General Conditions of Contract

These general conditions of contract (“Agreement”) govern the contractual relationship between customers (“You”)  who use our services to purchase Tours (“Tour”) through www.outdoorlifenorway.com (“Site”) and Outdoorlife Norway (Norwegian organisation number 915369782) in respect of guided Tours organized by Outdoorlife Norway and performed by its guides.

You must read this Agreement before booking a Tour. This contract is concluded once Outdoorlife Norway has accepted a booking You have made in writing (email or via the internet) or by telephone. By booking a Tour, You warrant that You understand, agree to and accept all terms and conditions contained here.

You agree that Norwegian law applies to this Agreement, as well as all to other legal concerns between You and Outdoorlife Norway.

1. Terms of payment
2. Booking and cancellation by You
3. Alteration and cancellation by Outdoorlife Norway
4. Requirements for Participation
5. Risk and liability
6. Insurance
7. Privacy

In addition, our general terms and conditions and privacy policy apply. Outdoorlife Norway reserves the right to make changes to all conditions and Agreements.

1. Terms of payment

Payment for guided Tours organized by Outdoorlife Norway is due in advance. You can pay by credit card.

All prices are quoted included Norwegian VAT (MVA).

Online payments via the Site may only be made at the time of booking.

2. Alteration and cancellation by You

You are responsible for providing accurate, timely and complete information in connection with booking any Tour.

Alterations
includes changes to dates, times, and numbers of participants of confirmed Tours.

The first alteration of the dates and times is free of charge; for any further date and time alterations a fee of 200 NOK will be charged. Extra participants will induce normal additional costs according to the prices stated on the Site, and are free of extra booking charging fees. Any unadvised reduction in number of participants or duration of the Tour will not alter the fee for the booked Tour already calculated.

Alterations have to be made at least 48 hours before the Tour starts.

Cancellations
by You must be made by telephone or email at least 48 hours before the Tour starts, and must be acknowledged by Outdoorlife Norway.

Refunds
for cancelled booked Tours will be made on the following basis – Cancellation received and acknowledged by Outdoorlife Norway:

• Within 24 hours of Outdoorlife Norway receiving confirmation of booking: 100% refund
• More than 1 month before the booked Tour date: 100% refund
• More than 1 week before the booked Tour date: 50% refund
• 1 week or less before the booked Tour date: no refund

In addition, a refund fee of 200 NOK applies, regardless how long before the Tour the cancellation was made.

Cancellation Protection
can only be purchased at the time of booking. If You have purchased the Cancellation Protection, alternative alteration, cancellation and refund terms and conditions apply:

Alteration of the dates and times are free of charge. Extra participants and add-ons will induce normal additional costs according to the prices stated on the Site, and are free of extra booking charging fees.

Alterations have to be made at least 36 hours before the tour starts.

Any cancellation by You must be made by telephone or email and acknowledged by Outdoorlife Norway. Refunds for cancelled booked Tours will be made on the following basis – Cancellation received and acknowledged by Outdoorlife Norway:

• More than 36 hours before the booked Tour departure time: 100% refund*
• 36 hours before the booked Tour departure time: no refund

* Costs paid for the Cancellation Protection (200 NOK) will not be refunded.

Cancellation charges of involved partner institutions (bus companies, hotels, restaurants etc.) will be charged according to their conditions. Refunds will be transferred using the same payment method as the original payment performed by You.

No Show
The maximum waiting time of the guides is 10 minutes. In the event of a late arrival the duration of the Tour will be reduced accordingly. If the client for the booked Tour does not arrive (”no show”) then Outdoorlife Norway will make no refund and reserves the right to levy an addition cancellation fee of 10%.

3. Alteration and cancellation by Outdoorlife Norway

Alterations
Tour programmes may be altered in unforeseeable circumstances and cases of force majeure, such as – but not limited to – natural catastrophes, unrest, strikes, the event of govenment action, road closures, accidents, technical defects, weather conditions, etc. Outdoorlife Norway will do all it can to offer alternative arrangements or another solution in such cases.

After the Tour has started – defined by You meeting the guide – any change and/or early turn around / return is considered an alteration, not a cancellation.

Alterations in Tour programmes – prior and/or during the Tour – by Outdoorlife Norway do not give You the right to cancel without penalty, or the right to claim full or partial refunds and/or compensation.

