Trade terms

These are the terms on which we supply ground services to tour operators, travel designers and agents. You will be sent them, and asked to accept them, before your first booking with us is confirmed.

1. Who is contracting with whom

These terms form the contract between Escapeades (Pty) Ltd, a company registered in the Republic of South Africa, registration number TODO, of TODO registered address ("we", "us", "our"), and the tour operator, travel company or agent that books services with us ("you").

We supply ground services to you. You hold the contract with your clients, the travellers, and you remain responsible to them for the trip you have sold them. Nothing in these terms creates a contract between us and your clients, and we do not act as your agent.

Where we have signed a separate supplier or partnership agreement with you, that agreement takes precedence over these terms wherever the two differ.

2. Proposals

We quote by sending you a written proposal for a programme. A proposal is not an offer capable of acceptance, and nothing on this website is a quotation. Unless the proposal says otherwise, its rates are net, cover the dates, party size and services it describes, and are held for 14 days, subject to availability when you confirm.

Nothing is booked on a proposal alone. Where a scarce room or charter is at risk, we will tell you, and place a provisional hold on your instruction where the supplier allows one.

3. Confirmation

A booking is confirmed when you have accepted a proposal in writing, we have received the deposit in clause 5, and we have sent you a written confirmation. The confirmation lists every service included, with the supplier and any reference we hold for it. Anything not on the confirmation is not included.

4. Rates

The rate we quote is ours and the price you sell at is yours. We will not disclose our rates to your clients or quote them directly.

5. Deposit and payment

A deposit of 25 per cent of the confirmed total is payable on confirmation. The balance is due 60 days before your clients arrive. For bookings confirmed within 60 days of arrival, the full amount is payable on confirmation.

Some hotels, charter operators and activity providers require full or non-refundable payment at the time of booking. Where that applies to any part of a programme, the proposal says which part, and what it means for the cancellation position, before you confirm.

Payment is by bank transfer, in the currency on the invoice, without deduction. Bank and intermediary charges are yours. If the balance has not reached us by the due date, we may treat the booking as cancelled by you and apply clause 9.

TODO: whether credit terms are offered to established partners, and on what basis.

6. Currency and rate changes

Our costs are incurred in South African rand. Where we quote you in another currency, the proposal states the currency and how long the figure is held for. Once your deposit is received the confirmed total is fixed, except for a change in government taxes, levies or conservation fees after confirmation, which we pass on at cost and evidence to you.

7. Information we need from you

You agree to send us, accurately and in good time: every traveller's full name as it appears in their passport, the ages of any children, arrival and departure flight details, dietary requirements, any medical condition, disability or mobility limitation relevant to the programme, and an emergency contact. We rely on what you send. Where information is late or wrong and that causes a cost, a change or a refused service, that cost is yours.

You are responsible for obtaining your clients' agreement to share their information with us and with the suppliers we book for them, and for passing on to your clients what we tell you they need to know: activity conditions, age and fitness limits, what to bring, and the arrival arrangements.

8. Travel documents, insurance and health

Your clients' passports, visas and health requirements are a matter between you and your clients. We will tell you what we understand applies to South Africa, including the documentary requirements for travellers under eighteen, but the final check is yours.

You agree to require your clients to hold travel insurance covering medical expenses, emergency evacuation and repatriation for their whole time with us, including any adventure activity in the programme, such as shark cage diving, a helicopter flight or a boat charter. A supplier may refuse an activity where it requires evidence of cover and none is produced.

9. Changes and cancellation by you

Tell us in writing, as early as you can. Changes made well before arrival usually cost nothing from us. Where a supplier makes its own charge, we pass it on at cost and show it to you before we proceed.

Cancellation takes effect on the day we receive your written notice, and the charge depends on the number of days between that date and your clients' arrival:

• More than 90 days before arrival: the deposit, plus any supplier costs we cannot recover.
• 60 to 90 days before arrival: the deposit and 30 per cent of the total, plus any supplier costs we cannot recover.
• 30 to 60 days before arrival: the deposit and 60 per cent of the total, plus any supplier costs we cannot recover.
• Fewer than 30 days before arrival: the total, less any third-party cost we are not contractually bound to pay.

Where we recover more from suppliers than this scale assumes, we refund the difference to you. A reduction in the number of travellers is a part cancellation, charged on the same scale for the services it affects.

