How Paid Walking Tours Work

The short version

• The organizer is the seller. They set the price, run the tour and are responsible for it.
• Walk With Me is the platform. We vet organizers, host the listing and run the booking and payment, and we are not a party to the contract for the tour itself.
• Payment goes to the organizer's own account through Stripe. It does not sit with us.
• If the organizer cancels, you are refunded in full, every time, no matter which cancellation policy the tour had.

Who you are buying from

Every paid tour on Walk With Me is sold by the organizer who runs it, either an independent guide working under their own name or a registered touring agency. They are the merchant of record, which is the formal way of saying they are the seller.

That means the organizer is the one responsible for the tour going ahead, for it being what the listing said it was, and for the licences, permits, insurance and taxes that apply to running paid tours where they operate. It also means they carry the refund and chargeback liability on your booking.

Walk With Me provides the platform, the vetting, the listing and the payment rail. We are not the tour operator, we do not employ organizers, and we are not a party to the contract between you and the organizer. This is the same position our terms and conditions have always taken for walks generally, and it applies to paid tours too.

How the money moves

Payment is handled by Stripe, and the money settles directly into the organizer's own Stripe account. It never sits in a Walk With Me account and we never hold it on anyone's behalf.

Walk With Me currently takes 0% commission on bookings. The organizer receives what you paid, minus Stripe's own card processing fee, which Stripe deducts when the payment settles. If that ever changes, the change will be published here and in the organizer agreement first.

Prices are shown in the currency of the organizer's Stripe account, which is one of euro, Hungarian forint, US dollar or pound sterling. The price you see on the listing is the price you pay. If your card is in a different currency, your bank may apply its own conversion, which is between you and your bank.

Paid tours are never charged through the App Store or Google Play, because they are a real-world service you attend in person rather than digital content. That is why checkout looks different from a subscription purchase.

Cancellations and refunds

Every paid tour carries one of three cancellation policies, chosen by the organizer and shown on the listing before you pay. The window is measured from the tour's scheduled start time, not from when you booked:

• Flexible: full refund if you cancel up to 2 hours before the tour starts.
• Moderate: full refund if you cancel up to 24 hours before the tour starts.
• Strict: full refund if you cancel up to 72 hours before the tour starts.

That policy governs one thing only: you changing your mind. Cancel inside the window and you are refunded in full. Cancel after it has closed and the organizer keeps the payment, because they have already planned their day around you.

Everything else is refunded in full, always. If the organizer cancels the tour, you get all your money back regardless of the policy on the listing. If we remove a tour for breaking our rules, you get all your money back. If your payment never completed, nothing was taken. The only case with no refund is a tour that simply went ahead as described.

Refunds are returned to the card you paid with and usually reach your bank within 5 to 10 days.

How organizers are vetted

Anyone can create a free walk on Walk With Me. Nobody can sell a paid tour without being approved first, and approval is not automatic.

Before an application can even be submitted, the applicant must have a fully verified account, meaning a verified email address and a verified phone number. A person then reviews the application by hand. We are looking for evidence that this is a real, operating tour business: a live listing on an established tour platform, a working website, an active professional profile, licences where the city requires them, public liability insurance, a genuine description of the tours, and how long they have been doing this. Applications with nothing verifiable behind them are rejected.

Approval alone does not let anyone take money. Stripe then runs its own identity and business verification, collecting the organizer's ID document, tax details and bank account directly. Walk With Me never sees or stores any of that. Only when Stripe confirms the organizer can accept payments does the ability to publish a paid tour switch on.

We want to be straightforward about the limits of this. Licences and insurance are declared by the organizer and weighed by a human reviewer; we do not independently verify every document, and we do not run criminal background checks. Vetting raises the floor. It is not a guarantee, and it does not replace your own judgement about who you spend an afternoon walking with.

What organizers agree to

Approved organizers accept the organizer agreement, which sets out what they are responsible for: describing tours accurately, turning up, keeping guests safe, holding the licences and insurance their local law requires, and paying their own taxes on what they earn.

Our community guidelines apply in full, and they apply to conduct on the walk itself just as much as to conduct inside the app. Organizers who mislead guests, abandon a group mid-tour, or behave in a way that puts people at risk can have tours removed and lose the ability to sell.

If you guide tours yourself and want to know what applying involves, we set the whole process out on become a tour guide.

What we ask of guests

• Show up, or cancel while the free cancellation window is still open. A no-show costs a small operator a real seat.
• Read the listing before you book. Distance, pace, duration, meeting point and what is included are all on there.
• Treat the organizer as the professional they are, and follow reasonable safety instructions on the walk.
• Tell us if a tour was not what the listing promised. We cannot fix what we do not hear about.

If something goes wrong

Start in the app. Your bookings screen shows every tour you have paid for, whether the free cancellation window is still open, and a button to cancel and be refunded if it is.

If the organizer cancelled, you do not need to do anything. The refund is issued automatically and in full.

If the tour went badly, was not as described, or the organizer did not turn up, contact us at support@walkwithmekinetik.life with your booking details. We will look into it, and we can remove an organizer from the platform. Because the organizer is the seller, a refund beyond the cases above is theirs to agree to, and a card dispute is answered by them rather than by us. We will not stand in the way of a dispute you are entitled to raise.

Your rights, and which law applies

Nothing on this page takes away rights you have under the law where you live. If you are a consumer in the European Union, your mandatory consumer protections apply in full, you may bring proceedings in the courts of your own country, and you can use the European Commission's online dispute resolution platform.

Otherwise, these arrangements are governed by Hungarian law, consistent with our terms and conditions.

What this page is

This is an explainer, written to be readable. It is not the contract. The binding documents are our terms and conditions, which you accept when you use the app, and the organizer agreement, which organizers accept when they apply. Where this page and those documents differ, those documents govern.

Paid tours are new on Walk With Me, and this page will be updated as the marketplace grows. Questions are welcome at support@walkwithmekinetik.life.