Provider agreement

v2.2 · updated 2026-10-16

This document is currently available in English only.

Vastura Travel — Provider Agreement

Last updated: 2026-10-16 Version 2.2

1. Who this agreement is between

This agreement is between you (the "Provider," "you," an independent travel operator such as a dive shop, boat charter, stable, hiking guide, surf school, guesthouse, wildlife tour operator, or transport provider) and Vastura Travel, a division of Vastura Ltd, a Canadian company based in Alberta. Vastura Ltd is the contracting party.

Registered address: Vastura Ltd, 62431 Range Rd 443, Ardmore, Alberta T0A 1H0, Canada

By registering as a Provider, you agree to this Provider Agreement, our Terms of Service, our Acceptable Use Policy, and our Dispute Resolution Policy, all of which apply to you.

If you operate more than one service — for example, a guesthouse that also runs a dive shop and offers walking tours — each service line is registered, assessed, scored, and published separately under this agreement. References to "your listing" below mean each service line's listing individually, unless stated otherwise.

2. Acceptance gate — this agreement must be accepted before you pay

No subscription starts until you have affirmatively accepted this agreement. Acceptance happens before payment is taken, not after. When you accept, we record:

the agreement_version you accepted
the accepted_at timestamp
your name and email
a hash of your IP address (not the IP address itself — see our Privacy Policy)
a content hash of the exact text you were shown at the time

If we make a material change to this agreement, you must re-accept the updated version before your subscription continues. We keep the acceptance record described above for each version you accept.

3. What Vastura Travel does and does not do

Vastura Travel is a directory. We list you so travellers can find you and contact you directly. We are not your travel agent, booking agent, or sales channel. We do not sell your services, collect payment on your behalf, hold customer funds, or take a commission on any booking. We do not negotiate prices with you and we have no financial interest in how many bookings you receive.

Vastura Travel's only product is the listing itself, paid for by subscription. Everything else — pricing, availability, booking process, cancellation terms, refunds, and service delivery — is entirely your responsibility and entirely between you and the traveller.

4. What Vastura Travel is not — read this before you rely on our assessment process

Vastura Travel is not an inspector, a regulator, a certification body, or a licensing authority. We do not assess, certify, or guarantee the safety of your operation, your equipment, or your premises, and passing any Vastura Travel assessment is not a substitute for, and does not represent, compliance with any law, licence, permit, insurance requirement, or industry certification that applies to your business. Maintaining those remains entirely your responsibility under Section 7.

What our assessor records is an observation, made as a paying customer, on a specific day, scored against criteria we publish openly. It describes a moment in time. It is not a safety verdict and should not be marketed or represented by you as one.

5. The three-stage service matrix

Every Provider — and every service line, where you run more than one — moves through up to three stages:

Stage	Badge on your listing	Question it answers	Method	Vastura Travel's obligation (SLA)
Vetted	Vetted	Are they real?	Registration, licences, and traceable business history are checked to screen out scams.	Within 2 weeks of you joining
Quality checked	Verified	Is it any good?	An announced onsite visit (a Verified visit) by our assessor, with our own photos and scoring against published criteria.	Within 6 months of you joining
Service audited	Blind audit (sometimes spot audit)	How do they actually treat a paying customer?	An anonymous, full-price, unannounced visit — a blind audit or spot audit — by our assessor.	Within 1 year of you joining, then annually

Being listed at all requires passing Vetted — that's the floor. The 6-month and 1-year clocks start on your signup date. If your listing hasn't reached Verified or had a first blind audit yet, it publicly shows "Not yet assessed" rather than a score — we're not going to claim an assessment happened when it hasn't.

These are Vastura Travel's obligations, not aspirations. If we miss one of these deadlines for your listing, you may cancel your subscription for the period affected without penalty, and without it counting as your Section 12 voluntary cancellation for scorecard-retention purposes.

Criteria and scoring vary by service type (17 recognised types on Vastura Travel). Scores are 1–10 per criterion against a published anchor, so a score is checkable against a stated standard.

