changing, moving and cancelling a booking, and who decides

Reserve a stay and know how to get out of it before you agree to anything

Thirteen places, each offered at three lengths, run from $2,065 to $12,421 for the whole stay, and the terms for changing or dropping one are on the table before you agree to it. The company that operates the stay writes those terms, and this office repeats them in plain words alongside the quote. Requests are answered within one business day.

Reserve your weeksA reply is written within one business day, by a person.

You reserve a stay and know how to get out of it in the same breath, because the exit terms arrive with the quote. Before a single night is held in your name, you have the operating company's own conditions for moving dates, changing the party, cutting the stay short and calling the whole thing off, and the consequence of each is written as a figure or a percentage rather than as a phrase.

Those conditions belong to the company that runs the place you are going: the owner of a house, the family with four guest rooms, the farm with two cottages at the end of a lane. Slow Latitudes is the agency that carries your request to them, puts your name against the dates and keeps the paperwork straight. Slow Latitudes Bookings LLC takes no money from you at any stage and holds no card details, so there is no cancellation fee on this side to argue about. Its commission is paid by the operating company after you come home, on stays that actually happened, and that is worth holding in mind while you read the rest of this.

Seven nights and eight weeks are two different contracts

The catalogue is thirteen places, each offered at one week, three weeks and a season of 56 nights. The three lengths sit side by side at the three lengths set out side by side and all thirty nine prices sit together in all thirteen places at all three lengths. What is easy to miss is that the length changes the shape of a cancellation and not only its size.

A week in a town with forty places to let is an evening's work for an owner to fill again, and short lets are written that way: a notice window, a percentage once it closes, and an assumption that the calendar recovers. A season in a village with four houses to let is that owner's year. Somebody who held August for you turned other people away in March, and when you step back in July there is nothing left of the summer to sell to anyone else. The terms for 56 nights say this out loud, with longer notice and firmer stages, and they say it before you agree rather than afterwards.

So read the terms for the length you are actually taking. A traveller who has booked weeks through this office three times and then takes a season is reading a document with different numbers in it, and the difference is not carelessness on anybody's part. It is a measure of what the owner is putting at risk.

Who decides what, situation by situation

Seven of these come up often enough to be worth setting down plainly. In every one, the operating company's written terms are the terms that bind, and this office is the party that asks the question and brings the answer back to you.

Before the reservation exists: You decide, and it costs nothing. A request that has not yet been placed can be withdrawn in one line of mail, and no money has moved in either direction.
A week, cancelled well ahead: The operating company decides, under the notice window in your written terms. At that distance a short let can usually be filled again, and most terms are drafted with that in mind.
A season, cancelled well ahead: The operating company decides, and expect a firmer answer. Fifty six nights in a place with four houses to let is a large part of that owner's year, and the notice stages are longer for exactly that reason.
Moving the dates rather than dropping them: The operating company decides. Ask about this first, because a move is a smaller thing for an owner to grant than an empty calendar, and this office will put the question to them without waiting.
Shortening the stay after you arrive: The owner or the manager on site decides, and under most written terms the nights you booked stand whether you sleep in them or not. Tell this office as well, so the record matches what happened.
The operating company cancels on you: The operating company owes you what its own terms say it owes, and this office will ask for it in writing. If you still want to go, the same dates can be put to another place on the matrix.
Your own travel falls through: The stay is unaffected and stands on its own terms. Getting there is your arrangement and sits outside the reservation this office placed, though telling this office early gives it something to ask the operator for.

The crest of a dune ridge against a bright empty sky

Money that has already left your account

Payments go straight to the operating company under whatever arrangement that company uses, and refunds come back along the same route, on its timetable rather than this office's. Nothing passes through here in either direction, at any point, in any amount. That is the reason this page can be blunt about the terms instead of defensive about them: there is nothing on this side of the arrangement to protect.

It also means this office cannot promise you a refund, only pursue one. When the terms give you a sum, this office will chase it and keep chasing it. When the terms give you nothing, you will be told that in the same flat way, on the day the operator says it, rather than a week later in softer words.

How to tell this office, and when the clock starts

Send the change or the cancellation to bookings@slowlatitudes.com with the place, the dates and the length you booked. Talking it through on +1 (225) 766-2418 first is fine and often faster, but the message that starts the clock is the written one, because the operating company will want the date and the hour it was sent. Requests are answered within one business day, including the answers nobody enjoys receiving. This office makes no outgoing calls and sends no text messages, so the reply comes back the way you sent it.

Entry rules are a matter between the traveller and the authority that issues the document, and this office does not advise on them.

If anything on this page reads differently from the terms you were sent, the terms you were sent are the ones that count; write to corrections@slowlatitudes.com and this page will be corrected. The sequence from first request to placed booking is set out at how a request becomes a held let, and what people write in about is collected at what people write in to ask, and a request for one place at one length starts at request a stay quote 24/7.

Ask this office to reserve your weeks

The form below is open every hour of every day, and what it collects is read by a person, who replies within one business day. Nobody is committed by sending it, nothing is charged for it, and no call or message goes out from here unless you ask for one.