Terms and Conditions

- Last amended: June 2019 -

Contents:

Section A: Terms of Use for the Website and Services

I. Validity and changes to the Terms of Use; definitions

(1) These Terms of Use form the basis for the business relations between Travelcircus GmbH, Aroser Allee 76, 13407 Berlin (hereinafter referred to as “Travelcircus”) and the user of the website operated by Travelcircus and/or the functions, applications, modules, programs, software, etc. associated therewith (hereinafter referred to collectively as “services”), regardless of which device (e.g. PC, smartphone, tablet) the user uses to visit or use it.

(2) These Terms of Use apply exclusively. Deviating terms and conditions on the part of the user, in particular terms and conditions on the part of the user that contradict these Terms of Use, shall only become part of the contract with Travelcircus if and to the extent that Travelcircus expressly agrees in writing to the inclusion of the deviating terms and conditions. In particular, deviating terms and conditions of the user shall not be included in the contract with Travelcircus if the user merely refers to them and transmits them to Travelcircus, or if Travelcircus does not expressly object to the validity of the deviating terms and conditions of the user, or if Travelcircus performs an order or service or activates a function without reservation.

(3) Travelcircus reserves the right to amend these Terms of Use with effect for the future. Travelcircus shall only make such changes for sound reasons, e.g. if there are new technical developments, changes in case law or legislation or other equivalent reasons. Travelcircus shall notify the user of the changes without due delay; Travelcircus shall point out to the user the deadlines and legal consequences associated with this in individual cases, as well as the possibility or possibilities of objection. If the user does not object to the changes within the period specified in the notice or notification, the changes shall be deemed accepted by the user through the user’s continued use of Travelcircus’s website or services. This shall not affect legal provisions governing unilateral changes to prices and/or contractual conditions.

(4) These Terms of Use as well as other terms and conditions of Travelcircus are based on the following definitions:

• In the following, consumers means all natural persons who enter into legal transactions for purposes which are not predominantly attributable to their trade, business or professional activities.
• By contrast, traders are natural or legal persons or partnerships with legal personality who or which, when entering into a legal transaction, act in exercise of their trade, business or profession.
• Website means the websites of Travelcircus (e.g. www.travelcircus.de), regardless of which top-level domain or country code is used to access them.
• User means a person who visits the website.
• Customer means a person who initiates or concludes a contract with Travelcircus.
• Contracting parties means Travelcircus and the customer/user.
• Service providers means businesses offering individual travel services or service packages for tourists, e.g. hotels and other providers of accommodation, organisers, airlines, rental car companies or other carriers, travel insurance companies.
• Cancellation means the declaration of withdrawal before the agreed or scheduled arrival.

II. Design of services; customer group; communication; contract language

(1) Travelcircus makes functions available to the user on its website/in its services, in particular for establishing contact and automatically concluding contracts. Travelcircus reserves the right to extend, improve or otherwise change the functions or the design of the website/services offered at any time, in particular if this serves technical progress and/or is appropriate to prevent practices of relevance under criminal law or misuse of the website/services.

(2) Communication on the website/via the services takes place electronically. Travelcircus reserves the right to communicate electronically with the user in various ways, e.g. by email, by text messages, by API (application programming interface), by in-app push notifications as well as by electronic messages stored in the account on the website; this shall apply as long and in so far as the user has not expressly objected to selected electronic means of communication. The user accepts that all consents, notifications, publications and other communication he or she receives electronically from Travelcircus do not require the statutory written form, unless mandatory legal regulations require a different form of communication in individual cases. The user shall ensure that the receipt of electronic messages from Travelcircus is guaranteed and in particular that it is not prevented by spam filters.

(3) Travelcircus only accepts users or customers with unlimited capacity to contract as contract partners. The services presented on the website/via Travelcircus’s own services are based on this premise. If the customer intends to make a booking for an unaccompanied minor via the website or services, the customer must contact the Travelcircus service team prior to making a booking.

