Refund & Cancellation Policy

1. How Payments Work

Bookings are paid online through our payment gateway, Razorpay, which supports UPI, cards and netbanking. Hostelova does not store your card or banking details — those stay with the gateway.

A booking is confirmed as soon as the payment is verified, and a receipt is emailed to you. Your room is held from the moment checkout begins and locked once payment succeeds, so the same room cannot be sold to two people.

Some owners may still ask for amounts outside the platform. Anything paid directly to an owner is a private arrangement between you and them, and is covered by section 6 below.

2. What Makes Up the Amount

Every quote, receipt and invoice separates the amount into these parts, and all of them are shown before you pay:

• Room rent for the months you selected
• Security deposit, held by the owner and returned at the end of your stay under their terms
• Maintenance, where the owner charges it
• Service fee, covering booking, payment handling and support

Together the first three are referred to below as the booking amount. The service fee is charged on top of it.

3. Free Cancellation Window

You can cancel a paid booking yourself, from My Bookings in the app or on the website, within 3 days (72 hours) of making the booking.

Your stay begins the day you book — the owner holds the room from that moment and their rent runs from then — so there is no separate move-in date to pick, and nothing cuts the 72 hours short. The exact deadline is shown on the booking itself. Once it passes, the Cancel button is withdrawn and the booking can no longer be cancelled for a refund from your account.

4. What Is Refunded

Cancelling inside the window refunds the full booking amount — room rent, security deposit and maintenance — to the original payment method you used.

The service fee is not refundable, because the booking and payment handling it covers have already been carried out.

Cancelling also releases your room back to other students immediately.

5. Timeline & Tracking

Refunds normally reach the original payment method within 5 to 7 working days once initiated. Your bank or card issuer controls the final leg, so the exact date can vary.

Every cancellation creates a refund record with its own Refund ID. You can follow it live from My Bookings, where it moves through:

1. Pending — the refund has been created
2. Under Review — our team is checking it manually, usually settled in 1–2 working days
3. Initiated — the payment gateway has accepted it
4. Processing — the gateway is crediting your payment method
5. Completed — the money has been credited

A refund can also end as Rejected, Failed, or Not Eligible. If one fails, our team retries it — you do not need to do anything. The tracker shows the Refund ID, Transaction ID and an estimated date throughout, and you are notified by email and in the app as the status changes.

6. Payments Made Directly to Owners

If you pay an owner directly — rent, deposit, advance or a token amount — outside Hostelova, that payment is governed by the owner's own refund and cancellation terms, not this policy.

We cannot initiate, reverse or guarantee recovery of money that never passed through the platform. Confirm refund terms, cancellation rules and receipts with the owner before paying anything offline.

7. Security Deposit at the End of a Stay

The security deposit collected at booking is the owner's to hold for the duration of your stay. Its return at the end of the stay — including any deductions for damage or unpaid dues — is settled between you and the owner under the terms of your stay.

This is separate from a cancellation refund, where the deposit comes back to you in full along with the rest of the booking amount.

8. Owner-Side Fees & Settlement

Listing a hostel, PG or flat on Hostelova is free. There is no brokerage and no subscription.

Owners are settled their property's own money — room rent, maintenance and the security deposit they hold. The service fee is charged to the student on top and is never deducted from an owner's payout.

When an owner is paid. A student can cancel for a full refund of the booking amount for 3 days (72 hours) after booking. For that reason a booking's payout is held, not paid, while that window is open — it is marked pending against the booking and released for settlement only once the window closes without a cancellation.

If the student cancels inside the window, the payout for that booking is withdrawn at the same time as the refund, so no money is settled for a stay that is not happening. Nothing is deducted from the owner in that case — the payout simply never becomes payable.

If paid listing, verification or promotional services are offered in future, their refund terms will be shown at the time of purchase.

9. Support & Disputes

For anything to do with a refund, quote your Refund ID or Booking ID and write to [email protected].

If you believe a listing, owner or payment request is suspicious, send us the details and any screenshots you have.

We can review reports and act on listings or accounts, but we cannot guarantee recovery of money paid outside the platform.