Terms of Business

This website is provided by Fair Voyage AG (hereafter referred to as “Fair Voyage”,”us”, “we”, “our” or “ours”). Any references on this site and in correspondence to Fair Voyage and FairVoyage.com refer to Fair Voyage AG, a company registered in Switzerland at c/o Impact Hub Zürich Association, Sihlquai 131, 8005 Zurich.

Fair Voyage provides tour operators, activity organizers and other touristic service providers (Operators, each an Operator) this platform to promote and facilitate the sale of their tours, activities or services (Tours, each a Tour) to visitors of this website or other Fair Voyage-affiliated marketing channels (including affiliated website and social media channels) (such visitors herein referred to as Clients, each a Client). Any contracts for Tours are to be made directly between you and the Client(s). Fair Voyage does not act as insurer or contracting agent for any Operator.

We carefully select Operators who we allow to promote Tours on FairVoyage.com and only accept Operators who comply with our sourcing criteria for responsible and sustainable tourism. There is no registration fee, and, once accepted, there is no charge for Operators to promote their Tours on FairVoyage.com, or for our promotion of their Tours in our other marketing channels.

By using FairVoyage.com or any Fair Voyage-affiliated websites, all users (including Clients and Operators) agree to our general Terms and Conditions. By creating an Operator profile or submitting a Tour, you further agree to the following business terms and conditions (Terms of Business):

• We strictly only promote Operators with a proven commitment to responsible and sustainable tourism practices. By using our platform, you warrant that you meet our minimum criteria as defined in our Responsible Travel Policy. This means that you must hold a valid certification by a Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) accredited certification body (“Certified”), or commit to follow our process to become Certified within a defined timeline (“Sustainability Verification Process“). To help us verify and improve sustainability, you agree that we may share your information known to us through our partnership with our preferred sustainability certification partner Travelife.
• Should your status change to no longer meet our Responsible Travel Policy, you will notify us immediately, no later than 5 business days after you have become aware of such upcoming or recently enacted change.
• We follow a best price policy. This means that the Tour prices submitted by you for promotion on FairVoyage.com (including our Commission) must be at least as low as you (or any other channel used by you) would charge clients booking directly with you (or such channel) for the same Tour (including transaction costs). If we find your Tour offered at a lower price elsewhere, you grant us the right to promote your Tour at that same lower price (including our Commission).
• You agree to follow the Fair Voyage booking, invoicing and other processes, all of which may change from time to time such as is expected with the continued development of our platform and technology.
• All information you upload to FairVoyage.com or otherwise submit to us must be accurate and kept up-to-date, following the below Tour overview and pricing information guidelines. None of your information will contain any misleading content or denounce other Operators, and you will refrain from making any such statements in your Client communications.
• You warrant that you are duly licensed or registered to operate your Tours according to the laws and regulations of your country, region or tourism authority. You must provide proof of licensing or registration.
• You must be available by phone and email, and normally respond to voice messages or emails from Fair Voyage or our Clients within two working days, or immediately in case of emergencies. An English-speaking representative must be available for such communications at all times.
• We withhold the right to not publish, cease to publish or irrevocably delete your Tours or Operator information at any point in time. For example, we may do so if we deem your information to be incomplete, misleading or inappropriate. Normally, however, we strive to publish all your Tour information.
• As we cannot guarantee continuous or uninterrupted access to the Fair Voyage website and services, we assume no responsibility associated with any outages, delays, interruptions or unavailability.
• These Terms of Business may be updated from time to time, in which case we will inform you by email. The latest Terms of Business will always be published here and shall take effect within one calendar week of publication.

Our reputation as a trustworthy company and platform committed to responsible tourism is crucial for our continued business development in line with our mission, to continue to provide and upgrade our platform to connect responsible Operators with Clients, and to promote responsible tourism overall. Therefore, we take Operator compliance with our Terms of Business seriously. In case of non-compliance, especially if deemed to be harmful or potentially harmful to our reputation, we may block your access to our website or certain areas thereof, including information provided by you, and terminate our agreement with you with immediate effect.

If you have questions in regards to our Terms of Business, please contact Fair Voyage at partner@fairvoyage.com.

Our booking process

Our goal is to make the booking process as smooth and efficient as possible for all parties involved. Therefore, this process is expected to change from time to time as we continue to upgrade our technology and services. We will update you accordingly before major changes take effect. Our current booking process generally is as follows:

Tour display

We are building an innovative and user-friendly platform that makes it easy for Clients to compare and customize Tours. To do so, we are planning to make available to Operators the tools to manage your Tour information directly on our website. While we continue to build our platform, we may initially organize, structure and upload to our website your Tour information for you, based on information submitted by you to us.

Based on the information submitted to us by you as Operator, we may display to Clients information about your Tour on our website in a separate page or designated section for your Tour, or in our other marketing channels.

Your public Tour display will normally not include your company name, and you must not include any reference in your Tour information (such as your itinerary description or frequently asked questions) that enables Clients to contact you directly. However, we will disclose your Operator company name and contact details upon Client request and always to Interested Clients.

