Privacy policy
Last updated 9 November 2026
This explains what personal information Travel Mate collects, why, who helps us handle it, and your rights. We've tried to keep it short and plain.
1. Who we are
Travel Mate is run by Daniel Ince, a sole trader based in the United Kingdom. We are the "controller" of your personal information, which means we decide how it's used and we're responsible for looking after it.
- Address: Lytchett House, 13 Freeland Park, Wareham Road, Poole, Dorset, BH16 6FA, United Kingdom
- Email: asktravelmatebusiness@gmail.com
- Registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO): ZC298351
2. What we collect
Things you give us
- Your account: your email address. If you sign in with Google, we also receive your name and profile picture from Google.
- What you tell Travel Mate: your chat messages and the travel preferences you choose (for example budget, who you travel with, interests and places you've been).
- What you save: saved destinations, trip plans (itineraries), price alerts, your travel diary and your reviews.
- Public reviews: if you publish a review, the review and the display name you choose are visible to other people.
- Shared trip plans: if you share a trip plan, anyone with the link can see the plan (but not your name or email) until you stop sharing it.
- Feedback: if you rate a chat reply (👍/👎), we keep that reply, your message and any comment you add.
- Emails you send us.
Emails we send you
- Sign-in emails when you ask for a sign-in link.
- Price drop emails if you set up a price alert and have an account. Every one has an unsubscribe link, and you can turn them off on your price alerts page at any time.
- We don't send marketing emails. If we ever want to, we'll ask first.
Things collected automatically
- Sign-in cookies that keep you signed in (including as a guest), and a security check from Cloudflare to tell people from bots.
- Your internet (IP) address, used to prevent misuse, for example limiting how many messages can be sent from one connection. We keep these counts for no more than two days.
- Visit counts: we use Vercel Web Analytics to count visits and see which pages are popular. It doesn't use cookies and doesn't identify you. We also keep daily totals (such as how many chats or trip plans there were) that contain nothing about you.
- Basic technical logs (such as errors, browser type and pages requested) kept by our hosting provider for a short time to keep the service working and secure.
We don't ask for, and you shouldn't share, sensitive information such as health details, passport numbers or payment details in the chat.
3. Why we use it, and our legal reasons
| What we do | Legal basis (UK GDPR) |
|---|---|
| Run your account, answer your chats, show personalised suggestions, save your trips, alerts and reviews | Contract: it's needed to provide the service you asked for |
| Check flight prices for your alerts and show you fares | Contract |
| Keep the service secure, stop bots and abuse, enforce fair-use limits | Legitimate interests: protecting the service and its users |
| Improve Travel Mate using feedback and anonymised usage | Legitimate interests: making the service better |
| Reply to your emails and requests | Legitimate interests, or a legal obligation where the law requires it |
| Keep records we're legally required to keep (for example for tax) | Legal obligation |
Travel Mate's suggestions are made automatically, but they're only recommendations: they don't produce legal or similarly significant effects on you.
We don't sell your personal information, and we don't use it for advertising profiles.
4. Who helps us run Travel Mate
We use trusted providers ("processors") who handle data only on our instructions:
- Supabase: our database and sign-in system (stores your account and saved data, and sends sign-in emails).
- OpenAI: understands your chat messages and writes trip plans. OpenAI doesn't use data sent through its business API to train its models, and keeps it for a limited time for abuse monitoring.
- Vercel: hosts the website.
- Resend: sends our emails, such as price drop emails.
- Mapbox: provides the maps (your browser requests map images directly from Mapbox).
- Cloudflare: the security check that keeps bots out.
- Google: only if you choose "Continue with Google" to sign in.
- Travelpayouts: provides flight prices. We send the route and dates you're interested in, not your name or email.
Partner links: when you click a link marked "Ad" (for example for flights, tours, tickets, transfers, car hire or mobile data), you go to a partner site such as Aviasales, Klook, Tiqets, Kiwitaxi, Airalo or AirHelp, through our affiliate network Travelpayouts. That site's own privacy policy and cookies then apply, and it records that the visit came from Travel Mate so we can earn a commission.
We may also share information if the law requires it, or to protect people's safety or our legal rights. If Travel Mate is ever sold or becomes part of a company, your information would move with it under the same protections.
5. Information stored outside the UK
Some of our providers (for example OpenAI, Vercel, Mapbox, Cloudflare and Google) are based in, or use servers in, the United States or other countries. When information leaves the UK, it is protected by the safeguards UK law requires, such as the UK–US "data bridge" or the UK's approved contract clauses.
6. How long we keep it
- Your account and saved data: until you delete your account. You can do this at any time from your profile, and it's removed straight away (backups clear within a few weeks).
- Guest sessions (if you use Travel Mate without signing up): deleted after 90 days without use.
- Public reviews: until you delete them or your account.
- Shared trip plans: until you stop sharing, delete the plan or delete your account.
- Chat feedback: up to 12 months.
- Internet address counts for limits: up to 2 days.
- Error reports (what went wrong and on which page): up to 30 days.
- Emails with us: up to 2 years, unless we need them longer for a legal reason.
7. Your rights
You have the right to:
- get a copy of your personal information;
- have it corrected if it's wrong (you can change most of it yourself on your profile);
- have it deleted (you can delete your account yourself);
- object to, or ask us to limit, how we use it;
- receive the data you gave us in a format you can take elsewhere.
To use any of these rights, email asktravelmatebusiness@gmail.com from the address on your account. We'll reply within one month. It's free.
If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, please tell us first so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.
8. Cookies and similar technology
We only use what's needed for Travel Mate to work, so we don't ask for cookie consent:
- Sign-in cookies (from Supabase) to keep you signed in, including as a guest.
- Security check (Cloudflare Turnstile) to stop bots.
- Storage in your browser for things like your compare list, so they're still there when you come back.
We don't use advertising or tracking cookies, and our visit counting (Vercel Web Analytics) works without cookies. If that changes, we'll ask you first.
9. Age
Travel Mate is for people aged 18 and over. We don't knowingly collect information from anyone younger. If you think a child has used Travel Mate, contact us and we'll delete their information.
10. Keeping it safe
Your data is sent over encrypted connections and stored with access controls, so each person can only reach their own data. No system is perfectly secure, but if something goes wrong that puts you at risk, we'll tell you and the ICO as the law requires.
11. Changes
If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top. If the change is important, we'll tell you on the site or by email first.