How to Handle Bad Weather Cancellations on Tours

01Why weather is a cancellation you can plan for

Start with what the evidence does and does not say.

What we found. Alyssa Ravasio, founder and CEO of Hipcamp, said in a June 2024 press release that “the most common by far is bad weather” among reasons campers cancel, and that “about a third of all cancellations are weather related”. That is a company speaking about its own platform (outdoor stays in the US) in a release launching a weather guarantee, so it is a commercially motivated number with no stated sample or period.

In January 2026 Redpoint Travel Protection, a travel insurer, published a survey of 1,500 “highly active U.S. leisure travelers”: over half had already altered plans because of extreme weather and nearly 70% expect to do so routinely. Its post adds that, of its frequent travellers (it says 46% of the sample travel more than twice a year; the post does not define “frequent travelers”, so we read it as that 46%), 54% had had a vacation delayed and 37% had had to cancel one because of weather.

It was reported by trade press, but the insurer ran it, gives no fieldwork dates and no outside pollster, and “altered plans” is not defined. Frommer’s reported the “over half” figure as trips “delayed” by weather, so do not read it as “more than half cancelled”.

The Welsh Government’s Tourism Business Barometer for summer 2023 (902 interviews) found that 62% of activity providers reported fewer visitors than the previous summer (the report gives no sector base; it interviewed 45 activity operators), and that across all sectors, among the 343 businesses with fewer customers, 46% cited the weather. That measures customer numbers against the year before, not cancellations. And one tours-and-activities trade analysis of 200,000 bookings in 2025 put the cancellation rate at 6% overall and 11.5% once city passes and non-cancellable attraction tickets were removed. The data came from a booking-data provider, and it has no weather split and does not fully separate customer-called from operator-called cancellations.

What we did not find. We found no independent figure for the share of tour or activity cancellations caused by weather, and none for tour no-show rates from a trade body. The closest no-show number is from UK attractions: 15% of visitors across the market had “no-showed” in the previous six months (a BVA BDRC survey, reported in Attractions Management in 2021). That is attractions, not tours. So treat the figures above as a sign that the problem is real, and measure your own (section 11).

How often is it actually wet? It varies a great deal from place to place. Chart 1 shows the share of April to October days with at least 1 mm of rain in 1991-2020 averages from three national weather services (Met Office, KNMI and IPMA, for example Lisbon, Porto and Faro).

Three things to keep in mind when you read it.

• A rain day is not a lost day. One millimetre is a light shower. The chart tells you how often to expect weather you must make a decision about, not how often you cancel.
• The definition changes the count. The Dutch weather service’s monthly averages add up to 71.6 days of 1 mm or more from April to October at De Bilt, but 99.5 days at 0.1 mm or more. The US National Weather Service counts days of 0.01 inch (about 0.25 mm), so US counts run higher than European ones for the same climate and cannot be put on the same chart. Our four US stations (from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) 1991-2020 normals, read from the monthly-normals data service, shown for Sacramento; days of 0.01 inch or more, April to October) show 13.9 days at Sacramento, 67.3 at Portland, Oregon, 79.5 at Asheville, North Carolina and 88.8 at Burlington, Vermont.
• The dry season moves. Chart 2 shows that, of the months from April to October, October is the wettest at all four stations (each is wetter still in November to January). From June to August Lisbon has 0 to 2 rain days a month and Porto 3 to 5, while the two UK stations keep 9 to 17. In Asheville, North Carolina (not charted) the pattern is the other way round, with summer the wettest.

And rain is not the only problem. In Lisbon and Faro in summer the risk is heat. The Portuguese weather service’s averages show Lisbon with 10.7 days in August with a high of 30 C or more, and Faro with 13.1 in July (chart 3). In its State of the UK Climate 2025 report, published on 14 July 2026, the Met Office said that “the number of days of over 30°C has quadrupled in areas such as Greater London” (its key observations compare 2016-2025 with 1961-1990). The Copernicus report on the state of the European climate in 2025 found that 41% of Europe saw more days than average (against 1991-2020) with at least “strong” heat stress.

The practical point: a wet day is a day to check the forecast, not a day to cancel, and the cost of calling a day wrongly can be large. A policy exists to make those decisions fast, consistent and fair.

02Three different cancellations

“Weather cancellation” hides three different situations, and a policy that treats them as one will fail at least one of them.

A fourth cause often sits beside these: too few riders. That is a commercial decision rather than a weather one, and our guide to minimum numbers on guided tours covers it. If you can only sell a departure when it reaches its minimum, say so in your terms in the same place as the weather rule.

The three situations also behave differently in the evidence. Of the ten public policies we read (section 6), seven say what happens when the operator cancels for safety: five offer a full refund, a new date or both, one offers a new date or credit, and one gives a part refund on a multi-day course. One multi-day operator allows no weather cancellation at all. The other two, a German and a Dutch city operator, say only what they offer on a heavy-rain day or under a weather alarm. On a guest asking out over a forecast, only those two say anything specific; the rest publish standard cancellation tiers. Section 6 covers the first, section 8 the second and third.

03Triggers you can apply the same way every time

A trigger is the written answer to “when do we adapt, and when do we call it off?” It does three jobs. It lets your guide decide quickly. It makes two guides decide the same way. And it gives you something to point to when a guest says the day was fine, or that you should never have gone.

Use an official anchor plus your own limit. For most hazards, a national weather service already publishes a warning level you can adopt: that is the anchor. Then add your own limit where the warning is not specific enough, and say which limits are yours. This matters most in the UK, where the Met Office says its warnings are impact-based: they depend on “the potential impacts of the weather rather than specific weather thresholds” (from its explainer). So you cannot write “we cancel above 40 mph” and call it a Met Office number. You can write “we call off on an amber or red warning for the route area”, and add a separate limit of your own for gusts.