(4) The contract language vis-à-vis Travelcircus is German.

III. Use of the website/services; consequences of violations

(1) The exclusive rights of use for the website/services and the protected content accessible via these (e.g. logos, photos, images, diagrams, descriptions) are owned by Travelcircus or its partners (hereinafter referred to collectively as the “rights owners”). The user is expressly prohibited from copying the website – whether completely or in part as a result of the copying of photos, images, descriptions, diagrams or the design.

(2) By derogation of Paragraph 1, the user shall be entitled to download, display and print out individual pages and/or sections of the website exclusively for personal purposes (e.g. documentation of booking details). When using the content of the website/services, the user shall be obliged to indicate the source by means of an easily understandable, legible and permanently attached notice.

(3) In particular, the user shall not be entitled (subject to the exception in the preceding Paragraph 2) to modify, copy, transfer, assign, sell, distribute, exploit, display, publish, publicly present, reproduce and/or license the content, information, software, products or services which are retrievable or viewable via the website/services without the express consent of the respective rights owner.

(4) If there are specific indications that a user culpably violates legal regulations, third-party rights, such as in particular name, copyright and trademark rights, or these Terms of Use, or if there is any other legitimate interest on the part of Travelcircus, Travelcircus shall, taking into account the legitimate interests of the user concerned, be entitled to take one or more of the following actions:

• issuing the user a warning;
• erasing the user’s posts/content;
• restricting the user’s use of the website/services;
• excluding the user – temporarily or permanently – from using the website/services (blocking).

The aforementioned actions shall not affect contracts already concluded with a service provider.

IV. Liability

(1) Claims for damages against Travelcircus arising from the user contract shall be excluded.

(2) This does not include claims by the user for damages arising from injury to life, limb, health or from the negligent violation of essential contractual obligations as well as liability for other damages based on an intentional or grossly negligent breach of duty by Travelcircus or the parties used by Travelcircus to perform its obligations. Essential contractual obligations are those whose fulfilment makes possible the correct execution of the contract in the first place and on compliance with which the user may regularly rely. In the event of a violation of essential contractual obligations, Travelcircus shall only be liable for foreseeable damage typical of this type of contract, if said damage was caused by ordinary negligence, unless the user’s claims for damages are based on injury to life, limb or health.

(3) The liability of Travelcircus under the German Product Liability Act, under guarantee, due to fraudulent intent and other mandatory liability regulations shall not be affected by the foregoing exclusions and limitations of liability. The foregoing limitations and exclusions of liability apply to the same extent in favour of Travelcircus’s legal representatives, employees and other parties it uses to perform its obligations.

V. Applicable law; place of jurisdiction; formal specifications

(1) All legal relationships between the contracting parties shall be subject exclusively to the law of the Federal Republic of Germany, excluding the UN Convention on the Sale of Goods. If the user or customer is a consumer, Sentence 1 shall apply only to the extent that the choice of German law does not undermine the protection provided by mandatory regulations under the law of the state in which the consumer is ordinarily resident.

(2) If the contracting parties are general merchants (Vollkaufleute) under German law or in the event that the user or customer has no place of general jurisdiction in Germany, or in the event that the customer against whom the action is brought moves his or her domicile or habitual residence outside the scope of this law after conclusion of the contract or his or her domicile or habitual residence is unknown, the exclusive place of jurisdiction is hereby agreed as Berlin. This shall not affect mandatory statutory regulations governing the exclusive place of jurisdiction.

(3) Changes or additions shall require written or text form. The written form shall be required to amend, waive or supplement this clause.

VI. Information about consumer dispute resolution

(1) Travelcircus will endeavour to settle any differences of opinion arising from contractual relations with consumers in an amicable manner. Should the user or guest wish to make a complaint, he or she is therefore welcome to contact the German dispute resolution organisation Außergerichtliche Streitbeilegungsstelle für Verbraucher und Unternehmer e. V. by emailing [email protected]. The limitation of any claims shall be excluded for the duration of this procedure. If no agreement can be reached in this manner, legal action may be taken – without a prior attempt at conciliation with a state-recognised body.

