Privacy Policy
Last updated: [PUBLICATION DATE]
This policy explains what personal data trip.expert handles, why, for how long, and what rights you have over it. It covers three groups of people: guests who chat with an AI assistant on a property's page, property owners who hold an account with us, and visitors to this website.
trip.expert is operated by [LEGAL ENTITY NAME], [REGISTERED ADDRESS] ("we", "us"). For any privacy question, or to exercise the rights described in section 8, contact [PRIVACY CONTACT EMAIL].
1. Who is responsible for your data
Our role differs depending on whose data it is, which determines who you should contact first.
- Guest conversations — we act as a processor. When you chat with a property's assistant, that property is the controller: it decides that the assistant exists, what it knows, and what it does with your enquiry. We process that data only on the property's documented instructions, under a data processing agreement that every property accepts before its assistant goes live. You may address any request to the property or to us; if you come to us, we will act on it under that agreement and tell you what we did.
- Owner accounts, billing, support and this website — we are the controller. We decide why and how that data is processed and we answer for it directly.
2. If you are a guest using an assistant
What we handle
- Your messages and the assistant's replies, with the language detected from what you wrote.
- Contact details you choose to submit — an email address or a phone number, and your message — if you use the "contact the property" form. This is optional and happens only when you fill it in.
- A session token stored in your own browser so a conversation survives a page reload.
- Basic usage events from the chat widget, such as that it was opened, used to operate the service.
What we deliberately do not keep
We do not store your IP address or your browser's user-agent string against your conversation. Our database has no field for either. Your IP address is used only as a short-lived counter key to prevent abuse — for example to cap how many conversations one network may start in a day — and those counters expire within 24 hours. The lawful basis for that limited use is our legitimate interest in keeping the service available and preventing misuse, as recognised in Recital 49 of the GDPR. We set no advertising or analytics cookies and use no third-party tracking anywhere on the service.
Please do not send sensitive information
The assistant is a general enquiry tool. Please do not enter payment card details, identity document numbers, health information, or anything else you would not want the property to read: the property can see its conversations, and your message is sent to our AI provider in order to generate a reply.
Automated processing
Replies are generated automatically by a large language model, and messages are automatically screened for unsafe content. This produces information, not decisions: nothing here has a legal or similarly significant effect on you within the meaning of Article 22. A person at the property reads any enquiry you send through the contact form.
How to reach your own conversation
Because we hold nothing that identifies you — no account, no IP address, no device fingerprint — we cannot find your conversation from your name or email address alone, and we are not required to collect more data in order to be able to (Article 11). Your session token is the only handle that exists. You can clear the conversation from your own browser at any time using the widget's reset control, and you can send us the token to have the stored copy erased.
3. If you are a property owner
- Account data — your name, email address, and password, stored only as a salted hash and never in readable form. If you sign in with Google we receive your name and email address from Google instead of a password.
- Property data — the address, contact details and information you enter about your property so the assistant can answer questions about it.
- Billing data — your subscription status and identifiers issued by our payment provider. We never see or store your card details; payments are handled by Paddle acting as Merchant of Record.
- Support conversations — your questions to the in-app support assistant and the answers given, used to diagnose and improve it.
- Security and audit records — records of significant account events, kept to investigate faults and misuse.
- Your acceptance of our terms — which version you accepted and when, so that both sides have a record.
We process this to provide the service and perform our contract with you (Art. 6(1)(b)), to meet legal and accounting obligations (Art. 6(1)(c)), and for our legitimate interests in securing and improving the platform (Art. 6(1)(f)). Optional marketing messages are sent only with your consent, which you may withdraw at any time.
You can view, correct and export your data from your dashboard, and you can close your account there. Closing an account deletes it and its content, subject to the retention periods in section 7.
4. If you visit this website
If you submit the contact form we receive your email address or phone number, optionally your name, and your message, so that we can reply — our legitimate interest in responding to enquiries. Our servers keep standard technical logs needed to run and secure the site, for no longer than [SERVER LOG RETENTION]. We use no advertising cookies and no third-party analytics.