Cancellations
Prior to the Tour start – defined by You meeting the guide – Outdoorlife Norway is entitled to cancel Tours in cases of:

• unforeseeable circumstances and cases of force majeure, such as – but not limited to – natural catastrophes, unrest, strikes, the event of govenment action, road closures, accidents, technical defects, weather conditions, etc.
• weather conditions in the event that personal-safety can no longer be accounted for.
• inefficient capacity utilization

In case of cancellations, Outdoorlife Norway will offer You the following alternatives:

• A rescheduling / rebook of the Tour – if possible
• A credit / voucher towards an alternative Tour
• A full refund of all costs paid, minus possible cancellation, booking and transaction fees from involved partner institutions (booking software provider, credit card / bank companies, bus companies, hotels, restaurants etc.) for services already booked and paid.

In case You show up at a Tour without having with You the necessary equipment, clothes and water/food as stated in the Product Description and Additional Information on the Site, and/or information sent to You by email and/or SMS prior to the trip, Outdoorlife Norway has the full right to cancel Your booking at the start of the Tour and deny Your participation. In such a case, You agree that no refund will be given by Outdoorlife Norway.

4. Requirements for Participation

Skills and Level of Physical Fitness

Each tour offered by Outdoorlife Norway is labelled with a symbol that indicates the tour’s level of hiking difficulty, as described in our Hiking Difficulty Scale. 

It is important that You do not book tours that exceed your skill-level or physical abilities. Based on the information presented on Our website, it is Your responsibility, prior to booking, to determine whether You are physically-fit and skilled enough to safely complete the tour.

During the tour, if Our guide determines that You are neither skilled nor physically-fit enough to safely complete the hike, Our guide has the right and duty to turn You around at an early stage. In such a case, You will not be eligible for a refund.

Age and size

Each tour offered by Outdoorlife Norway has minimum age and size requirements for participation, which are listed on the respective tours’ webpages. It is Your responsibility to make sure all participants in Your party meet or exceed these requirements prior to booking.

Norwegian traffic law requires that passengers under 36kg/79Lbs. AND/OR 135cm/4ft.5in use child safety seats while being transported in land vehicles.

Certain tours offered by Outdoorlife Norway are suited for children. These tours require that participants are at least 15kg/33Lbs. AND 105cm/3ft.6in. For participants below 36kg/79Lbs. AND/OR 135cm/4ft.5in Outdoorlife Norway will, upon request, provide child safety seats for use during Our tour. If any member of Your group may require a child safety seat, You must communicate this to Us no later than 24-hours before the start of Our tour.

In the event that any member of Your group fails to meet the tour’s specific minimum age and size requirements, and/or You fail to communicate Your need for child safety seat(s) in a timely manner, Outdoorlife Norway reserves the right to deny the participation of any person who does not meet these requirements. In the event that this occurs, You will not receive a refund.

During the booking process, it is possible for You to request a child safety seat(s) as an add-on to Your booking. After the booking process is complete, requests made by You must be submitted to Outdoorlife Norway by email.

Pick-up Location / Meeting Time

During the booking process, You can choose between a list of pick-up locations, each of which have corresponding pick-up times.

One of Outdoorlife Norway’s guides will pick You up at the time and pick-up location time You selected when booking.  You must arrive at Your chosen location at least 10 minutes before the pick-up time. After Your official pick-up has passed, the maximum amount of additional time our guide can wait for You is 10 minutes. If You are not present and ready for pick-up after the additional time has passed, our guide must continue without You. In such a case, You will not be eligible for a refund.

In the event of last-minute changes, You must be reachable by phone at/before Your scheduled pick-up time. Outdoorlife Norway will contact You on the phone number You entered during the booking process. This phone number will also be used by our guide in the event that they cannot locate You for pick-up.

If you don’t remember your pick-up location and/or time, or would like to change it, please contact us*.

*All additional and/or updated information, including Airbnb addresses and requests for pick-up location and/or phone number changes, must be communicated to Outdoorlife Norway within the ‘communication deadline’, which is detailed in the PDF information sheet You are sent with Your booking confirmation.

Pick-up at Airbnb locations

During the booking process, You may choose ‘Airbnb’ as Your pick-up location. In this case, You must contact us with your desired pick-up address*. Pick-up times at Airbnb locations are calculated after we receive the address from You. We will reply with a confirmation, including Your updated pick-up time. Please note: AirBnB pick-ups are limited to Stavanger city center.

