Assurance: what we put in writing

The thing nobody answers

Search for a trip to Türkiye and you will find prices, photographs and star ratings without much effort. What you will struggle to find is an answer to the question you are actually asking at midnight, three weeks before you fly:

What happens if it goes wrong?

Online travel platforms cannot answer it, because they are not the operator — they resell someone else’s promise. Local agencies often prefer not to answer it, because writing a cancellation policy down makes it enforceable. So the question stays open, and you carry it with you all the way to the airport.

This section exists to close it.

How this works

Each assurance is a separate, numbered page. It says one thing, in plain language, and it says who is bound by it. We publish an assurance only when we can actually honour it — an unpublished commitment is a commitment we have not agreed to yet, and we would rather have a short list you can rely on than a long one you cannot.

Three rules apply to everything in this section:

1. If it is not written, it is not a commitment. Not ours, not anyone’s. That includes anything said on the phone, in a chat window, or in a listing description.
2. A legal obligation is not the same as a promise. Some of what follows is simply what any licensed Turkish travel agency owes you. We list it anyway, because almost nobody tells you it exists.
3. Weather, aviation authorities and antiquity sites do not take instructions from us. A balloon flies when the licensed operator and the morning’s conditions allow it. What we can commit to is what happens next.

What you already have, before we promise anything

Cotton Castle Travel operates under a Group A travel agency licence issued by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and is a member of TÜRSAB, the national association of travel agencies. That is not decoration. Under Turkish travel agency legislation it carries obligations: the service has to be put in a contract, package tours have to be covered by the insurance the regulations require, and the agency is open to Ministry inspection.

The licence number and our registered company title appear in the footer of every page on this site, and on the contract itself.

What to ask us for

You do not have to take any of this on trust. Before you transfer money, ask for three things:

• The written offer — what is included, what is not, and in which currency.
• The contract, with the cancellation and change terms in it. Read the part that applies to you changing your mind, not only to us.
• The name and licence number of the agency taking your payment. Payment should go to the company whose title appears on the contract, and to no other name.

If an agency hesitates on any of the three, that hesitation is the answer.