We found no official cycling-specific threshold for wind, heat, rain, fog, ice or air quality. British Cycling and Cycling UK publish heat advice without a cut-off. So every row below mixes official anchors with limits we suggest you set yourself. The table is our reading, not a standard. No source says that a Met Office yellow means “adapt” or an amber means “call off”.

A few notes on using it.

• Wind and heat limits are yours. Choose them for your riders and your bikes. A gust that is fine for a road group may be dangerous with children on trailer bikes or on an exposed ridge. Write the number down and say it is your limit.
• Borrowed benchmarks are not local law. The US wind and heat numbers are useful anchors where your country has none, but say where they come from.
• Lightning is the clearest official guidance we found, and it is US guidance. Thunder is audible about 10 miles from a strike, the National Weather Service says, and lightning can strike outward about 10 miles from a storm, so hearing thunder means you are within range.
• Heat is a risk-assessment issue, not a number you can look up. The Health and Safety Executive (Great Britain) says there is no maximum workplace temperature and that temperature is a risk you should assess whether work is indoors or outdoors, and it lists controls such as moving work to cooler times and adding rest breaks. The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration publishes recommendations for work in hot conditions (an action limit of 25 C wet-bulb globe temperature for unacclimatised workers doing moderate work), but those are occupational benchmarks, not cycling rules.
• We found no official sentence that says an operator “must stop” at a stated level. The employer duties we found are written for staff. How far they reach paying guests is a question for your lawyer and insurer.

Who decides. Name the person with authority on the day, usually the lead guide, and write that they can override the table in either direction for safety. Then keep a one-line record of every call: the time, the source you used (for example the warning for your area), what you decided and what you offered. That log protects you in a dispute, and after a season it is the benchmark we could not find.

04How to read a forecast

Most forecasts you will use give a percentage chance of rain. It is easy to misread.

• What it means. The Met Office describes the percentage as “the percentage chance of rain falling in a particular hour or day, informed by model runs” (Met Office, February 2026). The US National Weather Service defines its probability of precipitation as the chance of measurable precipitation, 0.01 inch or more, at a point in a period. Local offices word the “point” differently, and the Albany office’s fact sheet says it is not the share of the area covered, not the share of time it rains, and not a measure of how hard. We did not check how EU national weather services define the percentage, so read your own service’s definition.
• What it does not mean. A 60% chance does not say it will rain for 60% of your ride, or that the rain will be heavy. It says that on about six occasions in ten when 60% is forecast, it rains at the place and time in question. The Met Office puts it as “If the probability of an event is 10%, it means the event will occur on one in ten occasions”, and says probability forecasts can only be judged “by looking at large sets of forecasts” (Met Office, November 2025). So one day when 60% was forecast and it stayed dry was not a wrong forecast.
• How reliable is it? In its seasonal accuracy blogs the Met Office reports temperature and wind, not rain. 1-day maximum temperature forecasts were within 2 C 93% to 96% of the time between summer 2025 and spring 2026, falling to 73% to 87% at 5 days. We found no published rain or rain-probability accuracy by lead time from the Met Office, and no national reliability table from the National Weather Service. Do not borrow the temperature numbers for rain.

What this means for a policy, in our reading:

1. 1Use a probability for offers, not for compulsory cancellations. Offering a free move is cheap and optional, and a guest who wants to ride in the rain can say so. Calling off a tour is expensive and binding. That is the logic of the free-move offer in our rain policy guide, and why a firmer safety trigger should sit beside it.
2. 2Fix the source and the times. Choose one forecast for each route area, write down which, and check it at the same points each time. Two guides reading different apps will reach different answers.
3. 3Look at more than the percentage. Rain intensity, wind, thunder and heat usually decide safety, and the percentage says nothing about them.
4. 4Check the places that matter. A forecast for the start town may not describe a ridge, a coast road or the far end of a point-to-point route.

05The decision clock

The later you decide, the better the forecast. The earlier you decide, the less you have spent and the more choice your guests have. Chart 4 shows the trade-off in the example business used in section 6, where a departure costs £220 to run (guide, vehicle, refreshments).

Set fixed decision points and say what happens at each:

• Three days out: forecast watch. Look at the warnings for the route area. The Portuguese weather service says its warnings cover the next 72 hours (it does not say how early one is first issued). The Met Office issues warnings up to seven days ahead, so in the UK one can appear earlier than three days out. Nothing is spent. Do nothing public unless a guest asks, but tell the guide.
• The evening before: the main decision. This is our judgement, not a result of the model: only £75 is spent by then, and the forecast is better than three days out. One Scottish boat-trip company’s published terms say it “typically” decides in the evening, between 6pm and 8pm, or the morning, between 6am and 8am, and tells guests by text, phone and email.
• The morning of: the second look. Check again before you load up. Some operators set a later limit: one US bike-and-hike company says it may cancel up to an hour before the start, and a German city-tour operator asks guests who want a cost-free rain cancellation to contact it at least 90 minutes before.
• At the meeting point and on the road: the safety call. This is the guide’s decision, and the lightning rule above lives here. It costs most, so make it a safety decision, not a comfort one.

For multi-day tours, repeat the evening decision for each next day, and write down in advance which days or stages you can drop, shorten or swap. You cannot simply rebook a week. One multi-day Dutch operator we read (section 6) allows no weather cancellations at all, treats weather as a normal travel risk and points guests to their own insurance.

Substitute before you cancel. Several operators in our sample offer a swap before a cancellation: an indoor replacement, a walking tour instead of a ride, an alternative route, a local activity with bike hire refunded. That is your amber tier. It keeps the revenue and gives the guest something, but it needs a plan written in advance, with routes and a stop that is under cover.

06What to offer: refund, new date, credit or a different ride

When you call a tour off, you owe the guest something. The question is what.

The menu.

