Who you are booking with
Your contract is with Zara Tour, a licensed tour operator based in Hanoi, Vietnam. Below, we means Zara Tour and you means the person who confirms the booking together with everyone named on the itinerary.
- The person who confirms is responsible for the whole party, including payments and passing our information on.
- Everyone must be named on the confirmation, spelled exactly as on their passports.
- Travellers under eighteen must be accompanied by a parent or guardian throughout.
- We arrange and operate your ground services directly, except where an airline or other carrier takes you under its own conditions of carriage.
Quotes and confirmation
We quote in writing once we know your dates and party size. The quotation sets out the route day by day, what is included, and the hotels or a named equivalent standard. Nothing is held and nothing is owed at that stage.
- A quotation is valid for fourteen days; beyond that we may have to re-check availability.
- A booking exists once you accept the quotation in writing and we confirm that acceptance back to you.
- If a named hotel becomes unavailable we substitute one of the same standard and tell you before any further payment.
Payment
A deposit of thirty per cent of the trip cost confirms the booking. The balance falls due thirty days before departure. Book inside that window and the whole amount is payable at confirmation.
- Deposit: thirty per cent of the total, payable when you confirm.
- Balance: the remaining seventy per cent, thirty days before departure.
- Bookings made within thirty days of departure: the full amount at confirmation.
- Payment by bank transfer or a card link we send.
- If the balance is seven days overdue and we have heard nothing, we may treat the booking as cancelled by you and apply the scale below.
Changes by you
Before the balance is paid, most changes cost nothing. Swapping a town, moving a night or adjusting the hotel standard is ordinary planning work and carries no amendment fee.
- More than thirty days out: no fee from us. A supplier charge for a rebooked reservation is passed on at cost, with the evidence.
- Within thirty days: we will do what we can, but flights, trains and boats are usually beyond rescue and may be lost.
- Adding or removing a traveller changes the price per person, since a private trip is costed on the number in the vehicle. We re-quote first.
- Names on flight tickets cannot be transferred. A passport spelling found wrong late may mean buying a new ticket.
Changes by us
Occasionally we have to alter something after confirmation: a hotel oversells, a flight is retimed, a road closes. We tell you as soon as we know and put an equivalent arrangement in its place.
- Minor alterations, such as reversing two days or moving an activity to the afternoon, carry no compensation.
- For a significant change, meaning a different town, a shorter trip or a lower hotel standard, you may accept it, take an alternative of the same or better standard, or cancel with a full refund.
- Where events outside anyone's control intervene, including severe weather, flooding, strikes, civil unrest or border closures, we refund whatever suppliers release, but cannot refund money already gone.
- A guide or driver may be replaced at short notice through illness. We will not leave you without one.
Cancellation
Cancellations must reach us in writing and take effect on the working day we receive them. The scale below reflects the point at which we can no longer recover money already committed.
- More than sixty days before departure: the deposit is retained, nothing further is owed.
- Sixty to thirty-one days: fifty per cent of the total trip cost.
- Thirty to fifteen days: seventy-five per cent of the total.
- Fourteen days or fewer, or no show: the full trip cost.
- Flight tickets, cruise cabins and anything else already issued in your name are charged in full at any stage, on top of the scale above.
If we recover more from a supplier than the scale assumed, the difference goes back to you. Leaving a trip early produces no refund for unused days, which is one reason the insurance below is compulsory.
Travel insurance
Travel insurance is a condition of booking, not a suggestion. You must hold a policy covering the whole party for the whole trip, and we may ask for the policy number and the insurer's emergency line.
- Medical treatment and emergency evacuation, the part that matters in the mountains of northern Vietnam and Laos.
- Cancellation and curtailment, which responds when illness forces you to cancel late.
- Any activity on your itinerary an insurer treats as adventurous: trekking, caving, kayaking, riding a motorbike.
- We are not brokers and do not advise on which policy to buy, but we will decline to start a trip for anyone with no cover at all.
Passports and visas
Passports, visas, entry permits and health requirements are your responsibility. Rules differ by nationality across the four countries and change without much notice, and only your government or the relevant embassy can tell you authoritatively what applies.
- Passports normally need six months of validity beyond your return date and two blank pages.
- We will say what we believe is required and provide a letter where one is needed, but cannot warrant visa rules.
- You are liable for any cost arising from missing or incorrect documents, including refused boarding or entry.
- Passport names given to us must match the passport exactly, because airlines and hotel registration are checked against it.
Complaints
If something is wrong, tell the guide or call the duty number that day. A room, a vehicle or a guide who is not working out can be changed in an afternoon, and none of it after you fly home.
- Raise it on the spot, with your guide or on the duty line.
- If that does not resolve it, write to us within twenty-eight days of your return, with dates and detail.
- We acknowledge within three working days and reply properly within twenty-one days.
- Where we got something wrong we say so and put it right. Where we did not, we explain why.
Governing law
This agreement is governed by the laws of Vietnam, and any dispute that cannot be settled between us falls to the competent courts of Hanoi. Nothing here removes a right you hold under a law that cannot be contracted out of.
- These terms are written in English, which is the version that governs the contract.
- If one clause is found unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.
- The terms in force are those published here on the day you confirm your booking.