Dive/water operators only — visible safety kit: your scoring includes an observable category covering things any customer could see for themselves — for example, whether emergency oxygen is visibly present, whether it has a working gauge, and whether a safety briefing was given. This is scored as an observable, not an inspection. It carries no certification, licensing, or regulatory weight, and passing it is not a representation by Vastura Travel that your operation is safe.

6. Consent to assessment, audit, and publication

By listing, you consent to:

an announced Verified visit (Quality checked stage) — the badge displayed on your listing is Verified
an anonymous, unannounced, full-price blind audit (also referred to as a spot audit) at any time after your initial audit, without further notice (Service audited stage, and its annual repeats)
publication of your scores, per-criterion, including low scores, alongside the assessment date and the assessor's role (Verified visit vs. blind audit). This consent is a condition of listing, not something you can opt out of while remaining listed.

You also consent to photography, video and audio capture at your premises during a Verified visit (announced), and to Vastura Travel using that material — and licensing it back to you for your own marketing — in connection with your listing and Vastura Travel's own promotion of it. We will tell you when we are capturing, and you can ask us not to photograph a specific area.

We will not capture during a blind audit. A blind-audit assessor attends as an ordinary paying customer and does not film or record. That is a firm rule, not a courtesy: covert capture would compromise your guests' privacy and would make the assessment less trustworthy, not more.

You agree not to attempt to identify, influence, or treat differently a blind-audit assessor. Doing so is treated as an integrity failure under Section 14.

7. What you must do as a Provider

By listing on Vastura Travel, you agree to:

provide accurate, current rates and availability information
honour the terms you advertise on your listing (price, inclusions, cancellation policy, etc.) — what a traveller sees is what they should get
maintain any licences, permits, insurance, and safety standards required by your local law and industry for your activity type — Vastura Travel does not verify, certify, or take responsibility for these; that stays entirely yours (see Section 4)
notify Vastura Travel promptly of any material change to your operation (ownership change, closure, loss of a required licence or permit, etc.)
respond to traveller enquiries made through Vastura Travel in a reasonable time

8. Audit cost recovery — capped, and only after the fact

When our assessor conducts a Service audited visit (or its annual repeat), the arrangement is precise, and it is capped so neither side can push past it:

The assessor pays full price at the time, as a normal customer would, with no prior arrangement and no discount.
After the visit is complete, Vastura Travel sends you an expense invoice to recover that cost.
You comp exactly one service, once, for one person — for example, if the assessor booked and paid for 5 nights, you cover 1 night for 1 guest; if they paid for a day of diving, you cover that one day's diving for 1 diver; if they rented equipment, you cover that one rental. Not the whole stay, not the whole trip, and never a party or group — a single seat, a single room, a single rental.
You never pay Vastura Travel a fee for the audit. You forgo revenue on a single service, after the fact — no money moves from you to Vastura Travel in connection with an audit.
No travel expenses are ever recoverable from you — not flights, not fuel, not transfers, not meals. If it isn't the single service itself, it isn't yours to cover.
This cap is fixed. You cannot offer to cover more, and our assessor cannot ask for more.
Nothing about the visit is published until the expense is settled. You cannot delay or avoid a poor result becoming public by refusing or stalling on settlement.

8a. If you don't settle

We do not publish your result to punish non-payment — publication stays blocked until the invoice is settled, exactly as above. But you cannot keep your listing and suppress your assessment indefinitely.

If an audit expense invoice is unpaid 30 days after it is issued, your listing may be suspended (hidden, with billing continuing) and your business added to our non-payment list.
While you are on that list, you cannot hold a listing on Vastura Travel, and a new application under the same business name, email or website will be flagged.

Notice must be provably delivered before suspension takes effect. We do not treat an invoice as delivered simply because we sent it — a message that reaches a spam folder is indistinguishable from one that reaches no folder at all. Our system requires proof of delivery (opened receipt, reply, or portal-side acknowledgment) before the 30-day clock is counted as running. If you never received an invoice, the 30-day clock never started.