(2) If, after these Terms of Use have gone to press, participation in consumer dispute resolution proceedings were to become obligatory for retailers of the organisers, Travelcircus would inform the customer of this in an appropriate form.

(3) For all contracts concluded with the customer by means of e-business, Travelcircus refers to the European Union’s Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) Platform: http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr/.

Section B: Additional Terms and Conditions for Travel Arrangements

These Additional Terms and Conditions are the basis of the Geschäftsbesorgungsvertrag (“contract for the management of the affairs of another”) which the customer concludes with Travelcircus as the retailer; they explain and supplement the general statutory provisions on package travel from the German Civil Code (BGB) and the Introductory Act to the BGB (EGBGB).

They shall apply independently of any other terms and conditions or tariff conditions which may form the basis of the relationship between the customer and the service provider. Travelcircus has no influence on the general terms and conditions of tariff conditions of service providers; they are shown to the customer upon conclusion of the contract, and it is up to the customer alone to acknowledge and, if necessary, secure them.

I. Retailer; service provider

(1) The retailer is

Travelcircus GmbH, Aroser Allee 76, 13407 Berlin (“Travelcircus”)

Telephone: +49(0)30 577 000 900

Email: [email protected]

(2) The user will find the name/company, address and contact details of the service providers or organiser in the respective offer on the website/in the services.

II. Object of the contract; information about the booking process and storage of the contract text

(1) Travelcircus offers the customer the possibility of booking individual travel services or service packages for tourists, which are offered by service providers (e.g. hotels and other providers of accommodation, organisers, airlines, rental car companies or other carriers, travel insurance companies). Travelcircus names the respective service providers on the website/in the services, specifying their name/company and address, thus informing the customer about his or her contractual partner in each case.

(2) The services presented on the Travelcircus website/via its own services do not constitute binding contractual offers by Travelcircus in the legal sense, but are rather an invitation to the users of the website to submit an offer. In this respect, Travelcircus offers the services not in its own name, but in the name and on account of the respective service provider. After entering the required data – such as name, address and email address – the customer makes a binding contract offer to the selected service provider, based on the conditions shown on the website, by submitting the online booking form; he or she does this by clicking on the button which indicates the binding nature of his or her declaration; and by doing so, the customer simultaneously instructs Travelcircus to supply the selected service. The contract arranged between the customer and the service provider is concluded upon receipt of a booking confirmation, which is usually sent by email or by post but does not require any specific form, meaning that verbal and telephone confirmations are also legally binding. The sending of the invoice by Travelcircus or the service provider is equivalent to a booking confirmation.

(3) The customer may use the usual PC and browser functions, e.g. the browser’s back command, to correct his or her entries, delete or reset the entire online order form.

(4) The text of the contract and booking data will be stored by Travelcircus for a limited period of time in order to process the contract for the management of the affairs of another, and these can no longer be retrieved via the internet after booking. When processing the contract, Travelcircus will forward the necessary contract data to the service providers selected by the customer. The customer is advised to make his or her own permanent copies of order data and the text of the contract. Once contract processing is complete, the text of the contract and booking data will be erased or blocked for further use, unless Travelcircus is prevented from doing so by mandatory retention obligations under tax or commercial law. Further information on how customer data is handled is available in Travelcircus’s privacy policy at https://www.travelcircus.de/datenschutzerklaerung.

(5) The information on the website about the individual services or service packages is based on the information from the respective service providers; it does not constitute information provided by Travelcircus about the quality of the services and service packages. In the absence of the necessary possibility of influencing the service providers, Travelcircus does not owe a certain success in its arrangement of the services, unless such a success was agreed with the customer at least in text form. Position data, maps or pictures shown on the Travelcircus website serve only as a non-binding guide to the local position of the offer. Only the details contained in the final step of the booking process and in the corresponding booking or travel confirmation shall be decisive for the conclusion of the contract.

