1. About our service

PalapaVibez operates three connected lines of business:

• Flight Search & Referral. For flights we operate as a search and affiliate referral service, not a travel agent or merchant of record. We show live fares from a third-party flight metasearch partner (Travelpayouts / Aviasales). When you choose a flight you are handed off to the airline or an online travel agency to complete the booking and pay them directly — we never take flight payment, issue tickets, or hold your booking. Where you book after following one of our links we may earn a referral commission at no extra cost to you. We are not an airline and we do not operate flights.
• Tours & Activities. Tours are the one product where PalapaVibez is the merchant of record. We charge your card, we appear on your statement, and we are who you come to about the money. The tour itself is run by an independent local operator — the guide — who sets the itinerary, the group size and the cancellation terms, and who is responsible for operating the tour safely and for holding the licences and insurance their jurisdiction requires. We verify that paperwork before a tour is listed; we do not operate tours ourselves.
• Hotel Booking. Hotels are sourced through LiteAPI, which acts as the merchant of record for hotel reservations. LiteAPI appears on the receipt for hotel bookings and processes hotel payments through its own payment processor. We are not a hotel and we do not operate accommodation.

2. Eligibility

By using the Service you represent and warrant that you are at least 18 years old and legally capable of entering into a binding contract. If you are under 18 you may not use the Service. We may ask for proof of age or identity at any time.

3. Your account

• You are responsible for the confidentiality of your login credentials.
• You are responsible for everything that happens under your account.
• You must give us accurate, current information when creating an account or making a booking — the name on a hotel or tour booking must be the person who will check in or join the tour.
• We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms, are used for fraud, or are flagged as compromised.

4. Bookings and payment

• Pay what you see. The price displayed on a hotel card is the full amount you will be charged — taxes and our service margin are included up front, and we do not add fees at hotel checkout. Mandatory charges some properties collect at check-in are disclosed beside the price and itemized before you pay (see below). Flight prices are set and charged by the third-party airline or travel agency you book with, not by us.
• Charges collected by the property. Some hotels require a mandatory charge paid directly to them at check-in — commonly a resort fee, city or tourist tax, or an environmental levy. This money goes to the property, not to us, and is not part of the amount we charge you. Where our supplier tells us such a charge applies, we show the amount on the hotel card and on the room before you book. Where the property has not disclosed one to our supplier, we cannot show it.
• Prices are live and may move between the moment you search and the moment you complete payment. For hotel bookings, drift of up to 1% between display and the moment we lock the rate is absorbed silently from our margin; anything larger is shown to you for confirmation before payment is taken. Your final price is the figure shown on the payment screen.
• Tours. The tour price is set by the guide. At checkout we add a separate service fee (currently 3%), shown as its own line before you pay. Tours are charged in US dollars; any local-currency figure we show is an estimate, and your bank sets the final exchange rate.
• For tours, you authorise us to charge your payment method for the full amount at the time of booking. Hotel payments are taken by LiteAPI.
• It is your responsibility to make sure guest details (names, contact email and phone) are accurate. A wrong email means you may not receive your confirmation, redemption code or messages from the guide.

5. Tours and activities

Tours are sold differently from everything else on this site, so this section is worth reading even if you skip the rest.

We take the payment. For tours PalapaVibez LLC is the merchant of record: your card is charged by us, our name appears on your statement, and any refund comes from us. This is not how our hotels work — those are charged by LiteAPI — and it is the reason the rest of this section exists.

The guide runs the tour. Each tour is operated by an independent local business, not by us. They set the itinerary, the meeting point, the group size and the cancellation terms, and they are responsible for running the tour safely and for holding whatever licence and liability insurance their jurisdiction requires. We check their liability insurance and business registration before a tour can be listed, and re-check them as they approach expiry, but we are not the operator and we do not supervise a tour while it is running.

The cancellation terms are the guide’s, and we honour them. Every tour shows its own cancellation policy, written by the guide, before you pay. That is the policy we apply — including partial refunds where the policy provides for one. To cancel, use Need to cancel? on your booking page or email us at [email protected] with your booking reference; we handle it rather than sending you to the guide.

No 14-day cancellation right. Tours are leisure services booked for a specific date, so the EU 14-day right of withdrawal does not apply (Consumer Rights Directive, Art. 16(l)). Your cancellation rights are the guide’s cancellation policy shown before you pay, and a full refund if the guide cancels.

A guide can call off a departure. Weather, equipment and minimum numbers are real constraints on small-boat and small-group tours. If a departure is cancelled you are told by email and refunded in full — that is not discretionary and it is not affected by the guide’s own cancellation policy, which governs cancellations by you.

Turning up. Your confirmation carries a redemption code. Bring it. If you do not appear at the meeting point at the stated time the guide may run the tour without you, and a no-show is treated under the guide’s cancellation policy like any other late cancellation.