• A full refund to the original payment method. Simple and safe, and on our reading the baseline in UK law and for EU packages, with the unfair-terms lists pointing the same way for other tours (section 7); in the US we found no statute that requires it.
• A new date at the same price, with no fee. Keeps the booking and the relationship.
• A credit or voucher. Cheap for you if it is used, but see the legal and trust problems below.
• A different ride, such as an indoor swap or shortened route, usually with a goodwill reduction.
• A part refund, which in our sample appears only for one multi-day guiding course (50% if conditions rule out the first two days of a four-day course).

What operators do. We read ten public weather policies from cycling, walking, boat and guiding operators in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and the US, plus one in Switzerland (outside the three regions we cover, used only as a policy example). We have anonymised them. When the operator cancels for safety, five commit to a full refund, a new date or both. One offers a new date or credit and no refund is mentioned. One mountain-guiding company cancels a four-day course and gives a 50% refund if conditions are too bad for any activity on the first two days, but gives no refund for individually booked days lost to weather. One multi-day Dutch operator allows no weather cancellations; guests can cancel free more than six weeks before arrival, and inside six weeks any refund depends on their own travel insurance. Two city operators say less: a German one says that in continuous heavy rain it may offer a replacement tour, a new date or, as an exception, cost-free cancellation, and a Dutch one says that “in the event of a weather alarm” it is possible to rebook free of charge (it does not say who cancels, and says changes are often possible free anyway). Credit appears in only one policy. Several say tours generally run in most weather, which sets the expectation that rain alone is not a reason to cancel.

What the evidence says about guests. The evidence is thin, and mostly from analogues.

• A Which? survey of more than 4,000 people whose package holiday was cancelled in 2020 and early 2021 found that 70% would book with the same operator or agent again, as reported by TTG. The main reasons given for not rebooking were that 51% no longer trusted the brand and 23% were unhappy with what they were offered instead (TTG does not state the base, which is presumably the roughly 30% who would not rebook). This was a pandemic-era package holiday survey, not weather and not tours.
• A 2007 meta-analysis of research on service recovery found that customers who get a good recovery can end up more satisfied than before the failure (the “service recovery paradox”), but the effect on repurchase intention, word of mouth and corporate image was not significant (de Matos, Henrique and Rossi, Journal of Service Research; we read the abstract and a summary). So do not assume a generous cancellation wins the guest back.
• Cancellations by a host can hurt later bookings: a study of 31,778 reviews across 6,384 short-stay rental listings found that host cancellations reduce occupancy, and more so for entire apartments than for shared rooms (Filieri, Raguseo and Galati, 2023). A cancellation you make is a negative signal for later guests. The study did not test how a cancellation was handled, so the handling advice here is our inference.
• Credits are not always usable. A consumer-body survey in Australia found that 21% of people who tried to use a pandemic flight voucher were unable to. It is about flights outside our three regions, so treat it as an analogue.
• We found no study of repeat booking after a weather cancellation on tours, and none comparing reschedule, credit and refund for outdoor tours.

A worked model. To see how the choice behaves, we built a small example. It is not a benchmark. Every number below is an example, and you should replace them with yours.

The example business: one guided day tour, 100 scheduled departures in a season, 8 guests on average (capacity 12), £85 a guest. A departure that runs costs £220 (guide, vehicle, refreshments) plus £8 a guest. Card fees are £1.90 a guest (2% of £85 plus a 20p fixed fee) and are not returned on a refund. If you call a departure off the evening before, £75 of the £220 is already committed. A departure that runs contributes £380.80 (ticket income less its running, per-guest and card costs), so a season with no cancellations contributes £38,080.

The weather: in a calm season 3 departures in 100 are called off, in a typical season 8, in a wet season 15.

The four policies, for a departure you call off:

1. 1Refund only. Every guest is refunded in full.
2. 2Reschedule or refund. Each guest chooses. We assume 60% take a new date. Because seats on the new date might have sold to someone else, we assume 15% of moved seats displace another sale, each worth the £77 margin before card fees (slightly conservative: the displaced sale would also have paid a £1.90 card fee, so its true value is £75.10, and using that adds about £11 to a typical season). A moved guest pays no second card fee, and the new date runs anyway, so only the £8 a guest is added.
3. 3Adapt first. For a quarter of would-be cancellations, the guide runs a shortened ride that costs 80% of a normal departure (£176); you still bear the £8 a guest and the card fee, and each guest gets £15 back. The rest follow policy 2. In this row, 2 of the 8 departures in a typical season run as shortened rides rather than being called off.
4. 4Credit only. Every guest gets a credit with no short expiry, we assume 70% use it, and the same 15% displacement applies to used credits. We show this one with a warning, below.

What the model shows:

• Rebooking recovers money in the example. In a typical season, reschedule-or-refund keeps £2,513 more than refund-only, and in a wet season £4,712. The gap grows as the weather gets worse. Refund-only loses the whole booking each time, and you still lose the card fee and the committed £75.
• It holds up when assumptions get worse. The table below varies how many guests take a new date and how often a moved seat displaces another sale. Even with only 20% rebooking and 45% displacement, a typical season keeps £34,854 against refund-only’s £34,312.
• Credit-only looks best on paper and sits uneasily with regulator guidance. It beats the others only if nobody can ask for cash, because it removes the choice that sends 40% of guests to a refund in policy 2. The table does not even count the £204 a departure of credit that goes unused. But, on our reading, UK regulator guidance, the Commission’s voucher Recommendation (written for package travel and transport) and card disputes point the other way (section 7). If 30% of guests demanded cash anyway, credit-only falls below reschedule-or-refund. Offer a credit as an option, never as the default that replaces the refund.
• Adapting first helps a little, and it needs a written plan, as in section 5.
• What the model leaves out is the value of the customer who comes back and the review that is not written. We could not put an independent number on either.

Refund-only in the same typical season: £34,312.

Our default, in plain words: when you call a tour off, offer a new date at the same price, or a full refund, and let the guest choose. Make the new date the easy path and keep the cash path open. Add a swapped or shortened ride where you have a plan for one.

