

A trip is confirmed when you have approved the final itinerary and price in writing and a deposit has been paid. At that point we begin committing your money to third parties — reserving rooms, buying permits, holding guides and vehicles — and those commitments are what the terms below are about.

Your specialist's written confirmation states your deposit amount, your balance due date, and any supplier terms that are stricter than this policy. Where they differ, the written confirmation for your booking governs.

If you cancel a confirmed trip, the amount we can return depends on how much notice we have before your departure date. The deposit secures your planning and supplier holds and is retained in every tier; the balance column refers to amounts you have already paid beyond the deposit.

Non-refundable supplier costs already incurred on your behalf (see below) are deducted before these percentages are applied, in every tier. Refund percentages are calculated on the trip cost quoted in your confirmation, excluding third-party fees and taxes that suppliers do not return to us.

Orbitrek arranges travel that is delivered by independent suppliers, and some of what you pay leaves our hands immediately on terms we do not set. The following are frequently non-refundable regardless of when you cancel:

• Airfare and rail tickets. Most discounted and promotional fares are non-refundable once ticketed. Where a fare is changeable, airline change fees and any difference in fare are yours to pay.
• Trek and park permits. Inca Trail permits in particular are non-refundable and locked to the traveler's name and passport number from the moment they are issued. They cannot be transferred, renamed, or moved to another date — a cancellation forfeits the permit entirely, and a name correction generally means buying a new one if any are still available.
• Event, entry, and timed-ticket purchases. Museum slots, festival passes, cooking classes, and similar reservations are usually final sale.
• Prepaid and non-refundable hotel rates. Some properties — particularly small lodges, high-season stays, and advance-purchase rates we use to hold a lower price for you — charge in full at booking with no refund.
• Private charters and small-group departures. Chartered vehicles, boats, and private guides often carry their own cancellation schedules, which we will show you before you commit.

We will always tell you which parts of your trip carry these terms before you pay, and we will recover whatever a supplier is willing to return.

Not every change is a cancellation. Where a supplier allows it, we handle date shifts, traveler-name corrections, and party-size changes as amendments rather than cancelling and rebooking — which is almost always cheaper for you. An amendment may carry an Orbitrek amendment fee plus any supplier change fee and fare or rate difference, quoted to you for approval before we act on it.

Some changes are not possible once a trip is confirmed. Reducing party size may re-trigger per-person pricing for the travelers who remain, name-locked permits and tickets cannot be reassigned, and peak-season dates may simply be unavailable to move into. If an amendment is not possible, the request is treated as a cancellation under the tiers above.

Cancellations must be made in writing. Email hello@orbitrektravels.com or send us a message through the contact page, including the traveler name and booking reference from your confirmation.

The effective cancellation date is the date Orbitrek receives your written notice, not the date it was sent. Phone calls are welcome and often faster for advice, but we cannot act on a verbal cancellation until we have it in writing — so if a tier boundary is close, send the email first. We will acknowledge receipt and confirm the applicable tier in writing.

Refunds are returned to the original payment method and to the person who paid; we cannot redirect a refund to a different card, account, or individual. Orbitrek's portion of a refund is issued within 10 business days of our written confirmation of your cancellation.

Amounts held by suppliers take longer, because we can only pass them on once they reach us — airline and hotel refund cycles of four to twelve weeks are common, and your bank or card issuer may add a few days after that. We will tell you what is outstanding and keep you updated rather than leave you guessing.

If we cancel a confirmed trip for reasons within our control — an operational decision on our side, a supplier we chose that we cannot replace, or a minimum group size we failed to reach — you may choose either a full refund of all amounts you paid to Orbitrek or to move your payments to a rebooked departure. Deposit retention does not apply in that situation.

If we need to make a material change before departure — a substituted destination, a substantially different standard of accommodation, or a shift in dates — we will present the alternative to you and you may accept it, take an equivalent alternative if one exists, or cancel for a full refund of amounts paid to Orbitrek. Minor substitutions of comparable quality, which are a normal part of operating trips, are not material changes.

Some cancellations are nobody's fault. Natural disaster, extreme weather, civil unrest, epidemic or public-health emergency, border or airspace closure, strike, supplier insolvency, or a government travel advisory against your destination can all make a trip impossible to run.

In those circumstances we will do the work of recovering what can be recovered — refunds, future-travel credits, or date changes from each supplier — and pass every bit of it through to you, along with an honest account of what we could and could not get back. What we cannot do is guarantee a full refund of supplier costs that are genuinely unrecoverable. This is the gap that travel insurance exists to close.

We strongly recommend comprehensive travel insurance for every confirmed trip, purchased at the time you pay your deposit — most cancellation-related coverage depends on buying early, often within a short window of the first payment. Look for trip cancellation and interruption cover at your full trip cost, emergency medical and evacuation cover, and baggage and delay cover.

Insurance is how you protect yourself against illness, a family emergency, a missed connection, or the force-majeure situations above — the circumstances this policy cannot cover, because the money has already gone to suppliers who will not return it. We are happy to point you toward reputable providers, but the policy is a contract between you and your insurer, and we cannot advise on the terms of a specific plan.

Amounts are quoted, invoiced, and refunded in the currency stated on your invoice. Refunds are issued in that same currency for the same nominal amount — we do not adjust for exchange-rate movement between the date you paid and the date you are refunded, and any difference in your home currency, or fees your card issuer charges for a foreign transaction, is not compensated.

This website does not currently process payments online. Every booking begins as a consultation request, and any deposit or balance for a confirmed trip is arranged directly with your specialist, who will document the amount, the method, and the terms that apply to your trip in writing. We will update this policy before online payments launch.

We would rather talk it through than have you guess. Reach us at hello@orbitrektravels.com or through our contact page. See also our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. This page is provided for information; for a confirmed booking, the written confirmation from your specialist governs.