Meet-your-guide guarantee. If your guide does not show up at the meeting point at the stated time, tell us through the chat on this site or at [email protected] with your booking reference, and we refund you in full within 2 business days of hearing from you. Your bank decides how long the refund then takes to appear on your card. It applies when your booking was not checked in by the guide. The guide is not paid for a tour they did not run.

6. Flights are booked with third parties

Because we only refer you to a flight, every flight booking is a contract between you and the airline or online travel agency you complete it with. Their fare rules, prices, payment terms, changes, cancellations, refunds, baggage charges, and customer support all govern your trip — read them before you pay. PalapaVibez does not set flight prices, take flight payment, or have authority to make changes or issue refunds on a booking you made on another company’s site.

7. We are not a travel-insurance broker

PalapaVibez is not a licensed travel-insurance broker, agent, or underwriter. We do not sell, advise on, administer, or adjudicate claims under any travel-insurance policy. If you carry travel insurance, your policy is a contract between you and the issuing carrier — direct all questions, claim filings, and emergency assistance requests to that carrier. We strongly recommend that you obtain independent travel insurance before international travel.

Affiliate referrals. We may surface optional links to third-party travel-insurance providers (e.g., SafetyWing Nomad Insurance) on our confirmation pages. Where we do, we may earn an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. We do not underwrite or process those policies — the issuing insurer is solely responsible for coverage, claims, and customer support. Affiliate links carry the standard rel=“sponsored” attribute and are labelled in the page copy.

8. Cancellations and refunds

See our full Cancellation Policy for flight and hotel cancellations. For your rights when an airline cancels or significantly changes a flight, see the Flight Passenger Rights page.

For tours, refunds are issued by us, following the guide’s cancellation policy shown before you paid; a refund for part of the price keeps your booking valid. If the guide cancels a departure, you are refunded in full — everything not already refunded to you. If you are charged for a booking we had already cancelled, we refund it automatically. The Cancellation Policy has the details.

9. Rewards program

The PalapaVibez Rewards program is governed by separate Rewards Program Terms. Points have no cash value, are not transferable, are earned on hotel stays only, and may be modified or revoked at our discretion. See the dedicated page for full details.

10. Prohibited conduct and termination

You agree not to:

• Use the Service for any unlawful purpose or in violation of applicable laws.
• Provide false or misleading information when making a booking.
• Attempt to circumvent our pricing, payment system, or security measures.
• Use automated tools to scrape, crawl, or systematically access the platform without our written permission.
• Resell or transfer a tour booking or hotel reservation for profit.
• Use the booking message thread for anything other than your booking. Do not try to move payment off the platform; contact details are hidden automatically. Harassment, discrimination or threats will get the thread reported and your account suspended.

Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close your account, or refuse a booking, if we reasonably believe you have broken these Terms, used the Service fraudulently, or put a guide or another traveller at risk. If we cancel a tour booking you have paid for, for any reason other than your breach, we refund it in full.

11. Intellectual property

All content on the Service — text, graphics, logos, code, photography, designs — is the property of PalapaVibez or its licensors and is protected by copyright, trade-mark, and other intellectual-property laws. You may not reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works without our written permission. If you believe content on the Service infringes your rights, see our DMCA / IP policy.

We give you a limited, personal, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Service to plan and book travel for yourself and the people travelling with you. You may not copy, resell or commercially exploit the Service or its content, or use it to build a competing product.

12. User content & indemnification

If you submit content to the Service (feedback, reviews, support messages, photos, or anything you upload), you grant PalapaVibez a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use, store, reproduce, and display that content to operate and improve the Service. You are responsible for the content you submit and you represent that you own it or have permission to share it.

Tour reviews. Only travellers who were checked in on a tour, on a booking not fully refunded, can review it. Reviews show your first name and last initial. We do not edit reviews; we may hide one that breaks these Terms, and the guide may post one public reply. We do not pay for or sell reviews.

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless PalapaVibez, its officers, employees, and agents from any claim, loss, liability, damage, or expense (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of (a) content you submit, (b) your violation of these Terms, (c) your violation of any third-party right, including any intellectual-property right or privacy right, or (d) your violation of any applicable law in connection with your use of the Service.

13. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service and everything on it are provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, PalapaVibez is not liable for:

• Flight cancellations, delays, or schedule changes made by airlines.
• Missed connections resulting from airline delays.
• Loss or damage to baggage handled by airlines.
• Hotel availability, condition, service, or refund decisions made by the property.
• The acts, omissions, safety or conduct of independent tour operators (guides), their crew, vessels and equipment, and any injury, illness, loss or damage arising during a tour — the operator, not PalapaVibez, runs the tour and carries the insurance for it.
• Acts or omissions of any third-party provider (Travelpayouts, the airlines and travel agencies you book flights with, LiteAPI, Resend, Cloudflare, Google, and others listed below).
• Any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages — or damages for lost profits, lost data, lost goodwill, or interruption of service — arising from use of the Service, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Our total cumulative liability to you for any and all claims arising out of or relating to these Terms or your use of the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you paid us in the twelve (12) months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) US $100. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages — in those jurisdictions, our liability is limited to the smallest amount permitted by law. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by our own negligence, for fraud, or any liability that cannot be excluded by law.