07What the law says: UK, EU (with Portugal as an example) and US

This section is our reading of primary sources (legislation, regulator and government pages) fetched on 13 October 2026. It is not legal advice, it covers consumers rather than business customers, and rules change. Where a point rests on our own interpretation we say “our reading”. For Portugal, our EU country example, we cover mainland national rules only.

Four questions run through every region: what do I owe when I call a tour off, can I keep money when a guest cancels, is there a cooling-off right, and when is a tour a “package” with extra rules?

The common ground

• If you call a tour off, on our reading expect to refund, or to give a genuine choice that includes a refund.
• A 14-day cooling-off right usually does not apply to a dated tour, but on our reading you must say so before the guest books.
• On our reading, a cancellation fee is safer if it looks like a fair estimate of your loss, and keeping the guest’s payment when you are the one who cancels is the kind of term the UK and EU indicative lists flag as potentially unfair.
• What you say can become a promise. A “weather guarantee” headline with the limits in small print can invite complaints or enforcement in each region we cover (in the US, state by state).

United Kingdom

• Your duty to perform. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, a service must be performed with reasonable care and skill (s.49), and what you say or write about it can become a term of the contract if the guest takes it into account when deciding to book, or when making a later decision about the service (s.50(1)), which is why a weather promise matters. You cannot exclude those duties (s.57). If a service does not conform, the guest can require repeat performance and, if that is impossible or fails, a price reduction, which can be the full price (ss.54 to 56). A price-reduction refund is due without undue delay and within 14 days of the trader agreeing the guest is entitled to it (s.56(4)). Other remedies stay open, including recovering money paid where the consideration has failed (s.54(6) and (7)(b)). On our reading a tour you call off and do not deliver falls under those other remedies rather than the 14-day rule, so 14 days is a sensible house rule rather than a statutory deadline. The Act applies across the UK for services.
• Unfair terms. A term is not binding on the consumer if it is unfair (s.62). The indicative list in Schedule 2 includes terms that let the trader keep sums paid when the consumer does not go ahead, with no equal compensation when the trader cancels (paragraph 4), and terms that let the trader keep sums for services it did not supply when it ends the contract (paragraph 7). On our reading, a one-way policy is the clearest example. (Schedule 2)
• What the regulator says. The Competition and Markets Authority’s 2020 statement on cancellations and refunds, written for the pandemic, says consumers can normally be offered credits, vouchers or rebooking as an alternative to a refund, but should not be misled or pressured, and businesses should not give the impression that they are not entitled to a cash refund. Refunds should be prompt. Its fair contract guidance, updated 22 July 2026, lists, among the signs that a term is more likely to be fair, that where the customer is not at fault you can cancel only where “circumstances genuinely beyond your control make it impossible to carry out the contract as agreed”, and that you refund any prepayments if the customer is not at fault. On the customer’s side, it says a non-refundable deposit or cancellation charge is more likely to be fair if it reflects a genuine estimate of what you will lose directly because of the customer cancelling, and that you may keep a deposit in full if it is no more than a small percentage of the price and you make clear when it is non-refundable. That second point is about the customer cancelling, not you. Neither page mentions weather.
• Cooling-off. The Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 give a 14-day right to cancel a distance contract, but reg 28(1)(h) excludes “services related to leisure activities, if the contract provides for a specific date or period of performance”. On our reading you must still tell the consumer before they are bound that no right applies (reg 13 and Schedule 2). On our reading a dated online tour booking falls within the exclusion, and an open-date voucher may not. The exclusion removes only the statutory right, not your duty to refund if you cancel. (reg 28)
• Package travel. The Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018 exclude trips “covering a period of less than 24 hours, unless overnight accommodation is included” (reg 3(2)(a)). So, on our reading, a tour of under 24 hours with no overnight stay sits outside them. On our reading, a multi-day tour that sells accommodation together with guiding, bike hire or luggage transfer is likely a package. Then the organiser can terminate if prevented from performing by “unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances”, notifying the traveller without undue delay before the start, and must refund in full within 14 days, with no further compensation (regs 13 and 14). A traveller can leave without a fee if such circumstances occur at or near the destination (reg 12(7)).
• What counts as “unavoidable and extraordinary”. The definition requires a situation beyond the party’s control whose consequences could not have been avoided with all reasonable measures. The government’s guidance (last updated 25 July 2022) gives one example, a new outbreak of Zika virus, and treats the Foreign Office’s travel advice as a rule of thumb; we found no weather example in it, and the definition in regulation 2(1) has none.
• Weather in the Directive. The EU Directive behind the Regulations does mention weather: its recital 31 says the circumstances may cover “weather conditions which make it impossible to travel safely to the destination as agreed in the package travel contract”. We did not research how a UK court would treat that recital. So on our reading whether ordinary bad weather qualifies is unsettled, a storm warning fits more easily than a wet day, and a reroute may count as a reasonable measure.
• Insolvency protection and the 2026 amendment. Packages also need insolvency protection (reg 19). Amending regulations, SI 2026/455, take effect on 6 April 2027 for contracts made on or after that date. They add a limb to the package definition (separate contracts for services selected and paid for during one visit to, or contact with, a single trader’s point of sale) and remove linked travel arrangements. Their only change to regulation 3(2)(a) deletes the words “and linked travel arrangements”, so on our reading the 24-hour exclusion is unchanged; check them before then. (regulation 3, regulation 13, regulation 14)
• Advertising a guarantee. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 bans unfair commercial practices, including misleading actions and omissions (ss.225 to 227), and lists as a banned practice presenting rights the consumer already has as a distinctive feature of your offer (Schedule 20, paragraph 11). The CMA can fine up to £300,000 or 10% of turnover, whichever is higher. The CAP Code, which the Advertising Standards Authority applies, asks that the word “guarantee” not be used in a way that could cause confusion about consumers’ rights (rule 3.55), that ads not mislead by omitting significant limitations and that full terms be supplied before the consumer is committed (rule 3.56), and that valid claims under a money-back guarantee be refunded promptly (rule 3.57). The code is self-regulatory, not statutory. On our reading, a “weather guarantee” that only promises the refund the law already gives could be seen as presenting a right as a feature, and any guarantee should show its trigger and remedy next to the headline.