(6) The named service provider is solely responsible for ensuring that the arranged services are fulfilled as requested by the customer. Travelcircus has no influence on whether the selected service provider accepts the customer’s contract offer. Under the contract for the management of the affairs of another, Travelcircus shall only be obliged to arrange the conclusion of the main contract for the service(s) of the service provider listed on the website with the due diligence of a prudent businessman. Travelcircus shall only be obliged to determine the least expensive offer if there is an explicit agreement with the customer, which must at least be made in text form in order to be effective.

III. Obligations of the user/customer

(1) The user is obliged to carefully fill in the necessary fields in the online booking form on the website (such as personal details, contact details, payment details), to check them before sending them, and to correct them if necessary. Entering information incorrectly can lead to difficulties in the travel arrangement process, significantly impair the provision of services, and cause additional costs.

(2) The customer is further obliged to ensure that

• Travelcircus has accurate and complete contact details for his or her person (in particular a current, valid email address, and, in the case of flight bookings: telephone number);
• he or she is able to receive information (e.g. form) and other documents from Travelcircus and, in particular, that such receipt is not prevented by email inbox spam filters;
• he or she carefully checks all details on the booking confirmation, invoices and other travel documents immediately upon receipt and notifies the sender without undue delay of any deviations, inaccuracies, incompleteness and other inconsistencies;
• he or she regularly checks the email account belonging to the email address provided for notifications from Travelcircus or the selected service provider, in order to ensure access to information about the booking or notifications of any changes. This obligation shall also apply if the customer has a visible profile or user account on the Travelcircus website.

(3) If the customer does not receive a confirmation within one hour after submitting the online booking form, he or she shall be obliged to check his or her email inbox, including the spam folder, and to contact the Travelcircus customer service team.

(4) Depending on the service, destination or means of transport selected by the customer, it is possible that the terms and conditions of the service providers, or any other information they may provide, may not be presented in English. If a customer is unable to understand the foreign-language terms and conditions or other information, then he or she shall be required to obtain the support of a person or body proficient in the relevant language before making a booking.

(5) Travelcircus points out to the customer that the terms and conditions and other information provided by the service providers may establish additional obligations on the part of the customer, e.g. in the case of air travel, compliance with check-in times, and – in the case of special and charter flights – the obligation to have outward, return and onward flights confirmed by the airline within a period specified by the airline. In his or her own interest, the customer must acknowledge and take into account these additional obligations. Failure to comply with such duties may result in the customer losing the right to carriage, without the right to (partial) reimbursement of the travel price.

(6) In accordance with air traffic regulations, the customer is advised that luggage that is lost, damaged or delayed in connection with air travel must be reported immediately to the responsible airline on site by means of a damage report (“PIR”). If the PIR/damage report has not been completed, airlines and organisers may refuse refunds on the basis of international agreements. In the case of damage to luggage, the damage report must be submitted within seven days of delivery, and in the case of delay within 21 days. The loss, damage or misdirection of luggage must also be reported immediately to the organiser, its representative or contact point, or the retailer. However, this does not release the passenger from the obligation to submit a PIR/damage report to the airline by the above deadlines.

IV. No withdrawal from the brokerage contract

With regard to brokered contracts for the carriage of passengers (e.g. flights, trains, buses, etc.) and accommodation services (e.g. hotels, guest houses, etc.), a statutory right of withdrawal is fundamentally excluded – Sections 312(2) No. 5; 312g(2) Sentence 1 No. 9 BGB – unless otherwise agreed by the respective service provider with the customer.

V. Prices; terms of payment

(1) All prices include statutory value-added tax and all other price components.

(2) Unless expressly agreed otherwise in individual cases, invoices shall be due for payment immediately and without deduction upon receipt of the invoice. The payment terms for other fees which the customer is required to pay directly to the respective service providers in connection with the arrangement of travel services can be found in those service providers’ own terms and conditions or other payment instructions they provide.

