Terms & Conditions

VIRAM Advisors acts as your agent. We arrange premium-cabin flights and hotels with airlines, hotels, and other suppliers on your instruction, and the contract for each of those services is between you and the supplier concerned, not with us. We are not the airline, the hotel, or the operator. We do not own the aircraft, the rooms, or the space we secure; we obtain access to it for you.

Our obligation is to exercise reasonable skill and care in arranging what you ask us to arrange. Where a supplier issues its own booking or ticket in your name, that document, and the supplier's own conditions, govern the service you receive.

We are paid by you, and by no one else. We take no commission, override, or inducement from any hotel or airline in return for directing your travel.

A quotation is an indication, not a held price. Fares, award availability, room rates, taxes, and surcharges are set by suppliers and by the exchange rates and inventory in force at the moment of ticketing or confirmation. They can move, sometimes within minutes, until then. Premium-cabin award space in particular is finite and can be withdrawn by an airline without notice.

A price becomes fixed only when the supplier has issued the ticket or confirmed the reservation and payment has been taken. Until that point we cannot guarantee any figure we quote, and a figure that was available when we spoke may not be available when you instruct us to proceed. We tell you the price before we ticket, and we do not ticket without your instruction.

Some arrangements require a deposit to hold. Many premium fares require payment in full at the moment of ticketing. We tell you which applies before you commit.

Payment is due when we say it is due, and a missed deadline can cost you the fare or the space, because the supplier, not we, controls the hold. Where a supplier takes payment directly from you, by card and in its own name, that transaction sits between you and the supplier. Where we collect payment to pass to a supplier, we do so as your agent.

Every flight, room, and service is subject to the conditions of the supplier providing it. Those include its fare rules, its cancellation and change penalties, its conditions of carriage, its check-in and boarding requirements, and any conditions imposed by an airline alliance or hotel group.

Those conditions can be strict. Many premium fares and reduced award tickets are non-refundable, carry change fees, or cannot be altered at all. We draw the material conditions to your attention and can obtain the full text on request. By instructing us to proceed you accept the supplier's conditions for that arrangement.

Ask us to change or cancel and we will act promptly, but what is possible, and at what cost, is determined by the supplier's rules for the ticket or reservation you hold. Some changes carry a fee. Some fares cannot be changed. Some cancellations return nothing.

Refunds, where a supplier allows them, are paid on the supplier's timetable, not ours, and can take weeks or months to reach you. Our own service fee is separate from, and additional to, any supplier penalty, and is addressed below.

We charge you a service fee for our work. The fee is agreed with you before we begin and is payable for the advice, the arranging, and the attention we give, whether or not you ultimately travel. It is earned when the work is done.

Because we take nothing from any supplier, the fee is the whole of what we are paid, and it is what keeps our counsel yours alone. The fee is separate from the sums you pay suppliers and from any supplier change or cancellation charge.

Our responsibility is limited to arranging your travel with reasonable skill and care. Suppliers are responsible for the services they provide. We are not liable for the acts, omissions, delays, cancellations, overbooking, schedule changes, downgrades, insolvency, or default of any airline, hotel, or other supplier, nor for injury, loss, or damage arising in the course of a service a supplier provides.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded. Subject to that, our total liability to you in connection with any arrangement does not exceed the service fee you paid us for it.

We are not liable for any failure or delay in performing our obligations caused by events beyond our reasonable control. Those include war, civil unrest, terrorism, and the threat of any of them; government action, border closures, and travel restrictions; strikes and industrial action; epidemic and disease; fire, flood, storm, and other severe weather; natural disaster; the closure or congestion of airspace, airports, or ports; and the failure or withdrawal of a supplier's own services for such reasons.

Where such an event affects your arrangements, the supplier's conditions govern what refund or alternative, if any, is available to you.

You are responsible for holding a valid passport, the correct visas and transit permits, and any health documentation required for every country you enter or pass through. Requirements differ by nationality, by route, and by the length and timing of travel, and they change. We can tell you what we understand to be required, but the obligation to meet the requirements, and the consequences of a passport, visa, or entry refusal, rest with you.

We strongly recommend that you hold travel insurance appropriate to the value and nature of your arrangements, taken out when you first commit, and covering cancellation, medical care, and repatriation. The choice to travel without adequate insurance is yours, and its consequences are yours.

These terms, and any matter arising from your engagement of us, are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If any provision is found unenforceable, the remainder stands.

These terms are the whole of the agreement between us on the matters they cover. We may revise them, and the version in force when you instruct us on a given arrangement applies to it. Enquire and we will explain any part of this before you engage us.