Terms of Service · Guideless Travel

1. Who we are

Guideless LLC operates the Guideless Travel brand, this website and the Guideless app. When these terms say "we", "us" or "Guideless", they mean Guideless LLC. When they say "you", they mean the person who makes a booking and, where relevant, each traveler on that booking.

You can reach us at hello@guidelesstravel.com.

2. What we provide

Guideless organizes the logistics of an independent trip with a group: your hotel at the level you choose, and the trains or coaches the route needs between destinations. We do not provide a tour guide. Your itinerary, timings and directions live in the app, which we call Your Guide.

Nothing else is included. Everything else is optional and priced separately. Free time is a deliberate part of every route. You decide how to spend it.

Add-ons (for example event tickets, a tasting, a dinner, a private transfer or an extra night) are optional extras you can choose at booking or later. Each add-on states its price, who sells it, when it happens and its own cancellation terms.

3. Booking and payment

A booking is confirmed when your payment is received and you see a confirmation number. Until then your places are held for a short time only.
Prices are per traveler in the currency shown. The default is your own room; two travelers on one booking may choose to share a room and each receive the shared-room saving shown at checkout. A stay tier, where offered, changes the price per traveler as displayed.
You may pay a deposit and the balance later, or pay in full. The balance is due by the date shown on your departure and in your account. Add-ons are paid in full when you choose them and are not part of the deposit.
If the balance is not paid by its due date, we email you a warning. If it is still unpaid 10 days after that warning, we cancel the booking. That cancellation is treated as a cancellation by you on that day: the refund tiers in section 6 apply to what you have paid.
Hotel prices are live. We check your rooms with the hotel again just before you pay. If a room has become dearer, the trip price changes to match and we show you the new final total before you confirm; you are never charged more than the total on screen when you pay. If the change is more than 5%, we stop and ask you to choose again.
The price you accept at checkout is recorded on your booking and does not change afterwards, even if our published prices do.
Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your card details.
Discount, coupon and referral codes reduce the base trip price only, as shown at checkout. One code per booking.

4. Referrals and hosting

We do not offer account credit. Rewards are discount codes for a future Guideless booking, not money.

Referrals are a flat amount, the same on every trip. A friend who books with your referral code gets $50 off the base trip price of that booking. You earn a $100 discount code for your next booking after their trip has taken place. It does not increase with the number of friends you bring, and it is not a percentage of the trip price.
You earn the code only once your friend's booking has been paid in full, can no longer be cancelled for a refund, and their trip has ended. We check once a day, so the code reaches your account shortly after the trip ends, not when the booking is confirmed. If the booking is cancelled or refunded before then, no code is earned. If a payment is disputed or we cannot verify it, the reward is held until a person has reviewed it.
Hosting a departure earns a $100 discount code for every confirmed traveler you bring, up to $1,000 on that departure, on the same conditions. Hosts do not travel free. The host page states the current amounts, and the amount that applies is the one published when the traveler books.
A discount code is yours alone. It is used on one booking, reduces the base trip price only, and cannot be exchanged for cash, transferred or combined with another code. While a checkout that uses it is unpaid, it is held for that checkout and cannot be used on another.
If a booking that used a code is cancelled before payment completes, the code is released for you to use again. If a paid booking that used a code is cancelled, the refund tiers in section 6 apply to the money you paid; the code is not reissued.
If you hold account credit from before these terms, it keeps the terms under which you earned it. No new credit is issued.

5. Changes you can make

You can update traveler details (names as they appear on passports, dates of birth, nationality, contact details, dietary and accessibility needs) from your account. Some suppliers need final details by a set date; we tell you when.
You can add add-ons any time they are still on sale, including during the trip, from your account or the app.
You can remove an add-on up to its stated cancellation deadline for a full refund of that add-on. After the deadline it is non-refundable. Some add-ons, event tickets in particular, are bought in your name and cannot be handed back, so they are non-refundable from the moment you buy them; those say so before you add them and show no deadline.
Room changes and traveler substitutions are handled by our team on request and depend on what hotels and rail operators allow. If a change makes your trip cheaper, the difference is refunded to your original payment method once the supplier has released it. We do not issue account credit.

6. Cancelling your booking

Every departure publishes its cancellation policy before you book: a set of tiers that state what percentage of the trip price is refunded depending on how many days before departure you cancel. The tiers for your departure are shown on the departure page, at checkout and in your account.

