spareholidays

How to Buy Someone Else's Travel Booking

By SpareHolidays, Editorial team

Buying a transferable booking is not like booking normally. The supplier has to move the reservation into your name, and that step — not the price — decides whether the purchase completes.

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Can you actually buy another traveller's booking?

Yes, where the supplier permits it and processes the change itself. For an EU package that permission is a legal entitlement rather than a favour; everywhere else it is whatever the carrier or property has decided.

Article 9 of the EU package travel directive lets a traveller transfer a covered package to someone who satisfies all the conditions applicable to the contract, by giving the organiser reasonable notice on a durable medium. Notice at least 7 days before the package starts is always deemed reasonable; shorter notice can still be reasonable, and the transferee still has to meet the contract's conditions — a visa or an age requirement does not disappear because the name changed.Source: EUR-Lex — Directive (EU) 2015/2302 on package travel, Article 9 (checked 2026-08-29)

For flights and hotels there is no equivalent right. Several European carriers publish a name-change fee and will move a booking for it, while most legacy and long-haul carriers correct a spelling and nothing more.

What never works, in any category, is travelling on a reservation still in somebody else's name. Identity is checked at the gate and at reception, and a mismatch means being turned away from a booking somebody else paid for.

What order do the steps actually happen in?

For a flight, hotel or package: you buy, the seller asks the supplier to change the traveller, uploads what the supplier did, and you confirm it. A voucher is different — its code can be released to you straight after payment. The seller normally starts the supplier conversation, because that is who the supplier will speak to first.

  • You read the supplier's transfer rule on the listing, then buy at the asking price or make an offer the seller accepts.
  • The seller requests the change through that supplier's official process rather than a workaround.
  • The seller uploads evidence of the outcome: a reissued confirmation, an amended booking, or the supplier's written reply.
  • You confirm in your dashboard that the booking is genuinely yours, or raise a dispute if it is not.

Which suppliers will move a booking to a new name?

The ones that publish a price for doing it. A published fee is the reliable signal: where a supplier prints one, transfers are routine, and where it prints nothing they usually cannot happen at all.

Ryanair charges 115 euros or pounds per passenger to change a name online and 160 through its contact centre or an airport desk. The online route closes 24 hours before departure; the assisted route stays open until 2 hours before.Source: Ryanair — Ryanair help centre — changing passenger details and the table of fees (checked 2026-08-29)

Flights are the most restrictive category and hotels the most variable, with a direct booking generally easier to move than one made through a platform. Packages sit between them with a statutory right behind them in the EU.

Work out which category you are looking at before anything else. The category sets the odds far more than the individual listing does.

What happens to my money between paying and travelling?

The buyer's card is charged in full at checkout. The payment is split immediately by Stripe: the seller's share goes straight into the seller's own Stripe account, and SpareHolidays receives only its fee. SpareHolidays does not hold the seller's money, but it does control the payout date — the seller cannot withdraw their share to their bank until the confirmation window closes. The seller is paid out only after the buyer confirms the transfer, or the confirmation window closes without a dispute. If the transfer never happens, or the purchase is cancelled before that point, the buyer is refunded.

The Terms set the payout clock: for a booking with travel dates the seller is scheduled to be paid 2 calendar days after the buyer's trip ends, and for a voucher without dates 7 days after the buyer confirms the transfer.Source: SpareHolidays — SpareHolidays Terms — payment handling and fund release (checked 2026-08-29)

The seller reaches the money after you confirm, or after the confirmation window closes with no dispute raised — not on payment. So a seller who abandons the handover does not get paid, and you are not chasing somebody for money already banked. Where a transfer goes wrong the outcome is decided under those Terms rather than automatically, and it can be a full refund, a partial one, or release to the seller.

Questions buyers ask

Can I buy a flight directly from another passenger?

Only where the carrier permits it, and only through the carrier's own process. The seller makes the request; you never contact the airline yourself.

easyJet charges 60 pounds per passenger per flight to change a name online and 65 through customer services, with both closing 2 hours before departure and airport changes possible later. Changing the name and reselling the ticket are two different things in its terms: the name change is permitted and priced, while the same section states you cannot resell your ticket and reserves the right to cancel a booking without a refund where easyJet reasonably believes it was resold or made available for resale, including through an online marketplace.Source: easyJet — easyJet fees and charges (checked 2026-08-30)Source: easyJet — easyJet Terms and Conditions, Passenger changes (checked 2026-08-31)

Several European low-cost carriers do this routinely and charge for it. Most legacy and US carriers permit a spelling correction and refuse a genuine change of passenger, which is why long-haul listings are rarer here than short-haul European ones.

Where a carrier does permit it, ask whether the seller has already made the change or merely intends to. A completed change with a reissued confirmation attached is worth more to you than a promised one.

What if the supplier refuses the transfer after I pay?

A transfer that never starts and times out is cancelled and refunded. Once a transfer has progressed or a dispute is open, the evidence is reviewed and the outcome can be a full refund, a partial one, or release to the seller — a seller is not paid for a handover that did not happen, but the result is decided rather than automatic.

What a refund cannot return is the time. A refusal landing days before departure leaves you with your money and no holiday, which is the argument for checking the supplier's published rule before paying.

Refusals cluster around three causes, and all three are checkable in advance: transfers forbidden outright, the change window already closed, or the fare class excluded. The first is in the carrier's published policy, the second is the travel date, and the third is in the fare rules on the original confirmation.

How long does a booking transfer take to complete?

It depends entirely on the supplier and the channel. A change a seller can make themselves online can take minutes; one that goes through a call centre or an email queue can take days.

A property under no obligation to hurry may simply not reply before the deadline, and that risk is what makes a late purchase unwise rather than merely cheap.

Ask the seller which route their supplier uses before you buy. It is a question with a short answer, and it tells you more about whether the purchase will complete than the price does.

Related pages

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