European Union

• Cooling-off. The Consumer Rights Directive gives a 14-day withdrawal right for distance contracts (Article 9), with an exception in Article 16(l) for “services related to leisure activities if the contract provides for a specific date or period of performance”. It requires clear pre-contract information (Article 6).
• Package travel. The Package Travel Directive (EU) 2015/2302 excludes trips under 24 hours without overnight accommodation (Article 2(2)(a)). For packages, “unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances” means a situation beyond the control of the party relying on it, whose consequences could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken (Article 3(12)). The organiser may terminate if prevented by such circumstances, and refunds are due within 14 days (Article 12). A traveller may terminate without a fee for such circumstances at or near the destination. Recital 31 of the Directive gives examples, including natural disasters such as floods or earthquakes and “weather conditions which make it impossible to travel safely to the destination as agreed in the package travel contract”. On our reading a recital helps interpret the rule but is not itself the operative text.
• Unfair terms. The Unfair Contract Terms Directive 93/13/EEC lists, as indicative and non-exhaustive examples, terms that keep sums when the consumer does not perform without equal compensation when the trader cancels (Annex 1(d)), and terms that let the trader keep sums for services it did not supply (Annex 1(f)).
• Misleading claims. The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive covers false information about the consumer’s rights (Article 6(1)(g)), and, in its Annex I, presenting consumers’ legal rights as a distinctive feature of the offer. For infringements handled through the EU’s coordinated enforcement procedure (widespread infringements), Member States must allow maximum fines of at least 4% of the trader’s annual turnover in the Member States concerned (Article 13(3), as amended by Directive 2019/2161), so national laws vary.
• Vouchers. The Commission’s 2020 Recommendation on vouchers says voucher acceptance should be voluntary and the traveller keeps the right to a refund. It is non-binding, written for the pandemic, and covers cancelled package travel and transport services rather than tours or leisure activities.
• What EU law leaves open. A European Commission and European Consumer Centres FAQ, again written for COVID cancellations, says EU consumer law does not regulate the conditions for and consequences of cancellation of sports and cultural events, and that rights then depend on national contract law and the organiser’s cancellation policy. It is about events rather than guided tours, so on our reading it is only an analogy, but it is why the Portuguese rules below matter.

United States

US consumer law is made state by state. We read statutes for New York, Florida, Washington and Hawaii, and attorney-general statements for California, Colorado and New York. We did not read California or Colorado statutes. Do not read this section as the law of all 50 states.

• No federal weather or cooling-off rule for tours. The US Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Cooling-Off Rule covers certain in-person off-premises sales, its Mail Order Rule covers merchandise, and its Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees (16 CFR 464) covers only live-event tickets and short-term lodging. A web-booked day tour sits outside all three on the text we read. Whether the Fees Rule reaches a multi-day tour that includes hotel nights is unresolved. What remains is the FTC Act’s ban on deceptive practices and your own terms. On our reading, a “refund if we cancel” or “rain or shine” promise contradicted by fine print could be treated as misleading, so put your weather policy next to the price and the booking button.
• No state statute we found says a tour operator must refund when it cancels for weather. On our reading, the rules that could reach it are general unfair-practices statutes, attorney general enforcement, and some seller-of-travel laws. Attorneys general have pursued firms that did not honour their stated refund policy: New York sued a travel company in 2023 for failing to refund cancelled trips as its policy promised, California settled with a ticket reseller in 2024 over switching from a refund promise to a credit, and Colorado’s 2021 agreement with a student-tour company let customers choose rescheduling, a voucher or a refund less a fee of $350 to $565. These are enforcement positions, not rules. All three arose from pandemic-era cancellations, and one involves tickets rather than tours.
• Seller-of-travel laws. Washington’s statute names “package tours” and requires a seller of travel to give a bold-type written statement on refunds for services the seller cancels, with refunds due within 30 days of receiving the supplier’s money or within 14 days of cancelling if the supplier was never paid (RCW 19.138.040). Hawaii’s registration regime targets intermediaries. Whether a day tour is covered is not settled by the text. On our reading, multi-day trips that include lodging are more likely to be caught. Operators selling to residents of such states should get state-specific advice.
• Credits. The federal card law on gift certificates (15 U.S.C. 1693l-1) defines a gift certificate as one “purchased on a prepaid basis in exchange for payment”. A credit issued because you cancelled was not bought as a credit, so on our reading the federal expiry rules do not obviously apply, but we found nothing that says either way. State rules differ: New York allows expiry no earlier than nine years after issue (GBL 396-i), and Florida and Washington allow no expiry on most gift certificates (each has exceptions), with Washington’s definition the broadest on the text we read. If you issue credits, safest is no short expiry, plus a refund option.
• Fees and deposits. On our reading, New York and California courts will not enforce a fee that is out of proportion to the probable loss, at least in the commercial cases below. The New York Court of Appeals (a truck-lease case) asks whether it “bears a reasonable proportion to the probable loss” (Truck Rent-A-Center v. Puritan Farms 2nd, 1977), and the California Supreme Court (a commercial loan case) calls “lack of proportional relation to the damages” the mark of a penalty (Ridgley v. Topa Thrift, 1998). We did not read a consumer tour case. On our reading, keeping a deposit when you are the one who cancelled is a weak position.
• Weather is not an automatic excuse. On our general reading, doctrines such as impossibility and impracticability are narrow, and weather on an outdoor activity is foreseeable. We did not read the case law. So write weather and safety terms into your contract, say who decides and on what criteria, and say what happens next.
• Card disputes are the backstop. A credit-card holder can send a written billing-error notice that must reach the card company within 60 days of the first statement showing the charge (Fair Credit Billing Act; 12 CFR 1026.13(b)(1)), and networks typically allow around 120 days, with the window for future services running from the service date, according to Stripe’s documentation. Stripe also says refunds take about 5 to 10 business days, that the original processing fee is not returned, and that, once a dispute is open, you should respond through the dispute process rather than refund, to avoid paying twice.
• Safety guidance. The National Weather Service’s lightning guidance (a written plan, shelter, wait 30 minutes) is guidance, not law, but on our reading it is the kind of standard a reasonable operator could be compared with; we read no case or statute that says so.