(3) Travelcircus is authorised by the service provider to accept payments from the customer. The customer can find payment terms – including the amount or percentage of the price to be paid as a down payment, as well as a schedule for the payment of the balance or for the provision of financial security – in the offer on the website/in the service. The customer may make the payment via one of the payment methods specified in the booking process on the website/in the service.

VI. Changes to bookings; cancellations

(1) The details on changing a booking, cancellations and withdrawal – in particular the period and form in which the customer can exercise the respective rights – can be found on the help pages on the website as well as during the booking process on the website and the corresponding booking documents.

(2) When arranging a package travel contract, the customer shall be able to withdraw from the contract at any time before the start of the package, subject to payment of appropriate compensation or, if applicable, lump-sum compensation demanded by the organiser. The customer shall be free to prove that no loss has been incurred, or that the loss was lower than stated in the lump-sum compensation.

VII. Complaints; notice of defects and other declarations by the customer

(1) Complaints with regard to the service provided by Travelcircus under the contract for the management of the affairs of another/the brokerage contract must be reported to Travelcircus without undue delay. As far as reasonable, Travelcircus must be given an opportunity to provide relief. If the customer is to blame for failing to make such a complaint despite the fact that it would have been reasonable for Travelcircus to provide relief, then the customer’s claims arising from the contract for the management of the affairs of another/the brokerage contract shall be void.

(2) In its capacity as a retailer, Travelcircus is deemed to be authorised to accept notices of defects and other declarations by the customer regarding the provision of travel services. As the retailer, Travelcircus shall inform the organiser of such notices and declarations made by the customer without undue delay. If he or she wishes to assert rights under Sections 651m, n BGB (German Civil Code), the customer shall be obliged to notify the tour operator of any defects without undue delay. Without undue delay means making the complaint without culpable delay. Travelcircus recommends that the customer document defects and also send the notice of defects – at least additionally – using a durable medium (e.g. letter, PDF attachment in an email).

VIII. Liability; booking errors

Liability shall be governed by legal provisions.

As far as the liability of Travelcircus is excluded or limited, this shall also apply to the liability of Travelcircus's employees, representatives and other parties it uses to perform its obligations.

IX. Limitation period

(1) By derogation of the legal rule in Section 195 BGB, claims against Travelcircus under the brokerage contract shall be subject to a limitation period of one year, unless the damage is based on injury to life, limb or health, or such damage is based on a grossly negligent breach of duty by Travelcircus or an intentional or grossly negligent breach of duty by one of Travelcircus’s legal representatives or one of the parties it uses to perform its obligations.

(2) The limitation period shall begin at the end of the year in which the claim arose and the user/customer becomes aware of the circumstances giving rise to the claim and the person of the obligor, or should have become aware of this information without gross negligence.

X. Travel cancellation insurance

In order to protect the customer’s travel planning against unforeseen risks, Travelcircus expressly recommends that the customer take out travel cancellation insurance and, if applicable, insurance to cover repatriation costs in the event of accident, illness or death and/or other appropriate insurance (e.g. luggage insurance). Travel cancellation insurance is not included in the services and prices offered by Travelcircus.

XI. Information about passport, visa and health regulations

(1) Information about general passport and visa requirements in the country of destination, including approximate deadlines for obtaining visas, as well as about health formalities can be found in the respective offer on the website/in the service. In this regard it is assumed that there are no unusual features in the person of the customer or fellow traveller (e.g. dual nationality, statelessness) – if this is not the case, Travelcircus kindly asks the customer to inform it of this before booking the trip.

(2) The user or customer can find further information on the websites of the authority or administration responsible for his or her country of residence. Users or customers who are not citizens of the European Union (EU) can find further information on passport and visa requirements on the EU’s freely accessible information pages at https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/entry-exit/non-eu-nationals/index_en.htm, which provide further information on entry by EU country and contact information for the national administrations of EU countries.