Request a cancellation from your account. Your account shows, before you confirm, the refund percentage that applies on that day and which add-ons are still refundable.
We confirm the cancellation within two business days. Refunds go back to the original payment method and usually arrive within 10 business days of confirmation.
Deposits and balances follow the same tiers, and we charge no cancellation fee on top. No tier is 100%: refunding a payment costs us the processing fee, so the top tier sits below it rather than us inventing a fee to cover it.
The tiers are not the same on every trip, and on some they are much lower. Where we have to buy rooms or tickets that the supplier will not refund at any notice — a Grand Prix weekend is the clearest case — the most we can return is what we can actually recover, and the published top tier can be as low as 20% even months ahead. That number is on the departure page and at checkout before you pay, and it is the number that governs. This is exactly why we recommend travel insurance on those departures.
Your deposit is set per stay tier and is shown before you pay. It is larger on the expensive tiers because the rooms behind them cost more and are bought earlier.
Optional extras follow their own deadlines instead of the tiers. Some, event tickets in particular, are non-refundable from the moment you buy them, and say so before you add them.
We are the organizer, and the hotels and sellers behind your trip set what can be recovered. Where a hotel or an add-on's seller refunds us less than a tier or deadline would suggest, what you receive for that part follows what they actually refund, and we tell you before you confirm.
If one traveler on a multi-traveler booking cancels, the tiers apply to that traveler's share, and the remaining travelers' room arrangement may change.

7. Changes or cancellation by us

A Guideless trip runs even if you are the only person on it. We do not cancel a departure because few people booked it; a small departure is a smaller group, not a cancelled trip.
If we cancel a departure for any other reason within our control, you receive a full refund of everything you paid us. Flights and other arrangements you booked yourself are your responsibility, which is why we recommend travel insurance that covers them.
If the hotel behind your level fills up or becomes much dearer before you book, we offer another hotel at the same level rather than withdrawing the level. You see the hotel you are buying before you pay.
After you book, we may replace a hotel or train with one of equal or better standard when a supplier changes plans. We tell you as soon as we know, through the app and by email.
Events outside our reasonable control (strikes, extreme weather, natural disasters, epidemics, government action, supplier failure and similar) may force changes or cancellation. In those cases we refund what we can recover from suppliers and work with you on alternatives, but we are not liable for losses beyond that.

8. Your responsibilities

Flights, and getting to the first hotel and home from the last one, are yours to arrange. We tell you exactly when to arrive.
Passports, visas, vaccinations and any entry requirements are your responsibility. Names on your booking must match your passport.
Travel insurance covering medical care, cancellation and personal belongings is strongly recommended on every departure. We do not make it a condition of booking and we do not check it, but if you travel without it, the losses it would have covered are yours.
You are responsible for your own health, safety and behavior during the trip, for complying with local laws, and for the terms of the hotels, rail operators and activity providers you use.
Timings in Your Guide are firm for trains and transfers. If you miss a departure, rebooking costs are yours.
A scheduled tour shows its minimum age, which is never under 5. A custom trip has no minimum age. A traveler under 18 on the departure date may travel only on a booking made by an adult who is that child's parent or legal guardian, travels on the same booking for the whole trip, and accompanies no more than two children. The person who makes a booking, and anyone travelling without a parent or guardian, must be 18 or older. Some extras, race viewing in particular, follow the seller's own age rules, which can be stricter; they say so before you add them.
The details you give us must be true. If you give a false name, date of birth, guardian relationship or any other false detail to make a booking or pass a check, the booking may be cancelled without refund and you lose your deposit. Venues with their own age checks — bars, clubs, licensed viewing areas — will turn you away at the door, and we can neither refund that nor be held responsible for it.

9. Missed connections, late arrivals and no-shows

Some things are outside what we organise, and this section says plainly what happens when one of them goes wrong. We would rather you read it now than discover it on the day.