Client inquiries

We strive to make it easy for Clients to find directly online all information they need to customize, book and prepare for Tours.

When a Client is interested in your Tour, they may send a query, reservation or booking request to us or directly to you, using our online messaging system. You will normally respond to any Client inquiries or messages within two business days.

To reduce your time spent answering Client queries, we encourage you to submit complete Tour and Tour pricing information, and to update your information when you receive new questions that may also be relevant to other Clients.

Bookings

When a Client submits an inquiry, reservation or booking request, you will be notified by email (New Inquiry Email). You will then normally respond within 48 hours, using our online messaging system. Depending on the Client’s requirements, you may simply confirm your Tour to be available, or create a new custom Tour for the Client. When you confirm a Tour to be available, or send the Client a new custom Tour, the Client will receive a confirmation email. If the Client wants to proceed with the booking, Client will be asked to proceed with the payment. You must not make any changes to the confirmed Tour thereafter, unless agreed by the Client.

Non-circumvention

In the New Inquiry Email, we will also log the name(s) of the interested Client(s) with you (Interested Client(s)), and you will also be able to see the names associated with your inquiries in your dashboard. At the same time, the Client will be informed about your full name and contact details as Operator of their Tour. Should Client(s) then also inquire with you directly, you will always ask Interested Client(s) (including their entire party if the Client is also requesting to book on behalf of other individuals) or other individual(s) referred to you by Client(s) (Client Referrals) to submit their complete booking request via Fair Voyage, even if the Interested Client(s) or Client Referrals request to book with you directly. You will in no circumstance ask them to book with you directly or via another channel in a way that circumvents the Fair Voyage booking process or our ability to obtain a Commission.

Payments

When you confirm a reservation or booking, we will invoice or charge the Client in accordance with the Payment Schedule set out in the Terms and Conditions in order to confirm the booking. We will notify you by email (Payment Notification) when we have received a payment on your behalf. You agree to reserve the booking for 72 hours from the time of your confirmation.

Deposit
Unless otherwise agreed, we usually charge the Client a minimum Deposit of 30% of the total Tour price in order to confirm a booking.

Appointment of Fair Voyage as limited payment agent
You hereby appoint us as your limited agent solely for the purpose of collecting on your behalf payments made by Clients. Payments made by a Client to Fair Voyage shall be considered the same as payments made directly to you, and you agree to make your Tour available to the Client as agreed, as if you have received the payment. In accepting appointment as your limited authorized payment agent, we assume no liability for any acts or omissions of you.

Invoicing
After we send you a Payment Notification, you must invoice us for the amounts that we have received on your behalf in accordance with the Payment Schedule. To assist you with your administration, we may provide you with an invoice template for each required invoice. We assume no liability for the correctness of any invoice template. Invoices must be emailed to finance@fairvoyage.com. Your email may be in reply to our email containing the invoice template which, if returned to us, shall be deemed as your invoice delivered to us.

Invoices must be emailed to us latest within (5) business days of the Tour start date, with a payment due date not sooner than (10) business days from the date of the invoice. For any remaining or total Tour price amounts other than the non-refundable Deposit, the invoice shall be sent to us after 31 days before the Tour start date, i.e. when the full Tour price becomes non-refundable to the Client, based on the final non-refundable amount.

Amounts for Deposits shall only be payable upon invoicing by Fair Voyage within the timelines stated above if amounts are required by you to deposit to third parties for local Tour reservations and bookings (such as accommodations or permits), and if the amounts are accrued within more than 60 days of Departure or if the total accrued payments due to you by Fair Voyage exceed US dollar 5,000. Otherwise, the Deposit shall be payable together with the non-refundable Tour price amounts to avoid unnecessary bank charges and increases in the traveler deposit insurance premium, with the objective to ensure efficient operations and thereby enable best prices, for the benefit of all parties—you, us and Travelers.

Your invoice must contain your complete company name, registered company address and registration number.

Payouts
If the Client makes a payment to us using Direct Pay Online and you hold a Direct Pay Online account, we will make the payout via allocation to your Direct Pay Online account. In all other cases, we will make payouts to your nominated bank account.

Client communications

We are responsible for emailing to the Client a confirmation for their inquiries, bookings and payments. When we send you the first New Inquiry or Payment Notification, we will also share with you the details how to communicate with the Client directly, by email or via our direct online messaging system. Should your Tour require further documentation, you are then responsible for sending such documentation to the Client.

Our commission

We do not charge you for promoting your Tours. Only when you confirm a booking, we charge an agreed commission as a percentage of the total package Tour price (inclusive of VAT, additional services and surcharges) (Commission); except for additional services and upgrade options (Upgrades) that you price separately for Clients at cost.

The Commission percentage varies depending on applicable market practices for your destination, with the intent to enable both parties to earn a fair revenue while ensuring best prices for Clients. The Commission is inclusive of transaction costs related to online card payments by Clients, and we will pay our bank’s costs. You will pay your bank’s costs.

