1. Who is responsible
Guideless LLC, trading as Guideless Travel, is the data controller for the personal data described here. Contact: hello@guidelesstravel.com.
2. What we collect
- Account: email address, password (stored hashed by our authentication provider), display name and any profile details you choose to add, such as a short bio, home country, interests, travel style and languages.
- Traveler details for each person on a booking: name as on the passport, date of birth, nationality, email, phone, dietary requirements and accessibility needs. Hotels and rail operators require most of these.
- Emergency contact for the lead traveler: name, relationship, phone and optional email.
- Payments: handled by Stripe. We receive the amount, currency, status and the last four digits of the card; we never see or store full card numbers.
- Booking history, add-ons chosen, room arrangement, referral codes used and credits earned.
- Messages you send in group chat, Live Moments you create or join, RSVPs, support conversations and any attachments you upload.
- App and device information: a push notification token if you allow notifications, app version, and crash reports (with personal fields removed) if the app fails.
- Location, to show what is near you: we use your device location to answer “what is good around here right now” and to tell you how far your next stop is — questions we cannot answer without knowing where you are. Only while the app is open, only if you grant permission, and the answer is worked out and the position discarded. Nothing is stored. Say no and the rest of the app works exactly as before; you can change your mind at any time in your phone’s settings.
- Location, shared with your group: so people on the same trip can find each other — at a station, at a viewpoint, before a morning swim. This is the only reason we do it. It is off unless you switch it on, you choose how long it lasts, and you can stop at any moment: stopping deletes your position rather than hiding it. While it is on we keep only your latest position and never a history of where you have been; it ends by itself when the time you chose runs out, and never runs for more than twelve hours without you turning it on again. Only people on that trip can see it, anyone you have blocked cannot, we never share it while the app is closed, and our own staff cannot see it either. You never have to switch it on, and nobody is told whether you did.
- Newsletter: if you subscribe, your email address, where on the site you subscribed from and the date you did. You do not need an account to subscribe, and every email carries a one-click unsubscribe link.
- Where you came from: if you reach us through a campaign link, a search or someone else’s site, we record the campaign tags on that link (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, utm_term), the referring site’s host name — never the full address, which can carry a query — the page of ours you landed on and the time. We keep both your first visit and your most recent one, because they answer different questions. It lives in a cookie in your own browser and is attached to nobody until you book; if you book, it is stored against that booking so we know which ad or article paid for itself. Ad-network click identifiers such as gclid or fbclid are kept only if you accepted analytics cookies — see section 7.
- Website usage: cookies and similar technologies for analytics, only after you accept them in the consent banner. Essential cookies for signing in and checkout always apply.
3. Why we use it
- To run your trip: booking hotels, trains, transfers and experiences in your name and sharing with those suppliers only what they need.
- To keep you informed: booking confirmations, payment reminders, itinerary changes, trip reminders and support replies. Operational messages are part of the service; group and news messages follow your notification preferences.
- To make the group work: other travelers on your trip see your display name and only the profile fields you switch on. They never see your email, phone, date of birth or documents.
- For safety: emergency contacts are used only in an emergency; staff can see traveler details to help during the trip. Staff cannot see your location.
- To meet legal and accounting duties, prevent fraud and enforce our terms.
- To improve the product, using analytics that is aggregated wherever possible and, on the website, only with your consent.
5. How long we keep it
- Booking, payment, refund and invoice records: seven years from the end of your trip. Tax law and the four states we are registered as a seller of travel in each set their own period; seven years is the longest of them.
- Traveler details — name, date of birth, nationality, dietary and accessibility needs: twenty-four months after the trip ends, then anonymized. They exist so a hotel and a rail operator can be given a correct manifest; once the trip is over that purpose has ended, and the two years after it are for a late question, claim or chargeback.
- Emergency contacts: deleted six months after your last trip. They belong to somebody who never signed up for anything, and there is nothing left to call about.
- Flight details you give us: deleted once the trip is over.
- Support conversations: twenty-four months from the day they are resolved. They are our record of what we told you about a booking, which is what we would need if a question about it came back.
- Group chat and Live Moments: for the trip and up to twelve months after it ends, unless you delete your messages sooner.
- Shared locations and check-ins: minutes, not months — a shared position is deleted when it lapses, and a check-in within a week of expiring.
- Details you typed into a checkout you never finished: anonymized after six months. You did not become a customer and we should not keep you as one.
- Our email delivery log, which records that a message was sent to your address: six months.
- Newsletter subscriptions: until you unsubscribe. We keep the unsubscribed record itself so we do not email you again by mistake.
- Analytics: in aggregated form; individual identifiers are removed or expire according to each tool's retention setting.
- The gl_attr attribution cookie: 90 days, counted from your most recent visit rather than your first, so it lapses on its own if you stop coming back. You can delete it sooner from your browser and nothing about the site changes.
- Attribution stored against a booking: for as long as we keep the booking record itself. It is part of how that booking came about, so it is anonymized along with the rest of the financial record rather than deleted separately.
6. Your choices and rights
- You can view and edit most of your data in your account and in the app (profile, traveler details, notification preferences, what the group sees).
- Download everything we hold on you from Your data on your account page: one JSON file with your profile, bookings and payments, the travelers you added, your itinerary, a list of your documents, your support conversations, the messages you wrote, your assistant conversations and your mailing-list state. JSON rather than a PDF, because a printout of your data is a picture of it — this you can search, read and load into something else.
- Ask us to close your account from the same place, or by email. We act within 30 days, and we tell you what closing does before you ask. Removed: your profile, the names, dates of birth, nationalities, dietary and accessibility details of everyone you added, their emergency contacts, your flight details, your saved places, your assistant conversations, your devices and every mailing list you are on. Kept, and only these: your bookings, payments and refunds for seven years because tax law requires it; your support conversations for two years; anything recorded in an incident report, because an incident is usually about a second person and the people in one are the ones who must not be able to erase it; and the audit record of the closure itself. Reviews and photos you published stay up under “A Guideless traveller”. Your chat messages become blanks so your group’s conversation keeps its shape.
- One thing we cannot do, and will say so rather than pretend: if you are booked on a departure that has not happened yet, we cannot remove the details a hotel and a rail operator are holding a room and a seat under. We record the request, tell you the date it can be completed, and complete it then without you having to ask again.
- You can also access, correct, export or delete your personal data by emailing hello@guidelesstravel.com. We verify the request, then act within 30 days. Financial records that the law requires us to keep are anonymized rather than deleted.
- You can withdraw analytics consent at any time from Cookie settings in the footer, which stops analytics immediately and brings the banner back. You can turn off push notifications in your device settings, and unsubscribe from the newsletter with the link in any of its emails.
- If you are in the EU or UK you also have the right to complain to your data protection authority. We would appreciate the chance to resolve it first.
8. Age
Our trips and accounts are for adults. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If a departure admits younger travelers with an adult, their details are entered by the adult who books.
9. Security
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Access to traveler details is restricted by role and by row-level security in our database: travelers see their own trip, staff see the trips they work on, and nobody else sees anything. Sensitive fields never appear in logs or error reports.
10. International transfers
Guideless LLC is based in the United States and our trips run in Europe, so your data moves between the two: to hotels and rail operators in the countries you visit, and to processors that operate in the US or EU. We rely on their standard contractual safeguards and share only what each party needs.
11. Changes to this policy
We will post changes here and update the version and date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use your data, we tell you by email first.
12. Contact
Guideless LLC, trading as Guideless Travel. Email: hello@guidelesstravel.com.