10. Changes by us

We may substitute accommodation, guides, vehicles or the order of days where safety, weather, road or sea conditions, illness or supplier failure require it. Any substitute will be of an equivalent or better standard, and we will tell you as soon as we know.

Day-to-day reordering by the guide in response to weather is normal, is usually in your clients' interest, and is not a change for the purposes of this clause. In the Cape the wind decides the order of a week more often than we do. We will tell you about anything that materially changes what your clients receive.

If we have to make a significant change before arrival and you do not accept it, you may cancel the affected services and receive a refund of everything you have paid us for them, less any supplier cost we cannot recover.

11. Cancellation by us

We will not cancel a confirmed booking except for force majeure, or because you have not paid. If we cancel for any other reason, we will offer you a suitable alternative or refund everything you have paid us for the cancelled services.

12. Force majeure

We are not liable for any failure or delay in performing our obligations caused by force majeure: an event beyond our reasonable control whose consequences we could not have avoided. That includes war, civil unrest, terrorism, epidemic or pandemic disease and the public health measures taken in response, natural disaster, fire, flood, drought, adverse weather and sea conditions, port or airport closure, industrial action, failure of public utilities, and any act or restriction of government.

Where force majeure affects a programme once it has begun, we will do what we practically can to keep your clients safe and comfortable and to keep you informed, but we can refund services they no longer receive only to the extent we recover them from suppliers.

13. Our standards on the ground

We will provide the services on the confirmation with reasonable skill and care, using NPTR-licensed vehicles, CATHSSETA-registered guides, and third-party suppliers that we have selected with reasonable care and that hold their own licences and insurance. We will meet your clients on arrival, keep a contact available to them and to you at any hour while they are in our care, and tell you promptly about any incident, complaint or material change.

14. Your brand and your clients

Unless you ask otherwise, we operate under your brand. Our guides introduce themselves as your team on the ground, and the documents we give your clients carry your branding or none.

We will not market to your clients, solicit a booking from them, or accept a direct booking from them, during their trip or for TODO months afterwards. Any enquiry they make to us about future travel is passed to you.

15. Third-party suppliers

Hotels, airlines, charter operators, helicopter companies and activity providers are independent businesses supplying under their own terms, which apply to the services they provide. Those terms often limit the supplier's liability, in some cases under international conventions. Copies are available from us on request.

16. Liability

We are responsible to you for the proper performance of the services on the confirmation, and for selecting our suppliers with reasonable skill and care. Where a confirmed service is not properly performed, and that is our fault or the fault of a supplier we selected, we will put it right or compensate you.

We are not liable for loss, damage or expense arising from an act or omission of yours or of your clients, from the act or omission of an unconnected third party that we could not have foreseen or avoided, or from force majeure. We are not liable for loss of profit, business or goodwill, or for any indirect or consequential loss.

Except for claims involving death, personal injury or illness, our total liability to you in respect of a booking is limited to the amount you paid us for that booking. Where an international convention limits a carrier's or a hotelkeeper's liability, our liability is limited in the same way.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

17. Claims by your clients

Your clients' contract is with you, so a complaint or claim they make is made to you. We will co-operate fully, give you the facts and documents you need, and meet our share of any claim to the extent it arises from a failure of ours under clause 16. You will meet any claim that arises from what you told your clients about our services where that differs from what we told you.

18. Complaints

Problems on the ground should be raised with the guide, or with us directly, at the time. Almost everything can be fixed the same day if we know about it, and almost nothing can be fixed after your clients have flown home. We will tell you the same day about any complaint your clients raise with us.

Written complaints should reach us within 28 days of your clients' departure, quoting the booking reference. We will acknowledge within five working days and reply in full within 28 days.

19. Personal information

Where you send us your clients' personal information, we use it only to deliver the booking, and we pass to each supplier only what that supplier needs. How we handle personal information, including your clients', is set out in our privacy notice.

20. Financial protection

TODO: set out the SATSA bonding position and any protection for deposits paid to us, with the membership number, and say plainly what it does and does not cover. Partners will ask, and it should not be buried at the bottom of a page.

21. Confidentiality

Our rates, your selling prices and each other's client details are confidential. Neither of us will disclose them except to the extent needed to deliver a booking, or where the law requires it.

22. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa, and the courts of South Africa have jurisdiction.

23. Website terms

Your use of this website is governed separately by our website terms of use.