Portugal (mainland national rules): our EU country example

• Consumer basics. Services must be fit for their purpose (Lei 24/96, art. 4), the supplier must inform the consumer clearly, objectively and adequately (art. 8), and good faith applies at every stage (art. 9).
• Cooling-off. For contracts made at a distance, the 14-day withdrawal right (Decree-Law 24/2014, art. 10) does not apply to leisure-activity services (“serviços relacionados com atividades de lazer”) where the contract sets a specific date or period of performance (art. 17(1)(k)). The article opens with “salvo acordo das partes em contrário” (unless the parties agree otherwise), so you can offer more, and art. 4 requires you to tell the consumer before booking whether the right exists.
• Registration and information duties. The tourist-entertainment regime (Decree-Law 108/2009, as amended) lists “passeios e atividades em bicicleta (btt e cicloturismo)” in its Annex I (as published in 2013; we could not read the current consolidated text). On our reading, a company that sells guided bike tours commercially must register in the national register (RNAAT) and carry accident and civil-liability insurance, plus assistance insurance for clients who travel abroad as part of the service (art. 27). The insured sums are set in a separate regulation we could not read. Art. 6 requires clear information on the activity’s characteristics, risks and required fitness. We found no weather or safety-cancellation rule in the regime.
• Package travel. Decree-Law 17/2018 excludes trips of under 24 hours unless an overnight stay is included (art. 2(2)(a)). For packages, the organiser may terminate for “circunstâncias inevitáveis e excecionais” (art. 27(1)(b)), with a full refund within 14 days (art. 27(5)); the traveller may cancel without a fee for such circumstances at the destination (art. 25(4)). The Portuguese definition gives no weather example, but recital 31 of the EU Directive that the decree-law implements lists “weather conditions which make it impossible to travel safely to the destination” among the examples.
• Standard terms. Decree-Law 446/85 prohibits, depending on the context, standard-form clauses that set penalties disproportionate to the damage to be compensated (art. 19(c), which art. 20 extends to dealings with consumers). We found no article that bans cancellation fees by name. A blanket “no refund for any reason, including our own weather cancellation” is, on our reading, the clause most likely to be attacked. The Civil Code also lets a court reduce a manifestly excessive penalty clause (arts. 810 to 812), which we read only through court and arbitration decisions.
• Deposits. The Civil Code’s rule on earnest money (sinal, art. 442) says that if the payer fails to perform they lose it, and if the receiver is at fault the payer can demand double. We read it as quoted in an arbitration award. Whether a tour booking payment is legally a sinal depends on the contract. Our reading: do not call a booking payment a “deposit” in your terms and then cancel for weather without a clear refund, because that is the situation in which the doubling rule could be raised.
• Complaints. Tourist-entertainment companies are on the list of businesses that must hold the complaints book (Decree-Law 156/2005), and online-only suppliers must offer the electronic version. A newer amendment, Decree-Law 102/2026, appeared on the legislation site and we could not read it. Where you belong to consumer-arbitration centres, you must also tell consumers which (Lei 24/96, art. 8(1)(g)). Low-value disputes can go to necessary arbitration or mediation at the consumer’s option (art. 14), so, on our reading, a weather refund dispute can escalate cheaply for the customer.
• Weather warnings. IPMA’s colour warnings cover the next 72 hours by district. We found no law that gives a colour a legal effect on a tour contract. A yellow warning signals risk for weather-dependent activities, so on our reading it supports caution, not an automatic right to cancel. Define your own objective trigger and apply it consistently.

What it adds up to

1. 1Offer a refund or a new date, the guest’s choice, when you call a tour off. Do not make a credit the default.
2. 2Tell guests before they pay that there is no cooling-off right for a dated booking, and what your weather and cancellation terms are.
3. 3Keep any fee or retained deposit proportionate to your real loss, and be able to explain it.
4. 4Treat a single-day tour and a multi-day tour with accommodation as different legal products.
5. 5Put the trigger and the remedy next to any “guarantee” headline.
6. 6Refund within 14 days as a house rule, and say so.
7. 7Log every decision with its time and source.
8. 8Have a lawyer in your market read your terms. This is the line to cross if you sell into several countries.

08When the guest cancels for the forecast, and no-shows

When you call a tour off, you decide. Here the guest decides, so the policy has to work on guests you cannot predict.

Start from your standard terms. Most public policies we read use tiers: for example a full refund more than 48 hours before departure, half between 24 and 48 hours, nothing inside 24 hours, or free until five days out, half until a day out, then nothing. Guests who cancel over a forecast stay on those tiers unless an official trigger applies. Keep any retained fee proportionate (section 7), say it before booking, and show the tiers on the tour page.

Then choose one of three rules for forecast cancellations.

1. 1Standard terms only. Cheapest on paper, but it can lead to disputes and bad reviews on days when the weather really is bad.
2. 2A free move when a trigger applies. The trigger can be an official warning for the route area (one Dutch city operator rebooks free “in the event of a weather alarm”), your own safety call, or a defined condition (a German operator says it can make an exception and allow cost-free cancellation for continuous heavy rain, but only if the guest contacts it at least 90 minutes before the start). We recommend this as the default.
3. 3A free move for anyone when the forecast crosses a line, such as a chance of rain above a threshold. This is a weather guarantee in the marketing sense, and the most generous of the three.