14. Force majeure

PalapaVibez is not liable for any failure or delay in performance caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including but not limited to: acts of God; natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, volcanic activity); sea state, weather, and marine or port authority closures; pandemics, epidemics, or government-declared public-health emergencies; war, civil unrest, terrorism, or government action (including travel restrictions, sanctions, and border closures); labour strikes or industrial action by airlines, airports, or hotel staff; failures of payment processors, telecommunications providers, or cloud-infrastructure providers; and any carrier-imposed schedule change, cancellation, or service interruption. Where such an event prevents a booking from proceeding as planned, refunds and rebookings follow the operating carrier’s or property’s own rules; for tours, a departure the guide cancels for any reason, including weather, is refunded in full.

15. Third-party services

Our Service relies on the following providers:

• Travelpayouts / Aviasales — flight metasearch and affiliate network that powers our flight results and referral links.
• LiteAPI — hotel content, booking, hotel payments (merchant of record for hotels) and the AI hotel assistant chat.
• Stripe — card payments for tours (we are merchant of record) and payouts to guides.
• Resend — transactional email delivery.
• Google (OAuth via NextAuth, Google Analytics 4) — sign-in and aggregate cross-domain analytics (analytics only with your consent).
• exchangerate-api — server-side currency-conversion rates.
• Travel Buddy API — visa-requirement guidance shown on flight results (optional, no personal identifiers transmitted).
• Self-hosted services on our own infrastructure — Umami (analytics), BugSink (error tracking), Uptime Kuma (uptime).
• Cloudflare — DNS, WAF, and edge routing for our domains.

See our Privacy Policy for what each provider receives. We are not responsible for the availability, accuracy, or conduct of these third-party services.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. Material changes are tracked in the policy changelog; the next time you sign in after a material change you’ll be asked to re-accept. Continued use of the Service after changes constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

17. Arbitration & class-action waiver

Please read this section carefully. It affects your legal rights.

17.1 Informal dispute resolution first. Before initiating arbitration, you and PalapaVibez agree to attempt to resolve any dispute informally. Send a written notice describing the dispute and the relief you seek to [email protected]. We’ll do the same to the email address on your account. If we cannot resolve the dispute within 60 days of the notice, either party may proceed to arbitration.

17.2 Binding individual arbitration. Except for disputes excluded below, you and PalapaVibez agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or your use of the Service will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, available at adr.org. The arbitration will be held in Multnomah County, Oregon, or — at your election if you are a U.S. consumer — in the U.S. county where you reside, or by telephone/video conference. The arbitrator’s decision is final and may be entered as a judgment in any court of competent jurisdiction.

17.3 Class-action waiver. You and PalapaVibez agree that each may bring claims against the other only in your or its individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated, or representative action. The arbitrator may not consolidate claims of more than one person or preside over any form of representative or class proceeding. If this class-action waiver is found unenforceable, the entirety of this Section 17 will be null and void, and the dispute will proceed in court under Section 18.

17.4 30-day opt-out. You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by sending a written opt-out notice to [email protected] within 30 days of first accepting these Terms (or, for existing users, within 30 days of the effective date of this Section 17). The notice must include your name, the email address on your account, and a clear statement that you wish to opt out of arbitration. Opting out has no effect on any other provision of these Terms and will not adversely affect your relationship with PalapaVibez. If you opt out, disputes proceed in court per Section 18.

17.5 Exclusions. The following are excluded from arbitration: (a) small- claims-court actions if the claim qualifies and is brought in your home jurisdiction; (b) claims for injunctive or other equitable relief to prevent infringement or misuse of intellectual property; and (c) any other claim that applicable law does not permit to be arbitrated.

17.6 Fees. AAA filing fees are paid as set out in the AAA Consumer Arbitration Rules. For consumer claims of $10,000 or less, PalapaVibez will pay all AAA administrative fees and arbitrator compensation unless the arbitrator finds your claim to be frivolous.

18. Governing law and venue

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Oregon, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply. Subject to the arbitration provisions in Section 17, any dispute that proceeds in court will be resolved exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Multnomah County, Oregon, and you consent to personal jurisdiction and venue there.

EU / EEA residents. If you are a consumer resident in the European Union or European Economic Area, the mandatory consumer-protection laws of your country of residence apply and you retain all rights granted by those laws. Nothing in these Terms limits your statutory rights as an EU consumer.

Complaints. Write to [email protected] first; we answer every complaint. EU consumers may also contact the consumer authority or an out-of-court dispute body in their country of residence.

19. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Reach us at [email protected] or via our contact form.