Terms & Conditions

Kismet is a curated hotel booking service operated from India by Kismet Stay Private Limited, a company registered under the Companies Act, 2013 with CIN U79110DL2026PTC469713, whose registered office is at DPT 808B, F-79 & 80, 8th Floor, DLF Prime Tower, Okhla Industrial Area Phase 1, New Delhi 110020, India. We keep a short list of houses we would stay in ourselves, and we arrange stays at them. This website is kismetstay.com, and the one address for everything is support@kismetstay.com.

These terms apply to every booking made through Kismet and to every use of this site. You accept them when you confirm a booking or open an account. You must be at least 18 years old to book, and you book on behalf of everyone in your party, who are bound by these terms and by the property's own rules as if they had read them.

Nothing here limits the rights you have under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, or any other law that cannot be excluded by agreement.

When you book through Kismet, we arrange your stay with the house directly or through one of our contracted travel suppliers. The contract for the stay itself is between you and the property. Kismet is the booking agent that puts it in place, holds the record, and stands between you and the paperwork. We do not own or run the properties, and their staff are not ours.

What the house provides under its own roof, from the room to the breakfast to the spa, is governed by its own terms and the law of the place it stands in. What we provide is the booking, the record, and a person to speak to about both.

A booking exists when we issue a Kismet reference. The confirmation page, the voucher, the email and your account all render from that one record, and the terms shown there are the terms that bind, frozen as they stood when you confirmed, not as they may later change.

Everything you give us to make it must be accurate: the guests' names as they appear on the documents they will carry, ages where a house asks for them, and contact details we can reach you at. A booking made on wrong details can be refused at the door, and we cannot undo that.

Availability is live, and rooms sell out between one screen and the next. Until the reference is issued nothing is held for you, and a room that sells out before you confirm is not a booking.

Every rate states what it includes, the room, the board, the terms, before you confirm it. Prices are shown in Indian rupees unless the page says otherwise. What you pay now and what you pay at the property are always 2 separate figures. Taxes and fees levied at the desk, a tourism dirham, a city tax, a resort fee, a service charge, belong to the house and are stated as such; they are collected by the property, not by us, and they are not part of what you pay Kismet.

Prices can move between your search and your confirmation. Houses reprice and inventory sells. If the price of your selection changes before you confirm, we tell you and ask again; we never confirm you at a figure you have not seen.

Now and then a price is plainly wrong, a decimal in the wrong place, a rate that no house of that kind has ever charged. Where a price is an obvious error, we will tell you as soon as we see it and offer you the correct price or a full refund of what you paid. We are not bound to honour an obvious error.

Every booking is paid in full when you confirm it, in the currency shown. Payment is processed by a regulated payment provider; Kismet does not see or store your card or banking details. Where Kismet has to convert what you pay into its own settlement currency, that cost is shown on the booking as its own figure before you pay, and it is not returned if you later cancel. Where your own bank or card issuer separately converts the charge from your card's currency, that conversion and any fee for it are theirs, not ours.

A payment that is declined, or that cannot be completed, does not make a booking, and nothing is charged. What happens if a house or a supplier cannot honour a room you have paid for, and what to do before disputing a charge with your bank, are set out under refunds and cancellations.

A stay outside India booked from India can attract tax collected at source under section 206C(1G) of the Income-tax Act, 1961, and counts towards the Liberalised Remittance Scheme limit the Reserve Bank sets for the year. Kismet is building this into every booking's price breakdown; until it shows there as its own figure, ask the concierge whether it applies to your stay before you pay.

A PAN is asked for only when a rate or the law requires it, and we say so at the time. It is verified, and what we keep afterwards is a one-way hash: the number itself cannot be read back, by us or by anyone.

Cancellation terms belong to the rate, not to Kismet, and they are shown in full before you book and on the booking ever after. Deadlines resolve against the house's own clock. Cancel inside a free window and the whole amount you paid is refunded; after it, the rate's own terms decide what is retained. A non-refundable rate is what it says.

To cancel, use your booking page or write to us. Changes to dates, rooms or guests are handled by a person, priced at the rate on offer when the change is made, and nothing changes until you have agreed to it. Not arriving, leaving early or arriving late, how a refund is worked out and how it reaches you are all set out under refunds and cancellations.

Check-in and check-out times, minimum ages, rules on children, pets and smoking, dress codes and the like are the house's own, and they are stated on its pages and on your booking. A house may ask every guest for identification at arrival, a passport for foreign nationals, a government-issued photo ID for Indian nationals, and some ask for a PAN or a card for incidentals as well. Some rates require the names of every guest in advance, and we say so before you book.