If you miss a flight you booked yourself or arrive after the trip has started, the trip price stays the same. Nights, trains and extras you did not use are not refunded, because we have already bought them for you.
If you need to leave a trip early, contact support first. We will work with you on what the hotels and sellers can still release and pass on what they refund. If you leave without contacting us, nothing is refunded.
If you miss a train or a transfer we arranged, we will help you find the next one. The cost of getting yourself back on schedule is yours.
If you miss an optional extra you paid for, that money is gone: the supplier holds the ticket in your name and does not give it back. Race viewing, event tickets and the harbour parties are non-refundable from the moment you buy them, and say so before you add them.
If you are refused boarding or entry to a country because of your passport, visa, vaccination record or conduct, the trip is treated as cancelled by you on that day, and the published refund tiers apply.
If a hotel refuses you a room for reasons of your own conduct, or you are asked to leave the trip under section 10, the trip is over for you and nothing is refunded.
We will always try to help. Message support in the app and a person will answer. We do not offer an open-ended guarantee; when something goes wrong we work it out with you case by case. What we cannot do is make a supplier give back money they have already kept.

10. Your Group, and how we expect people to behave

The group features of the app (the roster, group chat, Live Moments, seeing who chose the same add-ons) are optional. You choose what other travelers see about you. Live Moments suggested by travelers are their own plans, not services we provide.

There is no guide on the ground, so how a group treats each other matters more here than on a trip where somebody is watching. This is all of what we ask, and it applies in the app and in person:

Treat the other travelers, our staff and the people who host you — hotel staff, drivers, anyone serving you — as you would want to be treated.
There is no tolerance for harassment, discrimination, sexual harassment, threats, intimidation or violence, on any basis and in any direction. That covers what you say to someone, what you say about them, and what you keep saying after they have asked you to stop.
Take no for an answer the first time.
Obey local law, including on drugs. It is not ours and it is not always what you are used to.
Do nothing that puts other people at risk, and nothing that risks a hotel refusing the whole group a room.
Do not photograph, record or post another traveler who does not want to be.

If something happens, tell us. You can block a person and report a message or a person from inside the app, and report a problem on the trip from your trip page — it reaches Guideless staff, not your group. If you are in immediate danger, call local emergency services first and tell us afterwards.

What we may do, and no more than is needed: talk to the people involved, move rooms around, remove content, remove someone from the group chat and the group features, and for serious or repeated behaviour end their participation in the trip with no refund, as set out in the Booking Agreement. We will say in writing what we decided and why. Where somebody's safety requires it we will share what is necessary, and only what is necessary, with the authorities, a hotel or supplier, or emergency services, and we keep an internal record of what happened and what we did.

11. Who is responsible for what

We are the organizer of your trip, not an agent booking it on your behalf. You buy one package from Guideless at one price, we choose and contract the hotels and trains behind it, and the extras you add, and you deal with us rather than with them. That is a deliberate choice and it is what the rest of this section follows from.

We are responsible for delivering the trip as described: the nights at your chosen level, the journeys between cities, and any extras you bought from us. If a part of it is not delivered, tell us and we will put it right, provide something equivalent, or refund the part you did not get.
Hotels, rail operators, transfer companies and activity providers are independent businesses that we select and contract. We are responsible to you for the parts of your trip we sold you, whoever performs them. We are not responsible for things you buy directly from a supplier, for anything outside the trip we organized, or for a supplier's separate terms you agree to yourself.
To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for a booking is limited to the amount you paid us for that booking, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses such as missed flights you booked yourself, lost earnings or disappointment.
Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or rights that consumer protection law where you live gives you and does not allow us to remove.

12. The app, the site and our content

You may use the Guideless app and website for your own trip planning and travel. The content, design and software are ours or our licensors' and may not be copied or resold. Recommendations in the app are suggestions, not endorsements, and prices at third-party venues can change.

13. Custom trips

A custom trip is one we build for you instead of one you pick off the page. You tell us where you want to go, we research it, and we send you a proposal: a real itinerary, real hotels, and one price. Everything else in these terms applies to a custom trip too. This section covers the parts that are different, and they are the parts that cost people money elsewhere.

