Does free cancellation actually mean free?

The deadline is a property of the rate

This is the single most common misunderstanding about hotel booking. People remember whether a hotel was refundable; the refundability actually attaches to the specific rate they chose. Cancel one night before the deadline and you pay nothing. Cancel an hour after it and you may pay the first night or the whole stay, depending on what that rate said.

The same hotel sells several different answers at once

Open any property and you will usually find a non-refundable rate, a free-cancellation rate, and sometimes two free-cancellation rates on different rooms whose deadlines are days apart. None of those is the hotel's policy. Each is that rate's policy. The comparison worth making is between rates on the room you actually want, not between hotels.

It is a time, not a date

We show the deadline with the hour and the time zone on it — "Free cancellation until 25 Aug, 06:00 GMT" — because a date on its own is misleading. One real rate we sold expired at 06:00 GMT on the 25th. A guest who read "25 Aug" and cancelled that afternoon would have been charged £103.20, and would have been right to feel they had been told they had until midnight.

When a rate has more than one deadline, we show the earliest

Some rates arrive with a ladder of policies — free until one date, part-charge after that, full charge after another. The date we put on the rate is the first one, because that is the moment the free window actually closes. It is the only one of them that changes what you can do today.

Where the deadline comes from, and when we have to leave it out

The deadline is the hotel's, relayed to us by our supplier. We do not compute it and we will not estimate it. That has two consequences worth knowing:

• When a rate comes through marked refundable but with no deadline attached, we show "Free cancellation" with nothing after it. We do not turn that into "cancel any time", because we have not been told that.
• When a deadline arrives in a time zone we cannot resolve unambiguously, we leave the time off rather than convert it wrongly. A confidently wrong deadline is worse than an absent one.

If the rate you are looking at shows no deadline and the money matters, ask the property directly before you book.

Trap one: the free window closes earlier in the day than people expect

The classic mistake is not missing the date. It is assuming the date means end of day. Deadlines cluster in the morning, hotel-side, and a guest cancelling at lunchtime on the correct date has still cancelled late.

Where we can show the time, we do. Where the deadline is expressed in the property's own local time and we show it in GMT, the two can fall on different calendar days for you — so when you are within twenty-four hours of a deadline, treat the earlier of the two readings as the real one and cancel before the day it names, not on it.

Trap two: cheaper is often non-refundable, and that is the deal

A non-refundable rate is not a trick. It is a genuine discount in exchange for you carrying the risk of a change of plan, and when your dates are certain it is often the right choice. The mistake is taking that discount by accident because the cheapest rate was selected by default and the policy was never read.

A rough rule that holds up well: if there is any realistic chance your plans move, the gap between the refundable and non-refundable price is usually smaller than the cost of losing the whole booking. Where the gap is large and your dates genuinely cannot move, travel insurance is the other way to hand that risk back.

What "no prepayment" means, which is not the same thing

Free cancellation and no prepayment are two separate promises and a rate can have one without the other. Free cancellation means you can cancel without charge until the deadline. No prepayment means the money is not taken now — you pay at the property. A rate can be prepaid and still freely cancellable, in which case you are refunded; and a rate can require no prepayment while still charging you if you cancel late or fail to arrive.

What you actually get back

When a prepaid booking is cancelled inside its free window, the refund is calculated from the price you were charged, not from the lower net figure our supplier reports. On one real booking those two numbers were £118.67 and £103.20. Refunding the supplier's figure would have kept £15.47 of the guest's money, which is why we do not do it that way.

Where to see it before you pay

Every rate on a hotel page carries its own deadline, so the comparison to make is between rates rather than between hotels. Search a city and open any property to see them side by side — there is a "free cancellation only" filter if you would rather not look at the rest — or start from a destination guide. Our cancellation policy sets out how those terms are applied once a booking exists, and you can cancel from your trips without waiting for anyone.

Common questions

Does free cancellation mean I get all my money back?

Inside the deadline, yes — the full amount you paid, to the card you paid with. Outside it, the rate decides, and that can be one night or the whole stay.

How long does a refund take to arrive?

Once processed, typically five to ten working days to reach the card. The delay is the card networks rather than the booking, and no site can shorten it. Your bank is the authority on when it lands.

Can I cancel a non-refundable room?

You can cancel it; you will not normally get the money back. The property priced that rate on the basis that the room was sold. It is worth asking anyway if something serious has happened, because a property can waive a charge if it chooses — but nobody can promise you they will.

Does free cancellation cover not turning up?

No. A no-show is treated differently from a cancellation, and a rate that is free to cancel can still charge in full for a no-show. If you cannot travel, cancel — do not simply not arrive.

Can I change the dates instead of cancelling?

Not directly. A hotel booking is for the nights it names, so a date change is a cancellation plus a new booking. If the original rate is inside its free window, that costs nothing. If it is not, it costs whatever the rate says.

Why does the same hotel show two different cancellation deadlines?

Because you are looking at two rates, not one hotel. Different room types, board types and supplier contracts carry different terms, and deadlines days apart on the same property are normal.

Is a free-cancellation rate worth the extra?

It depends on how likely your plans are to move and how far ahead you are booking. As a way of holding a price with no risk it is very cheap insurance — when to book a hotel sets out the strategy that depends on it.

What happens to my room if my flight is cancelled?

Nothing, unless you do something about it. The two bookings do not know about each other, which is exactly why a non-refundable room paired with a flight is a risk — see what happens if my flight is cancelled. Booking the flight and the room together at least gives you one place to look.

Who do I cancel with — you or the hotel?

Us, if we took the payment. The property, if they did. Who to contact about a booking is the ten-second version, and contact us if you are not sure.