When someone drops out of a trip you have already booked

The short version

Work out how much of the booking is unrecoverable right now: deposits that will not come back, a fare that cannot be changed, a night the host will not refund. That is the only money genuinely at stake.

The fair starting point is that the person leaving covers their share of that, and the people still going re-divide what is left. Then look for a replacement guest before anything else, because a replacement makes the whole question disappear.

The number that decides it

Groups argue about whether the person leaving is being unreasonable. That is not the question the booking asks. The booking asks how much money the group cannot get back, and every sensible answer follows from it.

• Fully refundable, weeks out. Nothing is lost, so nothing is owed. Cancel, rebook for five, and there is no conversation to have.
• Deposit paid, balance later. The deposit is the money at stake. Everything else is still a choice the group is making.
• Paid in full, days out. All of it is unrecoverable, so the person leaving owes their full share and the price for everyone else does not move.

And before any of that: ask whether somebody else wants the place. A replacement guest is the only outcome where nobody pays more than they agreed to, and it takes one message to find out.

The three options, priced

Six friends, an $1,800 house, a $600 deposit paid and the balance due later. Somebody pulls out three weeks before. Each person’s agreed share was $300, and each person’s share of the deposit is $100.

The middle row is the one worth defaulting to, and the reason is not that it splits the difference. It is that it charges the person leaving for the harm their cancellation actually caused, which is the deposit, and asks the people still going to absorb the part that is a consequence of the house being priced as a whole rather than per person.

It is also worth seeing how small the range is. From the harshest outcome for the five to the softest, the difference is $60 each. That is worth ten minutes of arithmetic and it is not worth a friendship, which is a useful thing to know before the conversation rather than after it.

Price your own booking

Put in what the booking cost, how many it was booked for, and how much of it you cannot get back. All three options are priced at once, because this is a decision the group has to make rather than one a calculator can make for you.

Having the conversation without losing anybody

Separate the number from the decision

Work out what is owed first, as arithmetic, and then decide as a group what you want to do about it. Doing both at once is what turns a $100 question into an argument about whether somebody is a good friend.

Ask for the money once, clearly, with the figure in it

“The deposit was $600 and your share of it is $100” is a request anybody can act on. “We should probably sort out the deposit thing” is a message that gets left unanswered for two weeks and then feels awkward to repeat.

Check the insurance before you split anything

Some travel policies cover a cancellation for named reasons, and a successful claim changes what the group is actually out of pocket. Read the wording rather than assuming either way.

Decide what happens if they do not pay

Sometimes the answer is that the group absorbs it and moves on, and that is a legitimate choice as long as it is a choice rather than a slow realization. When someone doesn’t pay you back covers what to do when it has already gone that way.

The sentence that prevents this

Agree one line before you book, while everybody is enthusiastic and nobody has any reason to argue about it: if somebody pulls out after the deposit is paid, their share of the deposit is theirs.

It takes ten seconds. It is unarguable afterwards, because it was agreed before anybody knew who it would apply to. And it is the only thing on this page that costs nothing at all.

If the remaining trip also has people arriving on different days, the accommodation is a per-night cost before it is a per-person one: splitting a trip when people come for different parts has that arithmetic, and how to split shared costs fairly is the overview of picking a method before the money moves.

Planning a celebration with different activities and contributions toward the bride? Start with a bachelorette budget everyone agrees to before booking, including a message template.

Common questions

Every figure here was produced by running Halvy’s own split engine on the worked example, and under each option what the person leaving pays plus what the rest pay reconciles to $1,800.00 exactly. What a booking actually allows, and whether any of it is refundable, is a matter for that booking’s terms rather than for arithmetic. Nothing here is legal advice.