Some houses take a deposit or a pre-authorisation for incidentals at the desk, and return it on their own terms. Damage to the property, and charges run up during the stay, are settled with the house directly. You are responsible for the conduct of everyone in your party, and a house may ask a guest to leave for conduct that breaks its rules; no refund is owed for a stay ended that way.

Admission is the house's own right. A house may decline a guest who cannot present identification it accepts, who is under its minimum age, or who does not meet a condition it publishes. Some houses do not accept a local address proof, or an unmarried couple sharing a room. We publish every such rule we are told of, and we will find out for you before you book if you ask. A booking refused at the desk on the house's own rules is treated as a late cancellation under the rate's terms.

A view, a high floor, adjoining rooms, a cot, a late arrival: tell us when you book and we will pass it to the house and press for it. A request is a request until the house confirms it in writing; nothing on the booking is guaranteed unless the rate or the confirmation says it is.

Visas, passports, permits and vaccinations are yours to arrange, and a booking is not refunded because a document was missing at the border or the desk. We recommend travel insurance that covers cancellation, medical care and the loss of prepaid stays; Kismet does not sell insurance and is not a party to any policy you hold.

An account is yours alone. Keep its credentials safe, tell us at once if you think it has been used by someone else, and keep its details current. We may suspend or close an account used to make bookings in bad faith, to resell stays, or to misuse the site, and we will tell you why.

The photographs, the writing, the design and the code of this site belong to Kismet Stay Private Limited or to the houses and photographers who licence them to us. You may use the site to find and book a stay. You may not copy, scrape, republish or sell what is on it, build a competing service from it, or run automated tools against it, without our written permission.

We take care over everything this site says. Property descriptions, photographs, room details and policies come from the houses themselves and from our suppliers, and we check them; houses change, and when something is wrong we put it right. A description is not a guarantee of a particular room, view or service beyond what the rate states.

We are responsible for making the booking you confirmed, holding its record, and putting right what we get wrong. The stay itself is provided by the property; for what happens under its roof, its own terms and the law that governs it apply, and we are not liable for its acts or omissions or those of its staff.

Our total liability for anything arising from a booking, whether in contract, negligence or otherwise, is limited to the amounts you paid to Kismet for that booking. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for loss of enjoyment, or for events outside anyone's reasonable control, including weather, natural disaster, epidemic, strike, war, civil unrest, the acts of governments, or the failure of transport or utilities. Nothing here excludes liability that the law does not allow to be excluded.

We may decline a booking, or cancel one already made, where the details given to us are false, where a payment is disputed or appears fraudulent, where a booking is made to resell a stay, or where a court or a lawful authority orders it. If we cancel a booking that was honestly made, we tell you why and refund what you paid in full; if it was not, the rate's own terms apply and we may recover what we are owed.

We write to you about your bookings by email, and by telephone or messaging where you have given us a number: confirmations, payment matters, a question from the house, a change to your stay. These are transactional messages about a booking you made, and you agree to receive them even if your number is on a do-not-disturb register. We send nothing else unless you have asked for it, and you can withdraw that at any time. What we hold about you and why is set out under privacy.

Nobody from Kismet will ever ask you for a card number, a CVV, an OTP, a password, or a transfer to a personal account. If anyone does, in our name, do not answer them: write to support@kismetstay.com at once.

The concierge is a person. If you write to us, a human reads it, and every arrangement is made by someone who knows the house.

If something has gone wrong, write to support@kismetstay.com with the booking reference in the first line, and we will answer. A complaint about a stay is best raised with the house while you are there, so that it can be put right on the spot; tell us as well, and we will take it up with the house on your behalf.

Under the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, Kismet Stay Private Limited has appointed a Grievance Officer who also serves as the grievance contact required by the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Reach them at support@kismetstay.com or by post at the registered office above. A consumer grievance is acknowledged within 48 hours of receipt and resolved within a month, in English, with a ticket reference you can quote. If you remain dissatisfied, you may approach the consumer forum with jurisdiction under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.

These terms are governed by the laws of India, and the courts at New Delhi have exclusive jurisdiction, subject to your right to approach a consumer forum where the law gives you one. If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stands.

When these terms change, the date at the top changes with them, and a booking is always governed by the terms that stood when it was made. The version on this page is the only version; nothing said elsewhere adds to it or takes from it unless it is written into your booking.