Sure Stay Terms of Use
1. Who we are, and what these terms cover
Sure Stay is operated by Harbourlight Holdings Ltd, a company incorporated in the Republic of the Marshall Islands under registration number 141026, with its registered office at Ajeltake Road, Ajeltake Island, Majuro, Marshall Islands MH96960. In these terms, "Sure Stay", "we" and "us" mean Harbourlight Holdings Ltd.
These terms govern your use of www.sure-stay.com and everything on it. They apply whether you are looking for a place to stay ("guest"), offering one ("host"), or simply browsing. Where a clause applies only to guests or only to hosts, it says so.
By using Sure Stay, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the site.
Our full company details are in our legal notice. How to reach us is in clause 16.
2. What Sure Stay is, and what it is not
Sure Stay is a listing and booking service, not an accommodation provider. We do not own, operate, manage, control or inspect any of the properties listed on this site.
When you book, you enter into two separate contracts:
— With the host, for your stay. The host alone is responsible for the property, its description, its condition, its safety, its legal status, the licences and permissions it holds, access and keys, cleaning, house rules, and for handling the stay itself. Your rights in respect of the stay are against the host, under the law that applies to that contract.
— With Sure Stay, for the listing and booking service we provide and for the service fee you pay us. We are responsible for that service and for the accuracy of the information we ourselves produce.
We do not act as the host's agent in concluding the accommodation contract, we do not receive payment for the stay in our own name, and we give no warranty about the property.
We do check that hosts have supplied the registration or licence number their local law requires, and we verify a sample of those numbers against the public registers. That is a compliance check. It is not an inspection of the property and it is not an endorsement of the host.
Where a host is a business, they are separately required by law to give you information about your rights. Where a host is a private individual, the listing page says so and explains what it means for you: consumer protection law does not apply to your contract with them.
3. Your account
You must be at least 18 to hold an account. You must give us accurate information and keep it up to date. You are responsible for what happens on your account and for keeping your password secure — tell us straight away at [email protected] if you think someone else has access to it.
One person or business, one account. You may not sell, transfer or share your account, or open a new one to get around a suspension.
You can close your account at any time from your account settings. Closing it does not end a booking that is already confirmed, and does not affect anything either of us owes the other for a stay that has already happened.
4. Rules for listings
This clause applies to hosts. When you publish a listing you confirm that all of the following is true, and you must tell us immediately if any of it stops being true.
— You are entitled to let the property. You own it or have the owner's written permission, and letting it short-term does not breach your lease, your mortgage, the freeholder's consent, the building's rules, or any planning or licensing restriction.
— You hold every registration, licence or permit the law requires, you have given us the number, and it is current and not suspended or withdrawn. Where the property is in a registration area you must supply the number before we can publish the listing, and it is displayed on the listing.
— The listing is accurate. The address, the size, the number of bedrooms and beds, the maximum occupancy, the facilities and the photographs all describe the actual property as it is now. Photographs must be of that property.
— You have told us whether you are letting as a business or as a private individual, honestly, and you will tell us if that changes.
— The property is safe and lawful to occupy — it meets the fire, gas, electrical, structural and sanitation requirements that apply where it is.
— You will comply with any limit on the number of nights you may let, and with any restriction on which days or periods you may let, that applies where the property is.
You may not list: a property you are not entitled to let; a property in an area where short-term letting is prohibited; shared or undisclosed accommodation presented as exclusive; anything that is not the accommodation described; or a listing that duplicates another listing for the same property and dates.
Content you upload must be your own or licensed to you, must not infringe anyone's rights, and must not be unlawful, misleading, discriminatory, threatening or obscene. You keep ownership of what you upload; you give us a licence to display, reproduce and adapt it for the purpose of operating and promoting Sure Stay, for as long as the listing is live and for a reasonable period afterwards.
5. Booking a stay
This clause applies to guests. A booking request is an offer to the host. Your contract with the host is formed when the booking is confirmed, and your contract with us for our service is formed at the same time.
Before you confirm we show you the total price you will pay, including cleaning, our service fee and any tax we can calculate. Charges that are payable separately on arrival — such as a local tourist tax set by a municipality — are shown separately with the rate, because we cannot collect them.
Cancellation is governed by the host's policy, which is shown on the listing and on the confirmation screen before you commit. Because a stay is accommodation for specific dates, the 14-day right of withdrawal that normally applies to things bought online does not apply to your booking. Please check the dates before you confirm.
The Sure Stay service fee is not refundable.
6. How we moderate listings and content
We check listings before and after publication. You should know how, because it affects what you can expect from us.
Before a listing is published we check automatically that the required fields are present and correctly formatted, including any registration or licence number, and we screen the text and photographs against the rules in clause 4. A listing that fails these checks is not published, and we tell the host why.
After publication we verify a sample of registration and licence numbers against the relevant public registers, on a regular basis. We also act on reports from guests, hosts, authorities and third parties.
Automated and human review. Where a decision was made by automated means alone, you can ask for it to be reviewed by a person.
We are not obliged to monitor everything. We do not check every listing by hand, we do not visit properties, and we do not independently verify everything a host tells us. Our checks are a compliance measure, not a guarantee.