*All additional and/or updated information, including Airbnb addresses and requests for pick-up location and/or phone number changes, must be communicated to Outdoorlife Norway within the ‘communication deadline’, which is detailed in the PDF information sheet You are sent with Your booking confirmation.

Dietary requirements

All Our day-hike tours include a warm beverage and snack. Our standard snack is a bag of salted mixed nuts and black current  
juice and/or coffee.

Certain tours offered by Outdoorlife Norway include meals. Our standard meals, which are based on supplying guests with the  
calories needed to maintain energy while hiking/trekking, may include meat, fish, dairy, and allergens (such as gluten, shellfish, nuts, and  
yeast).

If You would like to join one of Our tours that includes a meal(s), and have special dietary requirements, it is Your responsibility to  
communicate this to Us at least 72 hours before the start of the tour. Special dietary requirements include, but are not limited to, meals  
that are: vegetarian/vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, or meals that must be free of allergens.

Specialty foods are substantially more expensive in Norway. Therefore, to offset the increased costs related to supplying guests with food  
that is suitable for specific dietary restrictions, there is a per-person booking surcharge when requesting special food/meals. The  
amount of the surcharge is dependent on the tour booked. Pricing information can be found under the ‘Extras’ tab on each tour page.

To add special food/meals to Your booking, You must do the following:

• Select the ‘Special Diets’ add-on while booking + send information about dietary requirements to Us
• Send Us an email requesting that we add special food/meals to your booking + information about dietary requirements.
  We will send You a payment link for confirmation.

On rare occasion, because of logistical and/or sourcing limitations, it may not be possible for Us to provide meals that meet Your specific  
dietary requirements. If you have uncommon dietary restrictions (serious/deadly allergies to specific foods, for example), You must  
communicate this information to Us, and get confirmation that we can fulfil Your requirements, prior to booking Our tour(s).

5. Risk and Liability

You acknowledge that, while all travel involves an element of risk, Tours offered by Outdoorlife Norway are adventurous in nature, involve a higher level of personal risk than most activities, and can be potentially hazardous/dangerous/lethal.

Risk is always a factor during outdoor Tours/backcountry activities, especially when weather is unfavorable/unpredictable, or when unforeseen events or conditions create a hazardous situation. There is also an inherent risk involved in joining Tours that require being exposed to other people. There are many risks, both natural and/or man-made, that could lead to injury or death, including, but not limited to, lightning, flooding, snow/ice, falling trees and/or rocks, landslides, exposure to allergens and/or illnesses, etc.

Bookings confirmed by Outdoorlife Norway will be allocated suitably qualified guides to meet the client’s requirements. Our guides will be carrying a first-aid kit, water and food supplies, and safety, emergency, navigation, and communication equipment. On some Tours, guides and/or other guests may be accompanied by their dog(s).

Prior to joining Outdoorlife Norway’s Tours, it is Your responsibility to familiarize Yourself with the hiking/trekking skills necessary for joining our Tours, as outlined in Outdoorlife Norway’s Hiking Difficulty Scale. Furthermore, if You or anyone in Your group has concerns related to medical conditions and/or allergies, it is Your responsibility to communicate this to Outdoorlife Norway prior to joining our Tours. During Outdoorlife Norway’s Tours, You must assume responsibility for Your own actions, exercise sound judgment, and be prepared for all types of conditions.

Prior to Tour commencement, Outdoorlife Norway will ask You to sign a Liability Release. Signing of the Liability Release is required.

You hereby assume all such risks and You, Your estate, Your family, heirs and assigns hereby release Outdoorlife Norway and its guides from all claims and causes of action whatsoever arising from any injury, death, or other damages, both pecuniary and non-pecuniary, to You that may occur as a result of Your participation in the Tours offered by Outdoorlife Norway or as a result of the negligence of any party, including the guide or any employee, officer, agent, contractor or assign of Outdoorlife Norway, whether such negligence is passive or active.

Under no circumstances will Outdoorlife Norway be liable to You for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special or exemplary damages arising from any provision of this Agreement or from the provision of any Tours purchased from the Site. Furthermore, the total liability of Outdoorlife Norway arising with respect to this Agreement and the Site shall in no event exceed the total amounts paid by You to Outdoorlife Norway under this Agreement.