A proposal is a plan at a price. It is not a reservation. No room, seat, table or ticket is held for you until the trip is booked and paid for, and availability can go between the day we research it and the day you decide.
A proposal shows a planning price based on rooms available when we researched it. Its displayed validity deadline is not a room hold or price guarantee. We check current rooms, the total price and cancellation terms before asking you to pay, and show you any change first. Your trip plan stays saved if its planning price expires; ask us for a fresh review.
You buy a custom trip from Guideless. We contract the hotels, trains, transfers and experiences in our own name, we pay them, and you pay us. This is true however you found us, including when someone else's website sent you here, and section 14 says what that means.
Cancellation on a custom trip is worked out from the actual rooms and tickets we hold for you. It is not the tiers published on our catalogue departures, and it can be much less generous than those — on a trip built entirely from rates a supplier will not refund, the answer can be nothing back at any notice. You see the exact terms for your trip on the proposal and again before you pay, and those are the terms that govern it.
We tell you what we could not do. Where a leg is one you book yourself rather than one we book, where a hotel is one we researched rather than one we know, where a price is an estimate from a published fare rather than a ticket we hold, and where something still depends on a supplier confirming, the proposal says so beside that item. If it is not written there, ask before you pay.
A proposal is an offer to arrange a trip. It is not advice. It is not a judgement that the trip suits your health, mobility, fitness or budget, and it is not guidance on visas, entry rules, vaccinations, safety or local law. Those remain yours under section 8, and they matter more on a trip nobody has run before.
Parts of a proposal are drafted with the help of an automated assistant working from our research. A planning draft can appear before a person reviews it, and you can ask our team to check it. We verify current rooms, price and cancellation terms before asking you to pay. The final details and terms you accept then govern your booking, not the planning draft or anything the assistant said along the way.
Changing a custom trip: traveler details change as usual. Dates, cities, hotels, order and length can often change before you book and much less often after, because by then we have bought things. Any change that alters what we have to buy will re-price the trip, and we show you the new price before anything is charged. Anything a supplier will not refund or rename cannot be taken off the trip for free.
A custom trip runs for the people on your booking. There is no Guideless group on it. Your Guide, the app and support work exactly as they do on a catalogue trip.
Where we have not run a trip before, our help when something goes wrong is real but remote: a person who can see your itinerary, reach the supplier and rearrange what can be rearranged. There is nobody local, we do not promise there will be, and we tell you which places those are before you book.

14. Trips sold through a partner

Another travel company can use Guideless to build and run a trip and sell it under their own name, usually marked “powered by Guideless”. If that is how you arrived, the trip is still ours to deliver and yours to buy from us.

Your contract is with Guideless LLC. You pay Guideless, your confirmation comes from Guideless, and these terms are the terms of your trip.
A partner may charge you their own fee on top of our price. If they do, it must be shown to you separately before you pay, as their charge. A partner may not quietly mark up what we quoted.
A partner cannot change these terms, make promises on our behalf, or sell you our suppliers' rates as though they were their own. What they say about the trip is theirs to answer for; what we sold you is ours.
If a partner has told you something that contradicts this page, this page is right, and we would like to know. Email us.
We can withdraw a partner's access at any time. That does not affect a trip you have already booked with us: we still owe you the trip.

15. Seller of Travel registration

Guideless LLC, trading as Guideless Travel, sells travel to customers wherever they live. The four US states below have seller-of-travel registration regimes. We intend to register in all four, and none of those registrations has been issued yet.

We ask where you live when you book, so that we know which rules apply to your booking. Where you live never changes the price, and we do not refuse a booking because of it. If you live in California, Florida, Hawaii or Washington, you are welcome to ask us about the status of our registration in your state before you book.

When a state's registration is issued, we will list its number below and update these terms to say so.

A missing number means this page does not provide evidence that a registration has been issued or that an application has been filed. Contact us for the current status before booking. We publish a number only when we can verify it.

California — Seller of Travel (CST), Attorney General: registration number not listed.
Florida — Seller of Travel (ST), FDACS: registration number not listed.
Hawaii — Travel agency registration, DCCA: registration number not listed.
Washington — Seller of Travel, Department of Licensing: registration number not listed.
Registration by a state is not an endorsement of us by that state, and it is not insurance for you. It is a public record that we are registered to sell travel there, and a place to complain if we fail you.
California residents: the Travel Consumer Restitution Fund is a California programme and only California residents who bought from a participating seller can claim on it. If you live elsewhere, it does not apply to you, whatever our registration says.
Some of these regimes may require a bond or a trust account for customer money. This section does not confirm whether such protection is in force for your booking. Ask us for the applicable details before paying.

16. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of Delaware, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and any court proceedings take place there unless consumer protection law where you live gives you additional rights, which these terms do not remove.

If something goes wrong, tell us first. Most issues are resolved by email within a few days, and we would rather fix a trip than argue about one.

17. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The version number at the top changes when we do, and the version you accepted is stored on your booking. Changes do not reduce your rights on a booking you have already made.

18. Contact

Guideless LLC, trading as Guideless Travel. Email: hello@guidelesstravel.com.