Terms of service

These terms are between you and Guide Algarve, Lda, a company registered in Portugal, which operates this website and provides the services described in clause 2. Throughout this document “we”, “us” and “Guide Algarve” mean that company, and “you” means the person who makes a booking, whether or not that person is the one who travels.

Passenger transport is carried out under Portuguese licence for the transport of passengers in light vehicles, and excursions are sold under the RNAVT registration above. Vehicles carry the insurance required by Portuguese law for passengers, luggage and third parties.

These terms apply to three services, and nothing else:

• Airport transfers — private point-to-point transport between Faro, Lisbon or Seville airports and an address in the Algarve, in either direction, and any other point-to-point journey inside the region.
• Private excursions — a vehicle and driver booked for a half day or a full day, sold as a whole vehicle and never per seat.
• E-bike rental — electric bicycles rented by the day, week or month, delivered to you or collected from our point in Lagos.

Our cancellation policy and our privacy notice form part of these terms. Where they say something more specific than this document, the more specific text wins.

No account, and when the contract exists

You do not need an account. A booking is made with a name, a phone number and an email address. Your request becomes a contract only when we send you a confirmation carrying a booking reference in the form GA-0000. A price shown on the site, in a quote or in a message is an invitation to book and not yet a contract.

Information you have to give us, and get right

Most things that go wrong with a transfer go wrong because of one wrong character. You are responsible for the accuracy of:

• The flight number and the date it operates — not the booking reference your airline gave you.
• The full pickup or drop-off address, including the name of the hotel, villa or apartment block and, where there is one, the door or unit number.
• The number of passengers, the number and size of bags, and the ages of any children travelling.
• A phone number that will work in Portugal, ideally with WhatsApp on it.

Where wrong information means the vehicle is too small, the driver waits at the wrong place, or the pickup is set for the wrong day, we will do what we can — but the booking may be treated as a no-show under clause 5 of the cancellation policy.

Bookings made for somebody else

If you book for another traveller you confirm that you have their permission to give us their details, and that you will pass on the confirmation and the trip link. We send the trip link to both numbers where we have them.

Bookings made through a hotel or partner

A partner hotel or agent may make a booking on your behalf using their partner code. The contract for the journey is still between you and us, on these terms. Where the partner bills the amount to your room, the partner collects it and remains responsible to us for it.

The price is for the vehicle

Every price we publish is for the whole vehicle, not per person, for both transfers and excursions. It includes VAT at the Portuguese rate, tolls, fuel, parking at the airport, meet and greet inside the arrivals hall, and child seats. There is no night surcharge, no public-holiday surcharge, no luggage fee and no booking fee.

What is not included

• Anything a third party charges on the day: boat fares at Benagil, fortress entry at Sagres, monument tickets in Seville or Lisbon, lunch.
• Additional stops or detours beyond one short stop, which are priced before they happen and never added afterwards.
• Waiting time you cause beyond the free periods in the cancellation policy, charged at €25 per hour, in 15-minute steps.
• Cleaning beyond normal use — see clause 8.

Paying

You may pay by card online at the time of booking, in cash in euros on arrival, by card to the driver on arrival, or — at partner hotels — by having it billed to your room. Card payments are processed by our payment provider; we never see or store your full card number. Where a booking is unpaid at the time of travel and payment on arrival fails, the driver may decline to travel.

Invoices and NIF

A fiscal document is issued for every booking and emailed to you automatically. To have a Portuguese NIFor a company's fiscal details on it, enter them at checkout or add them from your trip link before the end of the month in which you travelled. After the month closes the document is filed with the Autoridade Tributária and cannot be reissued with different fiscal details.

Errors

If a price is displayed that is obviously wrong — an order of magnitude out, or a figure the system produced in error — we will tell you before we confirm and you may either pay the correct price or cancel with a full refund. We will not confirm a booking and then ask for more money later.

We watch the flight, you do not

Give us the flight number rather than a pickup time. We track the flight and move the pickup to the actual landing time at no charge. If your flight is delayed, cancelled or diverted, clause 5 of the cancellation policy says what happens.

Where we meet, and how long we wait

For arrivals the driver waits inside the terminal with a board showing your name, for 60 minutes from the moment the aircraft lands. For every other pickup the driver waits 15 minutes from the agreed time. Both are free.

Luggage

The luggage capacity shown for each vehicle class is the number of large suitcases plus the same number of cabin bags. Golf bags, surfboards, bicycles and pushchairs need to be declared when you book so we send a vehicle that fits them. A driver may refuse luggage that was not declared and does not fit — safely tying a surfboard to a sedan is not a thing that exists.

Child seats

Infant carriers, toddler seats and boosters are free and fitted before we arrive, provided you tell us the ages when booking. Portuguese law requires children under 135 cm to travel in an appropriate restraint. If we were not told and no suitable seat is on board, we cannot legally carry the child.

The whole vehicle, and nobody else in it

An excursion is a private hire of one vehicle and one driver for a stated number of hours. Nobody outside your party joins it. The number of people travelling decides which vehicle class is assigned and therefore the price, but the price is never per person and there is no minimum group size.

The itinerary is yours, within the driver's day

Published itineraries are a suggestion. You may change the order, skip a stop or add one on the day, provided the total stays within the booked hours and within the driver's legal working and rest periods. Where a change makes the day materially longer, the driver will tell you what it costs before it happens.

