Privacy Policy
This page explains what happens to your information when you use this website. It describes how the site actually works rather than generic legal boilerplate.
In short
- We do not use cookies, analytics, advertising pixels, or any tracking scripts.
- The only personal data we collect is what you send us in a quote request, plus basic technical details about that request.
- We use your details to answer your enquiry and plan your trip. We never sell them.
- You can ask us to show you, correct, or delete your data at any time by emailing hello@trailsoflanka.com.
Who we are
Trails of Lanka plans private tours in Sri Lanka. This policy covers the website at https://trailsoflanka.com and the quote-request service behind it. For anything in this policy, contact hello@trailsoflanka.com.
Cookies and tracking
This website sets no cookies. It does not use local storage, session storage, analytics, advertising pixels, session recording, or any third-party tracking script. There is no consent banner because there is nothing to consent to.
Your language choice is carried in the page address rather than stored on your device, which is why switching language changes the web address instead of setting a preference cookie.
Information you give us
If you submit a quote request, we receive what you typed into the form:
- Your name.
- Your contact detail — an email address or a phone number, whichever you choose to give.
- Your travel dates or the month you are considering.
- How many adults and children are travelling.
- Your preferences for vehicle, accommodation level, guide language, and budget range.
- The tour you were looking at, if you started from a specific package.
- Anything you write in the free-text notes box.
Information collected automatically with a quote request
When you submit the form, our server also records a small amount of technical context. This helps us reply in the right language and at a sensible hour, and understand which pages lead to enquiries:
- An approximate location — country, region, city, and time zone. This is not precise location and does not come from your device GPS.
- Whether you used a phone, tablet, or computer.
- Your browser’s language setting and time zone.
- The page you submitted from, the page that referred you, and any campaign tags in the web address.
Your IP address is used at the moment you submit — to look up that approximate location and to limit how many submissions come from one place, which is how we block automated spam. It is then discarded and is not saved with your enquiry.
We deliberately do not store your full browser identification string, your exact coordinates, your network provider, or your screen size. None of them helped us answer an enquiry, and together they would have made each record far more identifying than it needs to be.
Simply browsing the site
If you only read the site and never submit the form, we do not create any record of you. Our hosting provider keeps short-lived server logs that include IP addresses, as essentially all web hosting does, but we do not build a profile from them and we cannot identify you from them.
Why we use it, and our legal basis
We use your enquiry details to reply to you, prepare a quote, and plan your trip. Under the UK and EU GDPR this is processing necessary to take steps at your request before entering into a contract.
We use the technical details to prevent spam and abuse, to reply in the right language, and to understand which parts of the site generate genuine enquiries. Our legal basis is legitimate interests — running a small business securely and effectively. We think this is proportionate because the data is limited, is never sold, and is never used for advertising.
We do not use your data for automated decision-making or profiling. Every quote is written by a person.
Who else handles your data
We keep the list of companies involved as short as we can. These are the only ones that touch your information:
- Vercel — hosts the website and serves its pages. Keeps standard short-term server logs.
- Cloudflare — provides the domain name service and forwards email sent to our addresses. Our website traffic is not routed through Cloudflare’s proxy.
- Google Cloud (Firebase Firestore and Cloud Run) — runs the service that receives your quote request and stores it. Hosted in the United States.
- Gmail — delivers the notification email that tells us a new enquiry has arrived.
- ipwho.is — receives your IP address at the moment you submit, in order to return the approximate location described above. It receives nothing else: not your name, not your contact details, not your message. We do not keep the IP address afterwards.
- WhatsApp (Meta) — only if you choose to click a WhatsApp link or message us there. That conversation is governed by WhatsApp’s own privacy policy.
We do not sell or share your data
We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal data. We do not share it with advertisers, data brokers, or marketing networks. We do not send marketing emails unless you have asked us to. The only parties who receive it are the service providers listed above, and only so they can perform the function described.
We may share information if the law requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim.
Where your data is processed
Trails of Lanka operates from Sri Lanka. The service that stores quote requests runs on Google Cloud in the United States, and our email is handled by Google. If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area, this means your data is transferred outside your home region.
Google Cloud provides Standard Contractual Clauses for these transfers. Sri Lanka has not been the subject of a UK or EU adequacy decision, so if you would prefer not to have your details handled this way, contact us by WhatsApp or email instead of using the form, and tell us what you would like us to keep.
How long we keep it
We retain enquiry data only for as long as is reasonably necessary to manage your enquiry, to follow up where appropriate, and to meet any applicable legal or business requirements. Travel planning is seasonal and travellers often enquire well in advance of booking, so an appropriate follow-up period may extend beyond the initial exchange.
Records are currently reviewed and deleted manually rather than on an automated schedule. If this process changes, this page will be updated to reflect it.
You may request deletion of your enquiry at any time. We will action the request within 30 days and confirm once it is complete.
How we protect it
The website is served over HTTPS, and your quote request is sent to our own domain rather than to a third-party address. The stored records are held in Google Cloud Firestore and are not publicly readable; access requires an administrator account on an explicit allowlist.
No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. Please do not send passport numbers, payment card details, or medical information through the enquiry form. We never ask for payment details on this website.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask us to: give you a copy of the data we hold about you; correct anything inaccurate; delete it; restrict or object to how we use it; or provide it in a portable format. Where we rely on legitimate interests, you can object and we will stop unless we have a compelling reason not to.
To exercise any of these, email hello@trailsoflanka.com. We will respond within 30 days. We will not charge you, and we will not treat you differently for asking.
If you are in the UK or the EEA and you are unhappy with our response, you can complain to your national data protection authority.
Children
This website is intended for adults planning travel. We do not knowingly collect data directly from children. If you include the number or ages of children travelling with you, that information is part of your booking enquiry and is provided by you as the adult making it.
Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle personal data, we will update this page and change the date at the top. Because this policy describes a specific technical setup rather than generic intentions, it is revised whenever that setup changes.
Contact
For any privacy question, or to request access, correction, or deletion of your data, email hello@trailsoflanka.com.