To clear it: settle the outstanding invoice in full, plus a flat penalty of USD $100. There is no interest — the penalty is a single fixed amount regardless of how long the invoice is outstanding.
Once cleared, you may re-apply. We are not obliged to accept you.

Why the penalty is what it is, plainly: we paid your full public price up front and carried that cost while waiting. Non-payment costs us real cash, ties up money we need elsewhere, and takes time to chase. You are out only your consumables and staff time on a service we already paid full price for. The $100 reflects our loss, not yours, and it exists to make ignoring the invoice the expensive option.

Why it works this way: paying full price at the time, with no prior arrangement, means our assessor gets exactly the experience any paying customer gets — nothing rehearsed, nothing improved because they were expected. Reimbursing only after the fact, and only for a single service, keeps the incentive honest in both directions.

9. Audit lifecycle

An audit moves through these steps, in this order:

Draft — the assessor scores the visit while on site.
Submitted — the draft is locked and can no longer be edited by the assessor.
Assessor confirms departure — the assessor states they have physically left your premises/location.
Released to you — only after Step 3, the scored audit is released for your review.
Provider review window — you have 7 days to review before publication.
Published.

Step 3 exists for personal-safety reasons, and we're not going to soften that. Our assessor is often working alone, sometimes in a remote location. They must never still be on site when you read a poor score. This sequencing is not negotiable and is not open to a faster turnaround at your request.

During your review window, you may correct facts — a wrong address, wrong hours, a factual detail we got wrong. You may not dispute or alter scores through this process.

If we hear nothing, the report publishes. If we do not hear from you within the 7-day window, the assessment is deemed accepted and proceeds to publication. Silence during the review window is treated as acceptance of the factual record we have compiled — this is not a courtesy timer, it is how the window works.

Instead of disputing a score, you may request another audit by a different assessor. There is no fee for this, and you may request as many as you like.

The terms are exactly the same as the first audit: our assessor pays full price at the time, and afterwards you comp that one service for one person. Nothing else changes hands.

Both scorecards are retained and published, regardless of which is more favourable to you — we do not delete a result because a later one was better. The dates are shown, so anyone reading can see which is current.

Why there is no fee: if we charged you to challenge a score, we would earn money from disputes — and that would give us a reason to want scores people feel the need to challenge. The whole point of what we do is that our income never depends on what we find. Charging for a re-audit would quietly break that.

10. Publication — including low scores

We publish your per-criterion scores, not just an overall number, along with the assessment date and the assessor's role. This includes low scores. A poor-but-honest result is published exactly as readily as a good one — that consistency is what makes any of our scores worth a traveller's trust, and a low score alone is not, by itself, grounds for removing your listing (see Section 14).

11. Media limits

To keep listings fast, consistent, and fair across tiers, media on your listing is capped by tier:

Tier	Images	Video embeds
Listed	4	2
Featured	8	3
Network Partner	14	5

Vastura Travel does not host video. All video is an embed from a third-party platform (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo) that you provide the link for. You are responsible for the content, rights, and hosting of any video you embed.

12. Subscription terms, tiers, and billing

Vastura Travel offers three subscription tiers, billed monthly in USD:

Tier	Price (USD/month)
Listed	$39
Featured	$99
Network Partner	$199

Subscriptions auto-renew monthly unless cancelled.
You may cancel at any time. Cancellation stops billing at the end of the current billing period — you keep your listing live until then, and you are not charged again after that period ends. See Section 15 for how this differs from dismissal, and Section 16 for what happens to your listing content and scorecard on cancellation.
No refunds are issued for partial months, whether you cancel, are suspended, or are banned. See Section 17.

12.1 Founding-member terms

If you register as a Provider before January 1, 2027, you qualify as a Founding Member and receive 50% off your subscription tier for 12 months, measured from your own registration date (not a fixed calendar date).

