What kinds of travel can you buy or sell on SpareHolidays?
SpareHolidays covers essentially any travel a supplier will allow to transfer, which is a wide range of categories rather than just flights. You can buy or sell flights, hotel bookings, hotel and travel vouchers, train tickets, bus tickets, car rentals, cruises, and full vacation packages, usually at a discount of 30 to 60 percent because the original traveller can no longer use them. Each category transfers through its own supplier process, an airline name change for flights, a guest-name change for hotels, or a handover for vouchers, and the listing states which rules apply before you buy. Whether a particular booking qualifies depends on the supplier's transfer policy, and the AI proof check confirms the booking is genuine and eligible first. The same protections cover all of them, so a short hotel stay and a long-haul flight are bought with exactly the same escrow and verification behind them.
How long does it take to get paid as a seller?
Payment timing is tied to buyer confirmation, which means you are paid soon after the booking is genuinely transferred rather than on a fixed delay. Once a buyer pays into escrow and you complete the supplier transfer, the funds are released to you as soon as the buyer confirms the booking matches the agreed details, which can be the same day. If the buyer does not actively confirm, the payment auto-releases to you 72 hours after the travel date, so a passive buyer can never trap your money indefinitely. This balances both sides fairly: the buyer gets a window of several days to check everything is correct, and you are guaranteed payment for a booking you delivered as described. Because every buyer is paying into a regulated escrow account before you transfer anything, you always know the money is there waiting before you act on your side.
Do you need to verify your identity to use SpareHolidays?
Identity verification is required for sellers before they list, and it is the single step that makes the whole marketplace trustworthy for everyone. Sellers verify through Stripe, the same identity technology used by millions of businesses in over 40 countries, with an official document and a short liveness check. Your documents are processed securely by Stripe and are never shown on your public profile or shared with the people you trade with. The reason it is needed before listing, not after, is that every other member verified too, so you are always dealing with confirmed, accountable people rather than anonymous accounts. Buyers benefit directly from this even before they sell anything, because it is precisely why a verified seller's listing can be trusted. Verification is not a barrier to clear but the foundation that lets strangers safely exchange bookings worth hundreds of euros with confidence on both sides.
What happens if there is a problem with your purchase?
If a purchase has a problem you are protected by escrow and a dispute process, so a bad transfer never costs you the money you paid. Your payment stays in Stripe escrow until you confirm the booking is correctly in your name, and your dispute window stays open until two calendar days after your trip ends, so you have time to raise any issue. If the seller never transfers the booking, or the transfer does not match what was agreed, you open a dispute and the escrowed funds are not released to the seller. In practice more than 90 percent of transfers complete cleanly, but the design assumes something could go wrong and keeps your money safe until you confirm otherwise. This is the core advantage over a private sale, where you would have already paid a stranger with no way to claw the money back. Here, payment only moves once you are satisfied the trip is genuinely yours.
How are listings checked before they go live?
Every listing is checked by both automated AI moderation and platform fraud screening before it can appear to buyers, so what you browse has already passed review. When a seller uploads booking proof, the AI reads the document, confirms it matches the supplier, dates, and route in the listing, and produces a verification score, while separate checks flag transfer-rule and fraud risks. Listings that fail are held back rather than published, which is how roughly 240 of the riskiest submissions are kept away from buyers. This screening sits on top of seller identity verification, so a listing has to clear both a verified human and a verified booking before going live. The result is that a buyer is not the first line of defence against a fake listing, the system is. By the time a trip reaches you, its proof, its transfer rules, and its seller have all been confirmed.