Terms of service

Samia Venue runs an online marketplace that connects people looking for event space (“clients”) with the people who own and run those spaces (“venues”). We list venues, coordinate the booking between both sides, secure your payment, verify venues before they go live, and handle support and disputes.

We are an intermediary and a service provider — we are not the venue. When a booking is confirmed, the agreement to host your event is between you and the venue. Samia is not the venue operator and is not a party to the physical hire of the space. These terms cover how you use our platform and the service we provide around your booking.

You need an account to book or to list a venue, and you must be at least 18 to create one. Keep your details accurate and your sign-in credentials to yourself — activity on your account is treated as yours.

• Use the platform only for genuine bookings and listings.
• Don’t misrepresent who you are, your venue, or your event.
• Make and complete your booking through Samia, and don’t ask the other side to take it off the platform.
• Follow the Community & Conduct Guidelines, which form part of these terms.

Samia Venue works on a request-to-confirm model. An enquiry is a request, not a booking: you choose a venue, date, and guest count, and a hold is placed on your payment method. The venue reviews and confirms. A booking exists only once it is confirmed through the platform.

Your payment is held, not charged. It is captured only after your event has taken place. The full detail is in our Payment Terms.

Samia sits in the middle and coordinates the booking, but the event itself involves three parties. So it is fair — and honest — to be clear about who owns which part. Each side is responsible for its own part, and no one blanket-disclaims their share.

This same split runs through all of our policies, and none of them contradict it. Nothing here removes a responsibility that the law says a party must keep.

Samia verifies every venue before it goes live and stands behind the accuracy of what we show you. If a listing turns out to be false or misleading — a feature shown that doesn’t exist, an amenity claimed that was never there — that is a verification failure on our part first, and the venue’s for misrepresenting it. Either way, it is not something we push onto you.

The venue is responsible for everything at and inside the venue on the day: the actual service, condition, cleanliness, staff, safety, and working facilities such as air conditioning, power, and water, along with its licences and honouring your booking. The venue also sets its own house rules — things like conduct, noise, décor, outside catering, timing, and damage terms. Samia surfaces those rules but does not write them.

A venue’s house rules are shown to you before you commit. Confirming a booking means you accept that venue’s house rules, and they apply to your event.

Searching, comparing, and booking is free for clients — there are no booking fees. Your payment is held and only captured after the event. Samia earns a fee from each booking, taken from the amount you pay through the platform; it doesn’t change the price you see when you book.

Payments are made by mobile money (EVC Plus, ZAAD, SAHAL) or card, and are processed by WaafiPay. Samia secures and holds funds as part of the service but is not a bank, and never stores your card details. Full detail is in our Payment Terms.

What happens when plans change is set out in our Cancellation & Refund Policy. In short: if you cancel any time before the event day, your held payment is released in full. On or after the event day, self-cancellation is closed and anything that went wrong is handled as a dispute instead.

If something goes wrong at your event, our Dispute Resolution Policy explains how we mediate and decide the outcome. Both policies form part of these terms, so please read them before you book.

Reviews keep the marketplace honest, so they must come from real bookings and reflect your genuine experience. Venues are responsible for the accuracy of their listings — photos, capacity, price, amenities, and house rules.

We may edit or remove content that is misleading, offensive, or unrelated to a real event, and we may suspend accounts that repeatedly break these terms or our conduct guidelines.

Our responsibility is to our part of the service — running the platform, holding your payment securely, verifying venues in good faith, coordinating the booking, and protecting your data. We work hard at all of these, but we can’t promise the platform is error-free or available at every moment.

To the fullest extent the law allows, Samia’s total liability for any loss connected to a booking is limited to the amount you paid through the platform for that booking, or the fee we earned on it. We are not liable for the venue’s own acts, its condition, or its delivery of the service, beyond our role above and our dispute process.

These terms, and any dispute about them, are governed by the laws applicable where Samia Venue operates, and disputes are subject to the courts of that jurisdiction.

Disputes about a specific booking are handled first through our Dispute Resolution Policy before any outside forum.

We may update these terms as the service grows. If a change is significant, we’ll tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect. Continuing to use Samia Venue after that means you accept the updated terms.