Travelers cannot cancel a booking themselves. From their portal they send a cancellation request with a reason, and you decide the refund. Until you answer, the booking stays Confirmed and keeps its seats.
Before you start
Team members subscribed to cancellation-request alerts are emailed when a request arrives.
A traveler can send one request per booking.
You cannot edit the booking while a request is pending.
Respond to the request
Go to Cancellation Requests. The Pending tab lists the requests waiting for you.
Open the request. You see the traveler's reason, the booking, the amount collected so far, and what your cancellation policy would refund today.
Select Respond, then choose how to resolve it:
Apply cancellation policy — Your policy's percentage for today's number of days before departure, applied to the amount collected
Refund a different amount — The amount you enter in the booking's currency, for example
50.00Full refund — Everything paid by card and not yet refunded
Deny refund — Nothing
Choose a Reason, and write a Message to traveler if you want to explain your decision.
Select Submit.
Every refund goes back to the card payments made through Samba, so no option can refund more than the card can take back. Money you recorded as paid offline (cash, bank transfer, check) is never refunded here — return it to the traveler yourself.
Every option cancels the booking, including Deny refund. A cancellation request cannot be refused: you decide the refund, not whether the booking is canceled.
What happens next
The booking is canceled, its seats are released, and any scheduled installments are canceled.
The refund, if any, goes back to the traveler's card through Stripe.
The traveler receives an email with the outcome and your message.
The request moves to the Archived tab as Approved.
If Stripe cannot process the refund, nothing changes. The request stays pending so you can try again.
If Stripe refuses part-way through, the money that did go back is recorded, the booking stays Confirmed, and the request stays pending with your choice locked in. Select Respond again: the dialog shows what is left, and Submit refunds only that remainder and cancels the booking.
The policy amount is lower than what the traveler saw
The policy amount is lower than what the traveler saw
The policy amount is recalculated for the day you respond. If a stricter tier started since the traveler sent the request, the amount went down. You can still choose Refund a different amount.
Which cancellation policy is used?
Which cancellation policy is used?
The one that applied when the booking was made, even if you have changed or archived it since. A non-refundable booking has no policy, so its policy amount is zero.