The Commission percentage is usually agreed at the outset when we start our partnership, and may be adjusted later on for all or specific Tours, subject to prior mutual agreement. We reserve the right to discontinue promotion of your published Tours if either party needs to adjust the Commission in future and we cannot reach agreement on the Commission percentage.

Changes to bookings

Ratings and review process

Fair Voyage strives to develop a custom-made rating and review mechanism specifically for the Tours promoted on Fair Voyage. We encourage Clients to rate and review Operators, Guides, and Tours; and encourage Operators to invite their Clients to do so, after they have completed the Tour, at each Client’s own time and convenience.

Prohibited activities

Under no circumstance shall you as Operator try to manipulate ratings or reviews in any way (other than indirectly through their actual performance and service delivery), including, but not limited to, the following manipulative activities, which are strictly prohibited:

1. Fake an identity to submit a rating or review;
2. Submit, or encourage someone else to submit, a review by someone who has not been a client of the reviewed Operator or for the reviewed Tour;
3. Exert pressure on a Client to submit a positive rating or review, such as by being present when the Client submits the rating or review, or by asking the Client to submit the rating or review while a Tour with the Client is still ongoing;
4. Provide incentives to Clients who submit a positive rating or review.

Getting started

Operators who have not yet been able to collect ratings and reviews from Clients who have booked via Fair Voyage may be invited to solicit such ratings and reviews from prior actual clients. In such case, Fair Voyage will verify the client identity and request proof of the client relationship. Further details will be updated here or communicated directly to you.

Your Tour and pricing information

Fair Voyage may provide you the features to upload, edit and update your Tours directly on our website. For each of your Tours, based on the information submitted by you, Fair Voyage will display to Clients information about your Tour in a separate page or designated section for your Tour (Tour Display), which you can normally preview via your dashboard. The content and layout of the Tour Display may change from time to time as we strive to continuously improve the customer experience, but will always be based on information provided by you.

Tour itineraries

To facilitate the promotion of your Tours and ensure consistency of information for common itineraries, we may provide you with itinerary description templates, including text and images, for your use only on our website in your Tour Display. When using our templates, it remains your responsibility to verify any content provided by us as may or may not be applicable to your Tour. We continue to hold all rights related to any content provided by us, which you must not use in any way other than for the promotion of your Tours via Fair Voyage.

Tour pricing

When you provide your Tour prices, you have the option to enter prices net of our Commission (Net Prices) or including our Commission (Rack Prices). If you provide Net prices, we will calculate the end prices for Clients by adding our Commission and you invoice us your Net prices. When you provide Rack prices, we invoice Clients your Rack prices and you invoice us your Rack prices net of our Commission. All prices are understood to be inclusive of VAT.

No matter whether you provide Net Prices or Rack Prices, all Tour prices submitted by you for promotion on FairVoyage.com (including our Commission) must be at least as low as you (or any other channel used by you) would charge clients booking directly with you (or such channel) for the same Tour (including transaction costs) (Best Prices). If we find your Tour offered at a lower price elsewhere, you grant us the right to promote your Tour at that same lower price (including our Commission).

Furthermore, all prices on Fair Voyage shall be quoted per person, on the basis of two Clients sharing a Tour and accommodation, unless specified otherwise. Any costs for additional services (e.g. equipment rental, transfers, additional hotel nights, etc.) or surcharges for single (one person per room) or solo (traveling alone and not joining a group tour) travelers shall be included in the pricing to the extent possible via the pricing features provided by us, so that the full Tour price including all additional services and surcharges can be calculated automatically for the Client at the time of their booking request.

Anything that is not included in your Tour price but might be commonly expected shall be clearly stated. If a Client is expected to share any part of your Tour with other clients or travellers, this must be clearly stated. You should also make clear the limits as to size, weight, type and number of items of baggage.

Tour requirements

Before Clients make a booking, they must be fully informed about all applicable terms and conditions. Therefore, if you have any additional requirements or applicable terms and conditions for a Client to book or participate in your Tour, such requirements must be clearly stated in your Tour information displayed to Client(s).

Photos and videos

We encourage you to provide high-quality photos and videos, which can be extremely helpful to promote your Tours. You must own the rights to all photos and videos that you upload or otherwise provide to us. By uploading photos or videos, you give us permission to use your photos and videos at our discretion for marketing and promotion, unless otherwise stated. You are responsible for any fines or penalties arising to us as a result of your non-compliance with any applicable copyrights.

Use of language

We reserve the right to revise your texts, if needed, to correct or improve spelling, grammar, or overall language. Poor use of language may result in rejection or low ranking of your Tour listing.

Times and time zones

Unless stated otherwise, times stated in reference to Tours and trips are (to be) stated in the local time zones at the place of the specific Tour activity. Times outside of the context of specific Tour activities are stated as times in Central European Time Zone (CET).

Last updated: 27 January 2020