Our tier prices are flat and published. Everyone pays the same for the same tier. We do not run a separate community rate — the fairness is one price per tier, applied identically to every operator.

13. Content licence

By submitting text, photos, or video links for your listing, you grant Vastura Travel a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to display, reproduce, and format that content for the purpose of operating your listing on Vastura Travel and promoting Vastura Travel generally (e.g., in marketing that shows example listings). You confirm you own or have the right to submit all content you provide, and that it does not infringe any third party's rights.

13a. Going around Vastura Travel — applies to both of us

If Vastura Travel introduces you to a content creator, ambassador, or assessor, and that person produces work for you, that engagement runs through Vastura Travel — not directly between the two of you.

This binds Vastura Travel too. We will not go around you to deal directly with someone we met through you, on the same terms. A clause that only restrained one side would be worth nothing and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

What this covers, narrowly:

It applies only to people actually introduced to you through Vastura Travel — not to anyone you already knew, found yourself, or would have met anyway.
It lasts 12 months from the end of the engagement we introduced.
If a creator approaches you directly, tell us. We are not asking you to refuse them; we are asking you not to arrange it privately and leave us unaware, because an undisclosed arrangement between a creator and a Provider we grade contaminates both.
It does not restrict who you may hire generally, what you pay, or your business in any other respect.

Why this exists: the material risk is not lost revenue. It is a creator quietly taking extra nights or free trips from you in exchange for coverage, with nobody told. That makes the coverage dishonest and, by association, makes our assessment look bought. Keeping these arrangements visible is what keeps both clean.

Consequence: for a creator, removal from our network. For a Provider, it is handled under the disciplinary ladder in Section 15 — not automatic dismissal.

14. What can end a listing

A listing can be warned, suspended, or ended (see the disciplinary ladder in Section 15) on these grounds:

Customer complaints — substantiated individually, or forming a pattern over time.
Safety issues — to be clear, Vastura Travel does not assess safety (Section 4). But we may act on a credible allegation or a reported incident. Reacting to information that reaches us is not the same as certifying its absence when nothing has been reported — we are responding, not inspecting.
Fraud.
Misrepresentation — dishonesty between what you advertise and what you deliver.
Vastura Travel's discretion — including fit. Vastura Travel retains sole discretion to end a listing for any reason it considers sufficient, including reasons unrelated to your conduct or your score. Without limiting that discretion, this expressly includes:

a breakdown in the working relationship, or an inability to work together productively;
a judgement that your business is not a fit for the Vastura Travel brand or the network we are building;
a change in the categories, regions or kinds of operator we choose to cover;
any other reason Vastura Travel considers sufficient.

A decision under this section is final and not subject to appeal. Vastura Travel will tell you that the decision has been made and will identify which of the above applies, but is not required to explain, justify, evidence or debate the decision, and will not enter into correspondence about it.

This is not a disciplinary step and is not a finding against you. It does not follow the ladder in Section 15, requires no warning, and is not a statement that you did anything wrong. Where a listing ends under this section and no other ground applies, Vastura Travel will say so if asked by you, so that you are not left carrying an implication of misconduct.

What happens to your money. Your subscription stops at the end of the current paid period and is not refunded (Section 16). Where Vastura Travel ends a listing purely for fit — with no complaint, safety concern, fraud or misrepresentation involved — Vastura Travel may at its discretion refund the unused portion. This is a goodwill practice, not an entitlement.

Why this clause exists (plainly): we are a small, curated directory. Our name goes on every operator we list. We need to be able to step away from a relationship that is not working, or from a business that does not fit what we are building, without having to prove misconduct or run a disciplinary process. This clause is that ability, and nothing more.

A low score is not, on its own, grounds for removal. A poor-but-honest result gets published and stays published (Section 10) — that's what makes our scores worth reading. We remove listings for the reasons above, not for scoring badly.