What a weather guarantee costs. Rule 3 gives up revenue on days when the tour would have run. We modelled it for the same example business. Assume 800 guests a season, with 20% of guests booked on days when the forecast crosses the line. On those days, 35% of guests take the free move. Of those who move, 70% rebook, and 15% of moved seats displace another sale. Each guest is worth £77 before card fees and £75.10 after. A guest who takes the move and does not rebook costs the operator the £77 (the card fee is lost either way), and a rebooked seat that displaces another sale costs that sale’s £75.10. We also credit the guarantee with the trouble it avoids: 8% of trigger-day guests would otherwise no-show, and 1 in 4 of those would dispute the charge, costing £85 plus a £12 dispute fee. We credit all of that saving whatever share take the move, and assume every other trigger-day guest would have turned up without the guarantee.

The cost is £1,735 in lost contribution, less £310 of avoided disputes, so £1,425 net. That is about 19 extra guests at £75.10 each, or 2.4% of the season’s 800 guests. The dispute credit is generous: without it the break-even is about 23 extra guests, or 2.9%. If a visible guarantee wins you about 2.4% more guests, it pays for itself. The break-even moves a lot with how often the trigger fires and how many guests take the offer, as chart 6 shows.

We found no independent measure of how much a visible weather guarantee lifts bookings, so we cannot tell you whether 2.4% is easy or hard. A US camping platform that sells weather cover to guests at checkout says it pays “up to 100% of the daily cost” when forecast conditions exceed a stated trigger, with the reimbursement paid by a weather-risk provider rather than the platform (Hipcamp). That is another way to carry the risk: sell it. A study of about 25 million hotel room postings found that sellers charge a premium of roughly 10% to 15% of the full price for refundable rates (Lacetera, Piga and Zirulia, NBER), which suggests guests do pay for flexibility, although the authors’ model assumes that some customers overestimate their chance of cancelling. It is a hotel analogue, not tours.

Guests’ own insurance usually will not rescue them. Standard travel insurance generally covers weather when it disrupts your transport (for example an extended delay) or causes a natural disaster at the destination, depending on the policy and any add-on, and not a decision to cancel because the forecast is poor. It typically excludes storms already named before the policy was bought (the US National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the NAIC, says so), and some commercial guidance we read extends that to weather already forecast. See the guidance from the US National Association of Insurance Commissioners and the Association of British Insurers. So, unless a guest bought a Cancel for Any Reason add-on (the NAIC describes these as cover where the reason for cancelling does not matter), your weather policy is their main protection. We checked US and UK guidance only. On multi-day tours, tell guests to check what their own insurance covers.

No-shows. We found no independent figure for tour no-show rates and no peer-reviewed field experiment on whether deposits reduce them. What exists are analogues, and we label them as such: a 2018 hospital sleep-lab quality-improvement project reporting a fall in its no-show rate from 9.1% to 4.3% after it introduced a deposit alongside reminders and financial counselling (no sample size or period given; not peer reviewed), and two events run by the same software company, one free (38 of 84 registrants attended) and a later one with a refundable $100 deposit (50 of 55 attended). Neither is a tour, and the deposit also changed who signed up. So take a deposit if it suits your business, not because the evidence is strong. Practical steps that need no evidence: send a reminder, ask guests to confirm, state a waiting time at the meeting point, and say in your terms what happens when someone arrives and decides conditions are not for them. Our suggestion is to treat that guest under your standard terms, but let your guide offer a move at their discretion when the day was an amber one.

If a guest disputes the charge. Do not refund a payment that is in dispute. Stripe says the cardholder’s bank has already refunded the customer, that a formally disputed payment should be handled through the dispute process, and that it recommends accepting or challenging the dispute rather than refunding, to avoid paying twice. Reply with your evidence, which is your terms, the booking page the guest saw, and your decision log. That is one more reason to keep one.

09Say it plainly: the policy, the booking flow and the portal

A good policy that guests cannot find is a bad policy. Say it in five places.

1. 1On the tour page, next to the price. Not only in the terms. The CAP Code, which the Advertising Standards Authority applies, requires marketers to supply the full terms of a guarantee before the consumer is committed (rule 3.56), and the US Federal Trade Commission’s policy statement on deception says that written disclosures or fine print “may be insufficient to correct a misleading representation”.
2. 2In the booking flow, before the guest pays. On our reading, UK and EU law expect you to give the guest set information before they are bound, including the conditions of any right to cancel or a statement that there is none (UK: regulation 13 and Schedule 2 of the 2013 Regulations; EU: Consumer Rights Directive, Article 6). Portuguese law says the same (Decree-Law 24/2014, art. 4). Your weather and cancellation terms are not listed by name, although arrangements for payment and performance and any deposit are (Schedule 2(j) and (u) of the 2013 Regulations, and their equivalents in the Directive), and on our reading what you state can become binding (Consumer Rights Act 2015, s.50) and leaving out material information can be a misleading omission (Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, s.227), so give them at the same point.
3. 3In the confirmation. Repeat the weather rule, the decision time and how you will tell them.
4. 4In the reminder, a few days before. Tell guests when you will decide and how you will contact them.
5. 5In the guest’s own booking page. This is where a customer portal earns its place.

A weather policy in eight lines. Adapt this, and have a lawyer read it:

Edit the brackets to match your policy, and make sure every promise in it is one you can keep.

What a customer portal should do for weather. A bike rental customer portal, or a guest portal for tours, is the page a guest returns to for their booking. For weather it should do five things:

• Show the policy and the decision time on the booking itself, so the guest does not have to search an old email.
• Show the status. “Running as planned. Next check 6pm tonight.”
• Offer the choices when you call a tour off. A new date picked from real availability, or a refund, in one or two taps.
• Let the guest ask for a change and have you approve it, rather than emailing into a void.
• Keep the messages in one place, so a guest and your guide see the same history.