5. Who else receives data
We do not sell personal data and we do not share it for advertising. We use the providers below, each bound by a data processing agreement to act only on our instructions. A current list is maintained here and we will update it before adding a new one.
| Provider | Purpose | Data involved |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | Generating replies and building the search index | Chat messages and property knowledge content. Not used to train their models. |
| Paddle | Payments, as Merchant of Record | Owner billing details and payment data, collected by Paddle directly |
| Optional sign-in, and address lookup while an owner edits a property | Account name and email on sign-in; the address text an owner types | |
| [EMAIL PROVIDER] | Sending account emails | Owner name and email address |
| [HOSTING PROVIDER], [REGION] | Hosting the service and its database | All of the above, at rest |
A property owner necessarily sees the conversations held with their own assistant and any enquiry sent to them. A property may also switch on notifications to an external messaging service of its choice; where it does, it makes that choice as controller and we tell it what that means. We disclose data to authorities only where the law requires it.
6. International transfers
Personal data is stored in the European Economic Area. Some providers above process data outside it, including in the United States. Where that happens we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses together with supplementary safeguards, or on an adequacy decision where one covers that provider. You may request a copy of the relevant safeguards from us.
7. How long we keep things
Deletion is automatic. These periods are enforced by scheduled jobs, not by request:
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Guest conversations and enquiries | 12 months, then permanently deleted |
| Conversation stored in your own browser | 7 days, or until you clear it |
| Abuse-prevention counters keyed on IP address | Under 24 hours |
| Owner support conversations | 90 days |
| Website contact enquiries | [WEBSITE ENQUIRY RETENTION], then deleted |
| Owner accounts and property content | While the account is active, then 12 months after a trial lapses or a subscription is cancelled. We email a warning 60 and 30 days beforehand |
| Invoicing and accounting records | As required by law, typically [ACCOUNTING RETENTION] years |
8. Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the right to access your data, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to its processing, and to receive it in a portable, machine-readable format. Where we rely on consent you may withdraw it at any time, without affecting processing already carried out.
Write to [PRIVACY CONTACT EMAIL] and we will respond within one month. Owners can exercise most of these rights immediately from the dashboard. Guests should read section 2 on how a conversation can be identified; where a request concerns a conversation, we act under the property's instructions and will tell you if we forward it.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data you may complain to your local data protection authority. Ours is [SUPERVISORY AUTHORITY].
9. Cookies and browser storage
We use only what is strictly necessary to make the service work, which is why you are not asked to accept cookies:
- Session and security cookies in the owner dashboard, to keep you signed in and to protect forms against cross-site request forgery.
- Local storage in the chat widget, holding your session token and recent messages so a conversation is not lost on reload. It clears itself after 7 days.
We set no advertising, profiling or analytics cookies. Fonts and styles are served from our own servers, so viewing our website or chatting with an assistant does not reveal your address to any third party. Where a property has added a video, it is not loaded until you choose to play it, and we tell you first that doing so contacts the video provider.
One exception, in the owner dashboard only: where a property owner has added YouTube videos to their media library, that page loads preview images from YouTube, so Google receives the owner's IP address. It affects account holders viewing their own library, never guests.
10. Security
Traffic is encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes. Each property's data is isolated from every other property's, and access is refused rather than merely hidden. We apply rate limits and automated abuse controls, restrict administrative access, and collect the minimum client information the product allows. If a breach occurs that is likely to put your rights at risk, we will notify the supervisory authority within 72 hours and inform you where the law requires it.
11. Children
The service is intended for adults arranging or managing travel. We do not knowingly collect data from children. If you believe a child has sent us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.
12. Changes to this policy
We will update this page whenever our processing changes and revise the date at the top. If a change materially affects you, we will notify account holders directly.
Questions? Write to [PRIVACY CONTACT EMAIL] or use our contact form.