15. Disciplinary ladder

If a concern is raised about your listing under Section 14, Vastura Travel applies the following steps:

Warning — issued for a first substantiated complaint or a minor gap between what you advertised and what you delivered.
Suspension — your listing is hidden from Vastura Travel. Your subscription continues to bill during suspension. Being hidden is the penalty — suspension is not a billing pause.
Permanent ban — applied for confirmed fraud, confirmed misrepresentation, a substantiated safety incident, concealment of an incident, retaliation against a reviewer, or a repeat offence.

No step on this ladder proceeds on notice we cannot prove you received. Escalation — warning, suspension or ban — happens only where our records show the notice as delivered, opened or viewed. A notice merely marked as sent does not count, and the step waits until that evidence exists.

Why we bill through suspension: suspension exists to protect travellers by hiding a listing under review, not to give you a free pause — that would create an incentive to invite suspension. The subscription pays for our ongoing administrative cost of managing your account regardless of listing visibility.

16. Cancellation vs. dismissal

Cancellation — you choose to leave Vastura Travel. Billing stops at the end of your current period. No refund of the current period, but no further charges either.
Dismissal (ban under Section 15) — Vastura Travel removes you for cause. No refund is given, pro-rated or otherwise, for the period in which dismissal occurs.

Either way, here's what happens to your listing content and your scorecard, and you agree to this now, before you pay:

Removed: your contact details, booking links, WhatsApp number, area-affiliate placement, and search placement.
Retained: your scorecard. It is a factual record of a visit that happened, and it does not disappear because you left — whether you scored a 9.1 or a 4.2.
Demoted: your archived listing ranks below every current paying member.
Your archived page will read: "No longer listed · Vastura Travel has no current relationship with this operator."

Why neutrality matters here: every assessment archives the same way regardless of score. That consistency is the thing that stops this policy from looking like a punishment — a good record isn't quietly deleted as a favour, and a bad one isn't kept as a punishment. It's the same rule either way.

Why no refund on dismissal: dismissal follows a failure of standards you agreed to when you joined — it's a consequence of that failure, not a service failure by Vastura Travel. Refunding on dismissal would also mean the threat of a refund claim discourages us from enforcing standards, which undermines the whole point of scoring honestly in the first place.

17. No refunds

Subscription fees are non-refundable in all cases — including on warning, suspension, dismissal/ban, or voluntary cancellation — except where required by law. Pro-rated refunds are not offered.

18. Termination

Vastura Travel may suspend or terminate your listing under the disciplinary ladder in Section 15, or for non-payment of subscription fees. You may terminate by cancelling under Section 16. Either party may terminate this agreement on written notice if the other is in material breach that remains uncured after a reasonable opportunity to fix it, except that bans for fraud, safety incidents, or misrepresentation under Section 15 may be immediate.

19. No agency, partnership, or joint venture

Nothing in this agreement creates an agency, partnership, joint venture, or employment relationship between you and Vastura Travel. You are an independent business. Vastura Travel has no authority to bind you, and you have no authority to bind Vastura Travel, to any third party.

20. Vastura Digital

Vastura Digital is a division of Vastura Ltd, as is Vastura Travel. You may engage Vastura Digital for websites, software, apps or other services. If you do:

Nothing you buy from Vastura Digital changes your score, ranking or placement on Vastura Travel. Our assessors score your business as a traveller finds it, against published criteria, and no commercial relationship with any Vastura business enters into that.
That said, if a website, booking system or tool genuinely makes your business better for your guests, an assessment will find a better business. That is an honest outcome of improving your operation, not a benefit of being a Vastura Digital client — any operator who improves the same things would score the same way.
Your listing will state that you are a Vastura Digital client, so travellers can see it.

21. Governing law

This agreement is governed by the laws of Alberta, Canada.

22. Changes to this agreement

We may update this agreement from time to time. The "Last updated" date will change when we do. Material changes require you to re-accept under Section 2 before your subscription continues; non-material changes take effect on posting.

23. Contact

Questions about this agreement can be sent to travel@vastura.ca.