That last point can save time on a bad-weather morning, because guests who can see the answer for themselves may have less reason to message or phone. We have no data on whether, or by how much.

A message when you call it off. Keep it short, and put the choice first.

10Weather cancellation booking software, and what RideLoop does

You can run a weather policy from a spreadsheet and a phone. It starts to fail when you have several departures a day, several guides, or a wet week when 40 guests all need a message and a new date. This is where booking software earns its keep, and where the choices in it matter.

What to look for

Whatever you choose, test these against your own policy. Software for weather cancellations and cancellation policies should do the following.

• A cancellation policy you set per tour, with your own tiers and deadlines, shown at checkout and in the confirmation.
• A weather trigger you can read. Ask what it checks (rain only, or wind, heat and warnings too), which forecast source it uses, when it checks, and who can change the threshold.
• Offers, not impositions. Ask what moves or refunds automatically. We think nothing should move without a person deciding or a guest accepting. Ask what happens if the guest does not reply.
• A reschedule that keeps the booking. It should show real availability, keep the price and not charge twice. A date change is not a cancel-and-rebook.
• Refunds to the original payment method, and a clear answer on what happens to fees. If you use Stripe, its documentation says the original processing fee is not returned.
• A record. Who decided, when, what the guest was offered and what they chose, plus staff roles and an audit log.
• A guest-facing page, so guests see the policy, the status and their options without emailing you (section 9).
• Low-numbers handling, if you run guided departures: minimum headcounts and what happens when you fall short (see minimum numbers).
• Multi-day handling. Ask whether weather is checked for the start only or for later days.
• Terms you can leave: whether there is a contract or exit fee, and whether you can export your bookings and customers. Our software buying guide covers the wider choice.

What RideLoop does for weather (our product)

• Ride Guarantee: weather rescheduling for tours and holidays. RideLoop checks the forecast before each tour and holiday departure. Above the rain threshold you set, within a set window, each guest gets a free reschedule offer that they can accept or ignore. Nothing moves automatically. The new date keeps the same price, with no cancellation fee, and if the guest does nothing the original date stands. It is described in more detail in our rain policy guide.
• Its limits, in plain words. It works from a rain threshold you set. It does not make your wind, heat, lightning, flood or air-quality calls, which stay with your guide and your policy. Nothing is cancelled, refunded or moved automatically. It applies to tours and holiday departures.
• Guided tours. Minimum-headcount alerts, and guide and shuttle allocation, for guided departures. You decide what happens to a departure that falls short.
• A guest portal, where guests return to their booking.
• Payments and refunds. Every payment settles to your own Stripe account, and the commission is refunded with any refund.
• Rebooking and records. A calendar that does not double-book, five staff roles and an audit log, bookings and customers that export as CSV, and a documented API and webhooks.
• No contract and no exit fee. See the pricing page for plans.

If you want to see how it would handle your own policy, you can book a walkthrough.

11A 30-day rollout

You can put a weather policy in place in a month.

Week 1: decide the rules.

• Choose one forecast source and one warning source for each route area.
• Fill in the trigger table in section 3 with your own limits for wind, heat and visibility, and mark which are yours.
• Name who calls a tour off, and give them authority to override the table for safety.
• Set your decision points (section 5) and your amber options (a shortened or covered ride).

Week 2: write the terms.

• Choose your remedy: a new date or a refund, the guest’s choice.
• Choose your forecast rule for guests who want out (section 8).
• Set cancellation tiers and any retained fee, and check they are proportionate.
• Write the policy box (section 9) and have a lawyer in your market read it. If you sell multi-day tours with accommodation, ask whether package travel rules apply.

Week 3: put it where guests see it.

• Add it to the tour page, checkout, confirmation and reminder.
• Write the call-off message and the amber message.
• Test the rebooking flow from the guest’s side.

Week 4: dry-run and start the log.

• Take three bad days from the last season and run your table against them. Would you have made the same call? Would a guest have understood it?
• Open a decision log with these columns: date, route, source used, trigger, decision, time made, what guests were offered, what they chose, cost.
• Brief every guide on the table and on what to say to a guest at the meeting point.

Day 30 and after. After every called-off or adapted departure, write one line. After a season you will have the figures we could not find: your own weather cancellation share, your rebooking rate and your cost per cancellation. Put them in the model in section 6 in place of ours.

12Mistakes worth avoiding

1. 1No written trigger. Every decision becomes an argument, and two guides decide differently.
2. 2Deciding at the meeting point, when costs are spent and guests have travelled.
3. 3A one-way policy. The guest loses money when they cancel, and you keep it when you do.
4. 4Credit as the default. It looks cheap, but on our reading it can be challenged by a regulator or in a card dispute, and guests may not use it (sections 6 and 7).
5. 5A “weather guarantee” headline with the limits in small print.
6. 6Treating a wet day as a cancellation. You will cancel too often and teach guests that weather means a refund.
7. 7Treating a heat or lightning risk as a rain problem. The percentage of rain does not cover them.
8. 8No record of the call. You cannot answer a dispute without it.
9. 9Forgetting the multi-day case. A week is not rebookable, and package rules may apply.
10. 10Not saying there is no cooling-off right. On our reading the rules expect you to tell the guest before they book. The exemption does not seem to depend on that notice, but leaving it out can breach the information rules and invite disputes.
11. 11Copying another country’s rules. What holds in one UK nation, EU country or US state may not hold in the next.
12. 12Refunding a payment that is already in dispute.

13Questions about handling bad weather cancellations on tours

Where to go from here

• Set a rain threshold and an offer: a rain policy for cycling tours that keeps the booking.
• Handle under-subscribed departures: minimum numbers on guided tours.
• Sort the money and the paperwork: our guides to deposits and rental waivers.
• Plan a multi-day trip: holiday itineraries.
• See what RideLoop includes on the pricing page.