6. Insurance

You are strongly encouraged to obtain suitable medical insurance prior to booking a Tour, as well as cancellation insurance.

Cancellations due to guest illness are perceived a risk to be covered by the guest, or their travel insurance. Such cancellations do not induce a refund, unless guests have purchased Cancellation Protection.

You must carry proof of valid travel insurance, covering all registered participants of Your booking and all activities and risks, as well as all geographic regions related to Your Tour with Outdoorlife Norway for the total duration of the Tour. Outdoorlife Norway may ask to present such proof prior to and during the Tour.

7. Privacy

Information collection
We collect information from You when you contact us through our contact form, email, phone, SMS, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, or any other way of communication.

You may, however, visit our site anonymously. You may decline to share certain data with us, in which case we may not be able to provide to you all features and functionality of our Site, Tours and/or Customer Service.

Information use
In order to make a booking, we need personally identifiable information, like Your name, email address, mobile phone number, and gender. In order to execute Tours safely, we need relevant information about Your health and hiking ability.

Any of the information we collect from you may further be used in one of the following ways:

• To operate our customer service (your information helps us to better respond to your questions and individual needs)
• To improve our website
• To send periodic emails
  If at any time you would like to unsubcribe from receiving future emails, we include detailed unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email.
• To generate general tour and guest statistics, used to improve our services. Statistic results will always be made anonymous before published and/or shared.

Sharing information

(a) Personally identifiable information: We will not rent or sell your personally identifiable information to others. We may store personal information in locations outside the direct control of Outdoorlife Norway (for instance, on servers or databases co-located with hosting providers). Any personally identifiable information you elect to make publicly available on our Site, such as posting comments or reviews, will be available to others. If you remove information that you have made public on our Site, copies may remain viewable in cached and archived pages of our Site, or if other users have copied or saved that information.

(b) Non-personally Identifiable Information: We many share non-personally identifiable information (such as anonymous usage data, referring/exit pages and URLs, platform types, number of clicks, etc.) with third parties to help them understand the usage patterns for our website and services. Non-personally identifiable information may be stored indefinitely.

Data protection
Outdoorlife Norway is concerned with protecting your privacy and data, but we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to Outdoorlife Norway or guarantee that your information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed by breach of any of our industry standard physical, technical or managerial safeguards. When you enter sensitive information on our contact forms, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL). No method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. If you have any questions about security on our Site, you can contact us at jcapon@outdoorlifenorway.com.

Data access
We respect your privacy rights and provide you with reasonable access to the personally identifiable information that you may have provided through your use of our Site. If you wish to access, update, correct or delete any data we hold about you, or to request that we delete any infromation about you, please contact us. At your request, we will have any reference to you deleted or blocked in our database.

Data storage
We only retain the personally identifiable information collected from you as long as we need it to fulfill the purposes for which we have initially collected it, unless otherwise required by law. We will retain and use information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements as follows:

• Billing information is retained for a period of 7 years.
• Information on legal transactions between You and Outdoorlife Norway is retained for a period of 10 years.

Data collected by third parties
Except as described in above sections concerning Your privacy, Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested by the customer.

Payments will be made through a secure environment. Outdoorlife Norway uses a third party service to process Your credit card information and does not store credit card details. Outdoorlife Norway uses a third party service to process Your Tour booking.

When third parties process Your booking and creditcard information, Outdoorlife Norway does not determine the means of collecting and use of any personally identifiable information. Therefore, when third parties process Your booking and creditcard information, Outdoorlife Norway is not acting in the capacity of data controller in terms of the European Union’s Directive 95/46/EC on data privacy or the European Data Protection Regulation (“EU Law”) and does not have the associated responsibilities under EU Law. In these cases, Outdoorlife Norway should be considered only as a processor on Your behalf.

Outdoorlife Norway does not own, control or direct the use of any of Your data stored or processed by third parties necessary to process Your booking and credit card details. Outdoorlife Norway is largely unaware of what data is actually being stored or made available by a third party, and does not directly access such data, except as necessary to provide Services to You.

You hereby agree to hold Outdoorlife Norway harmless for any damages that may result should any personal information about You be released by any third parties. Outdoorlife Norway is not responsible for the manner in which necessary third parties collect, handles, disclosures, distributes or otherwise processes such information.