What we collect
There are two forms on this site. The enquiry form asks for the least we need in order to write you a useful reply. The booking form, which you only see once a route is agreed, asks for the details needed to reserve rooms, flights and guides in your name.
- Your name, and the names of the other travellers once a booking is being made.
- An email address, and a telephone or WhatsApp number if you give one.
- Your travel dates, or the month you are considering.
- The number of travellers, and the ages of children where that changes what we can book.
- Anything you write in the notes field: interests, dietary requirements, mobility limits, a honeymoon, a request to avoid long drives.
- At the booking stage, passport details, nationality and date of birth, because domestic flights, boats and hotel registration in these four countries require them.
- Basic technical information your browser sends when it loads a page, such as the approximate location and the pages viewed.
We do not ask for card numbers on this website. Payment is arranged separately once a trip is confirmed, through a bank transfer or a payment link issued by the provider, and those card details never pass through our forms or our inbox.
Why we collect it
To answer you, to plan a trip, and to run it. That is the whole list. A planner reads your enquiry, drafts a route, prices it and writes back. If you book, the same details are used to make reservations and to produce the documents you travel with.
- Replying to your enquiry and preparing a written quotation.
- Reserving hotels, guides, drivers, boats, internal flights and entrance permits in the correct names.
- Reaching you before and during the trip, including out of hours if a flight moves or a road closes.
- Keeping the accounting and tax records that Vietnamese law requires of a licensed operator.
- Understanding which pages of this site people actually read, at the level of counts rather than individuals.
We do not sell or rent your details to anyone, and we do not add enquirers to a marketing list. If we ever start a newsletter it will be something you opt into deliberately, not a consequence of having once asked about Laos.
Who else sees it
Inside the company, your file is visible to the planner handling your trip, the operations staff who make the bookings, and the accountant who reconciles payments. Everything sits in our internal management system and in the company email accounts.
Outside the company, only what a supplier needs in order to hold your reservation. A hotel receives the guest names, the dates and the room type. An airline receives the passenger name, date of birth and passport number. A guide receives a first name, the party size and any note that affects the day, such as a walking limit or an allergy.
- Hotels, guesthouses and lodges on your route.
- Airlines, boat operators and, where a permit is required, the local authority that issues it.
- Guides, drivers and local ground staff in the region you are visiting.
- Our email, hosting and file storage providers, whose servers hold the data as part of running those services.
- Government bodies or a court, where Vietnamese law obliges us to provide something.
Our records sit on servers in Vietnam and on cloud services run by established providers, some of which store data outside Vietnam. Because your trip crosses borders, some details are necessarily sent to suppliers in Thailand, Cambodia or Laos.
How long we keep it
An enquiry that never becomes a booking is kept for two years, then deleted. Two years because people often come back to a plan they shelved, and it is easier for both of us if we still have the draft.
- Enquiries with no booking: two years from the last message between us.
- Booked trips: five years after your return date, so that the file survives any later query or complaint.
- Invoices, receipts and accounting records: ten years, as Vietnamese accounting law requires.
- Passport copies and scans: deleted within three months of your return, since nothing afterwards needs them.
- Website measurement data: kept in aggregate, with no individual record retained beyond fourteen months.
Your rights
You can ask us what we hold about you, and we will send it in a readable form. You can correct anything wrong, which matters most for passport spellings. You can ask us to delete your file, and we will, except for the invoices and accounting entries the law obliges us to keep.
- Ask for a copy of everything we hold on you.
- Correct a detail that is wrong or out of date.
- Ask for deletion, subject to the accounting records we are required to retain.
- Withdraw consent to any contact that is not about a trip you have booked.
- Object to how we are using something, and get a reasoned answer rather than a form letter.
Write to info@zaratour.com and we will deal with it within thirty days, usually far sooner. There is no charge, and you do not need to give a reason. If you are unhappy with the answer, say so and a senior member of the team will look at it again.
Cookies and analytics
This site does not run advertising trackers, and nothing here follows you to other websites to show you holiday adverts afterwards. There is no advertising pixel, no remarketing tag and no data sold to an ad network.
- Functional cookies that keep a form half-filled if you navigate away and come back.
- A simple measurement of page views, so we know which itineraries people read and which nobody opens.
- Nothing that builds a profile of you across other sites.
You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. The forms and the pages will still work. If we ever add a third-party tool that changes this position, this section will be rewritten before the tool goes live.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or a request about your own data, go to info@zaratour.com. Put the word privacy in the subject line so it reaches the right desk quickly. We answer during office hours, 08:30 to 18:00 Vietnam time, Monday to Saturday.
- This policy applies only to this website and to enquiries made through it.
- Pages we link to are run by other companies under their own policies.
- If we change this policy, the revised version is published here with the date it took effect.