Privacy Policy — São Tomé Tours
Who We Are Our website address is: https://saotometours.com (or your official domain). São Tomé Tours provides guided excursions, travel packages, local activities, and booking services across São Tomé and Príncipe.
Information We Collect & Why We Collect It
- Booking & Contact Forms: When you book a tour, request a quote, or contact us through our site, we collect the personal information you provide, such as your full name, email address, phone number, travel dates, and pickup locations. This data is strictly used to fulfill your tour bookings and communicate essential travel updates.
- Comments & Inquiries: When visitors leave comments or inquiries on the site, we collect the data shown in the form, as well as the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to assist with automated spam detection.
- Gravatar Service: An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to verify profile images. The Gravatar privacy policy is available at
[https://automattic.com/privacy/](https://automattic.com/privacy/). Upon comment approval, your profile picture is visible to the public alongside your comment.
Media & Uploaded Content
If you upload images to our website (such as user reviews or travel photos), you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract location data from images published on the platform.
Cookies & Analytical Tracking
- Comments & Forms: If you leave a comment or submit a inquiry form, you may opt-in to saving your name, email address, and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so you do not have to re-fill details on future visits. These cookies last for one year.
- Account Access: If you visit our login page, we set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
- Login & Display Preferences: When you log in to manage your bookings, several cookies are set to save your login credentials and screen options. Login cookies last two days; screen options cookies last one year. Selecting “Remember Me” keeps your login active for two weeks. Logging out removes all login cookies.
- Content Management: If you edit or publish content on our site, an additional cookie is saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data, simply indicates the post ID of the article edited, and expires after 1 day.
Embedded Content & Third-Party Services
Articles, itineraries, or pages on this site may include embedded content (e.g., Google Maps, YouTube tour videos, social media widgets, or interactive trip planners). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same manner as if the visitor has visited the external website directly.
These third-party platforms may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interactions—especially if you hold an account and are logged into that platform.
Payment Processing & Third-Party Data Sharing
- Payment Processing: To securely process online tour bookings and deposits, your payment details are transmitted securely to authorized third-party payment gateways (e.g., Stripe, PayPal, or local bank merchant services). São Tomé Tours does not store full credit card numbers on its servers.
- Operational Logistics: Relevant customer details (such as names and dietary/accessibility requests) may be shared strictly with our licensed local guides, boat captains, or partner transport providers solely to facilitate your itinerary safely.
- Security & System Emails: If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the automated reset email.
Data Retention Policies
- Comments & Reviews: If you leave a comment or tour review, the content and its metadata are retained indefinitely to automatically approve follow-up reviews rather than holding them in moderation.
- User Accounts & Booking Records: For users who register on our website or complete a booking, we store the personal information provided in their user profile and transaction history. All users can view, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (usernames cannot be changed). Site administrators can also view and edit that administrative information. Transaction records are retained as required by law for accounting and tax purposes.
Your Data Rights
If you have an account on this site, have submitted booking requests, or have left comments, you can request an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data provided to us.
You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obligated to retain for administrative, legal, compliance, or security purposes.
Automated Data Inspection
Visitor comments, contact forms, and booking inquiries may be verified through automated spam and fraud detection services.