7. What we may do, and when
We may take any of the following steps where we reasonably believe that a listing, an account or content breaches these terms or the law:
— Refuse to publish a listing;
— Remove or disable a listing or an item of content;
— Demote a listing in search results;
— Restrict an account — for example by limiting the number of listings or pausing new bookings;
— Suspend an account for a period; or
— Terminate an account.
We may also do any of these where an authority orders us to, or where the law requires it — for example where a registration number is missing, invalid, suspended or withdrawn, or where a property has passed a legal limit on the number of nights it may be let.
We choose the step that is proportional to what has happened, taking into account how serious it is, whether it was deliberate, whether it has happened before, and the effect on guests with confirmed bookings. Where it is safe and lawful to do so we will ask you to put something right before we act.
Whenever we take any of these steps we will tell you, in writing, setting out the facts we relied on, which clause of these terms or which provision of law was breached, whether the decision was made by automated means, and what you can do about it. The only exception is where the law forbids us from telling you.
If a listing is removed and a guest has a confirmed booking, we will tell the guest and help them find alternative accommodation where we can.
8. Misuse of Sure Stay
We suspend accounts that misuse the service. So that you know where the line is:
Repeatedly publishing listings that breach these terms or the law. Examples: publishing a listing three times with a registration number that does not match the property; relisting a property after we have removed it for the same reason; repeatedly describing shared accommodation as exclusive; repeatedly listing a property you are not entitled to let. We would normally warn once, then suspend for 3 months on the second occasion, then terminate.
Repeatedly submitting reports that are manifestly unfounded. Examples: reporting a competitor's listings in volume with no substantiation; repeatedly reporting the same listing after we have explained why it does not breach our rules. We would normally warn once, then suspend the ability to report for 3 months, then suspend the account.
Manipulating reviews or search results. Examples: writing or commissioning reviews that are not based on a real stay; offering a guest anything in exchange for a review or for removing one; creating duplicate listings to occupy more search results. This ordinarily results in immediate suspension.
In each case we consider how many times it has happened, how serious it was, whether it looks deliberate, and the proportion of your activity it represents. We tell you before we suspend, we tell you how long for, and you can appeal under clause 9.
9. Reporting a listing, and appealing our decisions
Anyone can report a listing using the "Report this listing" link on the listing page, or at [email protected]. You can do this entirely online and you do not need an account. Tell us what is wrong and, if you believe the listing is unlawful, explain why. We will confirm we have received your report and tell you what we decide.
If we have made a decision about your listing or your account and you disagree, you can ask us to look at it again, free of charge, for at least six months after we told you. Write to [email protected] or use the link in the message we sent you. A person will review it — not an automated system — and we will give you our answer with reasons.
If you are still not satisfied, and you are in the European Union, you may refer the decision to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body under Article 21 of the Digital Services Act. That process is voluntary for you and does not stop you going to court.
Complaints about our service, our fees or a stay are dealt with under our complaints procedure at [email protected].
10. Fees
Guests pay a Sure Stay service fee, shown separately in the price breakdown and included in the total price before you confirm.
Hosts pay available upon request
We will tell you at least 10 days before we change our fees. A change does not affect a booking already confirmed.
11. Reviews
Only a guest who booked through Sure Stay and completed a stay can review that property. We do not pay for reviews, and we do not accept payment to publish, promote, suppress or remove one. We publish every review that passes our checks, including negative ones, and the overall rating is the plain average of every published review.
We refuse or remove a review only for the reasons set out in our reviews policy at [email protected], which also explains how we check that reviews come from real stays, how they are ordered, and how a host can report one they believe is not genuine. That policy forms part of these terms.
12. How search results are ordered
We rank the properties that match your search. The main factors, in order of the weight they carry, are: how well the property matches what you searched for; guest ratings and the number of reviews; host reliability; price compared with similar properties; and how complete and accurate the listing is.
13. Your personal information
We explain what we collect, why, who we share it with, where it goes and what rights you have in our privacy notice, which can be requested at [email protected]. Our use of cookies and similar technologies can be requested at [email protected].
If you are a host, the law requires us to collect certain information about you and to report it to tax authorities. Our host terms explain what, to whom, when, and what happens if you do not provide it.
14. What we are responsible for, and what we are not
We are responsible for providing the Sure Stay service with reasonable care and skill, and for the accuracy of information we ourselves produce. If we fail to do that and you suffer loss as a result, we are responsible for loss that was a foreseeable consequence of our failure.
We are not responsible for the stay itself — the property, its condition, its safety, its legal status, whether it is as described, whether the host performs, or anything that happens during your stay. Those are the host's responsibility under your contract with them, and clause 2 explains why.
We do not exclude or limit our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that the law does not allow us to exclude or limit. Nothing in these terms affects your rights as a consumer under the law of the country where you live.
15. Changes to these terms
We may change these terms — for example to reflect a change in the law, a change to the service, or a change in how we moderate. We will tell you by email and on the site at least 10 days before a significant change takes effect, and we will explain what has changed.
If you do not accept a change you can close your account before it takes effect. Bookings already confirmed continue under the terms that applied when they were made.
16. Law, disputes, and how to reach us
These terms are governed by the law of the Marshall Islands. If you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory rules of the law of the country where you live, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of that country.
Before going to court, please use our complaints procedure at [email protected] — it is faster and it is free. That page also explains the mediation and out-of-court routes available to you.
You can reach us by email at [email protected]. These channels are staffed by people. Authorities should use the contact point in our legal notice.