Your driver is a driver

Our drivers know these roads and these places extremely well, and will talk about them all day if you want. They are not licensed tourist guides and do not present themselves as such. Where you need a licensed guide we arrange an independent one and show the cost separately.

Third parties on the day

Boats, fortresses, museums and restaurants on an excursion are operated by other people. We arrange access where we can and we choose them carefully, but we are not responsible for their opening hours, their prices, or a decision by a skipper that the sea is too rough.

Who may ride

The rider must be at least 16 years old. Riders under 18 need an adult present at handover who accepts these terms on their behalf. No licence is required. Only people named on the rental may ride the bikes.

What comes with the bike

A helmet, a lock, front and rear lights, a phone mount, a puncture repair kit and a charger, all included and all counted at handover and return. The bikes are pedal-assist and limited to 25 km/h as Portuguese and EU law requires; they are legally bicycles and may be ridden anywhere a bicycle may.

Deposit and damage

A €250 pre-authorisation per bike is held on a payment card at handover, capped at €500 for any one rental. It is released when the bikes come back and clears within 5 working days. Your liability for accidental damage is capped at the deposit. The full damage schedule, the theft excess and the exceptions to that cap are in clause 4 of the cancellation policy.

How you must treat them

• Lock the bike to a fixed object with the lock we supplied whenever you leave it, including for five minutes outside a café.
• Do not leave the bike outdoors overnight.
• Do not ride it beyond Lagos to Tavira, or across the border into Spain, without telling us first.
• Do not open, submerge or attempt to repair the battery or the motor.
• Obey the Código da Estrada. Fines from your riding are yours.

If it breaks

Anything that fails through normal use is our problem, not yours. Call the number on the bike and we come to you anywhere between Lagos and Tavira, usually within the hour, and swap the bike if it cannot be fixed where it stands. Do not pay a shop to repair it and send us the bill unless we have agreed to that first.

• Seat belts are worn by everyone, at all times. This is Portuguese law and the driver will not move without it.
• No smoking or vaping in any vehicle.
• Alcohol may be carried but not consumed in the vehicle.
• The driver may refuse to carry, or may end a journey, where a passenger is abusive, unsafe, or so intoxicated that they present a risk. Nothing is refunded in that case.

Cleaning

Sand, dust and wet swimwear are part of the job here and are never charged for. Soiling that takes a vehicle out of service — vomit, spilled food ground into upholstery, damage to trim — is charged at €120, which covers the valet and the jobs the vehicle missed.

We provide these services with reasonable skill and care, and we are liable for loss you suffer because we failed to do so. Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that Portuguese law does not allow to be limited. Your statutory rights as a consumer are unaffected.

Beyond that, our liability for any one booking is limited to three times the amount you paid for it. We are not liable for consequential losses — a missed flight, a missed connection, a non-refundable hotel night — where the cause was outside our reasonable control: traffic, an accident on the A22, a road closure, weather, strikes, or a flight that did not do what its schedule said.

Belongings

Luggage and personal items are carried at your risk and are covered by the vehicle's insurance to the legal minimum. Items left in a vehicle are kept for 30 days; we will get them back to you and will ask you to cover the courier. Tell the driver about anything valuable or fragile before it goes in the boot.

Subcontracting

At busy times we may pass a journey to another licensed operator we work with regularly. When we do, the contract stays with us, the price stays the same, and we remain responsible to you for the journey.

Cancellation windows, refund amounts, no-show rules and the e-bike deposit are set out in full in the cancellation policy, which forms part of these terms. In summary: transfers are free to cancel up to 24 hours before pickup, 48 hours for Lisbon and Seville; excursions up to 72 hours; e-bikes up to 48 hours, and always free if the weather turns.

Because these are transport and rental services for a specific date, the 14-day right of withdrawal for distance contracts does not apply to them under Article 17 of Decreto-Lei 24/2014. The windows above are given voluntarily and are more generous than the law requires.

Tell us first, and quickly

Send a complaint to transpory@gmail.com or on WhatsApp with the booking reference. We acknowledge within 2 working days and answer properly within 15 working days. Most things are fixed the same day if you tell us while it is happening rather than after you get home.

If we cannot agree

You can also use the routes every consumer in Portugal has, at no cost to you:

• The electronic complaints book, Livro de Reclamações Eletrónico, at livroreclamacoes.pt.
• Consumer arbitration at CIMAAL, the arbitration centre for the Algarve, whose decisions we accept as binding for disputes up to €5 000.
• Turismo de Portugal, for anything relating to our RNAVT registration.

What we collect, why, who sees it and how long we keep it is set out in the privacy notice. The short version: we collect what is needed to drive you somewhere and to issue a fiscal document, we give your name and phone number to the driver on the day, and we do not sell anything to anybody.

These terms are governed by Portuguese law. Disputes fall to the courts of the district of Faro, without prejudice to your right as a consumer to bring proceedings where you live.

We may change these terms. The version that applies to your booking is the one published when we confirmed it, and we keep previous versions. The version number and date at the top of this page tell you which one you are reading. Material changes are announced on this page for 30 days before they take effect.

If any clause turns out to be unenforceable, the rest stays in force. Our not enforcing something once does not mean we have given it up.