After you book
The interesting part starts where the chat stops.
A booking is not one moment. It is a written quote, a set of documents, a departure, and every day between that departure and the flight home. This page sets out that sequence, names who acts in each phase, and prints the limits of our part plainly, before you need them rather than at an airport counter. Nothing below is new policy. It is the detail behind the four promises on why not a chatbot and the third step on how it works.
Four phases, and who does what in each
Read the fourth column as the thing you can keep. A phase that ends without a document in writing has not ended; it has only been discussed.
| The phase | What starts it | Who acts | What you hold in writing afterwards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agreement and the binding quote | You say yes to a package in the thread | Lizanne, through her trade back-office | A quote with the fare rules, the deposit amount, the cancellation terms and a validity date. Nothing is charged before that document reaches you. |
| The documents before you fly | The supplier confirms the booking | Lizanne sends, you check | The itinerary, the e-tickets, the vouchers and the supplier's own terms. The passport, visa and health reading for your route sits on paperwork and health before you fly. |
| The trip itself | Your departure date | You message the thread, Lizanne acts | A written confirmation of any change, and of any added cost, before you accept it. |
| After you land | The return date | Nobody, unless you ask | The booking record. A claim for a delay, a lost bag or a medical cost is decided by the airline or your insurer under their rules. |
The planning lane stays free to the traveller in all four phases. The deposit and the balance go to the trade, never to Travel & Beyond. What it costs sets out who is paid by whom.
What is in your hand before you fly
The itinerary
Day by day, with the flight numbers, the room type, the board basis, the transfers and the activities that are already paid for. It is the document the whole trip is checked against, so it is the one to read twice, on the day it arrives, while there is still time to change it.
The tickets and the vouchers
An e-ticket number for each traveller and a voucher for each supplier. A voucher is the supplier's promise, not ours. If a hotel or a transfer operator will not accept a document at the desk, the fix belongs to that supplier and to Lizanne, and it is done on the day, not after you return.
The terms that actually bind
The fare rules say what happens if you move a flight. The supplier's terms say what happens if you cancel a room. Both are quoted to you before you commit, because both are decided by the supplier and neither is ours to waive afterwards. The questions page carries the short version.
The day a flight is cancelled
This is the part of the service that cannot be demonstrated on a website, so it is written down instead. It is a process, not a promise about the outcome. The outcome belongs to the airline.
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Step 1
Message the thread, not the website.
The same WhatsApp thread that planned the trip. Send the flight number, the airport, what the airline has told you, and whether you are at the desk or still at home. That one message is the whole handover. Nothing needs to be re-explained to a queue.
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Step 2
Lizanne reads the live position.
The airline's current status for the flight, the reason as the airline states it, and the seats that actually exist on the alternatives for your route and date. Not a schedule, and not a guess about what might open later.
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Step 3
The options arrive in writing, with the cost.
Each option is put to you with the fare difference attached, if there is one, before you choose. That is the same rule as the first quote: nothing is charged and nothing is changed until you have the number in front of you and you say yes.
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Step 4
She rebooks under the trade's change rules.
The change goes through the trade back-office, on the fare rules that were quoted to you when you booked. Where the airline is rebooking passengers itself, that route is used first, because it usually costs you less than a fresh ticket.
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Step 5
The new documents come back to the thread.
The updated itinerary and the new e-ticket, read back against the original so the difference is visible. If a hotel night is lost or gained by the change, the room is adjusted in the same pass, not left for the hotel to discover at check-in.
What is not printed here is a response time for the day of travel. Time zones and airline queues decide it, and a number printed on a website would be a number we could not keep. What is printed is the order of operations, which does not change.
What we cannot decide for you
Seven decisions that belong to someone else. We name the decision holder in each row because a traveller who knows who decides is a traveller who is not waiting on the wrong phone call.
| The decision | Who actually decides | What we do |
|---|---|---|
| Which flight you are moved to | The airline, under its conditions of carriage | We find the options that exist, price them, and put them to you in writing. |
| Whether a booking is refunded | The supplier, under the fare rules quoted at booking | We tell you the rule before you commit, and we file the request with the supplier. |
| Compensation for a delay | The airline, under the regulation that applies to the route | We give you the delay facts in writing, which is what a claim needs. |
| Whether you may enter a country | The immigration authority of that country | Paperwork names the authority and dates the reading. We do not give immigration advice. |
| Whether you are fit to fly | Your doctor and the airline's medical desk | Health before you fly names the requirements. The decision is not ours. |
| Whether your insurance pays | Your insurer, under your policy | We give you the booking record and the evidence of the disruption. |
| Whether a seat or a room is yours | The supplier, and only once it is confirmed in writing | We do not present anything as confirmed before it is. If it is not in writing, treat it as not booked. |
What this page deliberately does not do
- It does not promise a response time on the day of travel. The thread is with Lizanne, not a bot and not a call centre, and the honest limit of one person is a time zone.
- It does not promise that an airline will do what we ask. We can ask, price and rebook. We cannot create a seat.
- It does not act as your insurer, your doctor or your embassy. Those three are named in the table above, with their own decision rights.
- It does not introduce a price. Every figure on this site lives on what it costs or packages, where it can be read against the shape it belongs to.
Read this with how it works for the three steps before the
booking, and the questions page for the short answers. What the day
costs once the band has done its part, in each country's own currency, is on
money on the ground. The point of
all of it is the same as the point of this page: say what is real, and say what is not. The
live check is scripts/verify-after-you-book-deploy.py, which rereads this page
and the bytes the domain serves before the deploy is called good.
Something has changed. Send it to the thread.
One message with the flight number is enough to start. The same thread that planned the trip is the one that fixes it.
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One named human.
Lizanne van Niekerk plans it, books it and answers on the day. Not a queue and not a bot.
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Nothing charged in the dark.
Every change and every added cost is put to you in writing before you accept it.
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Limits named early.
The airline, the supplier, the insurer and the immigration authority keep their own decisions, and this page says so.
The booking is paid to the trade through Lizanne's back-office. Travel & Beyond never takes traveller money. See what it costs.