How we look after your personal data

2. What we collect

• Enquiry details: your name, email address, WhatsApp number, travel month, party size and any notes you choose to send.
• Booking details: passport details, date of birth, nationality, arrival and departure flights, and the information the Department of Immigration needs to issue a visa or permit.
• Trip details: dietary requirements, medical information you choose to share, room preferences, emergency contact and an insurance policy reference where you give one.
• Payment records: the invoice, the date and amount of each transfer and the bank reference. We do not receive or store card numbers.
• Correspondence: emails and WhatsApp messages exchanged with our team.
• Technical data: the pages you visit, the device and browser type and a truncated IP address, held in aggregate to keep the site working and to understand which pages are useful.

3. Why we use it

• To answer your enquiry and prepare an itinerary and a quote.
• To file a visa, a permit and the Sustainable Development Fee with the Department of Immigration and the Department of Tourism.
• To book certified accommodation, licensed guides, drivers and, where agreed, flights.
• To run the journey and reach you while you are in Bhutan.
• To keep the accounting, tax and licence records that Bhutanese law requires.
• To improve the website and the way we plan. We use aggregated figures for this and not individual profiles.

4. Our basis for using it

• Your consent, when you send an enquiry, ask for a quote or agree to receive occasional updates. You can withdraw it at any time.
• Performance of the agreement, when we arrange the services in your confirmed itinerary.
• Legal obligation, when we file visa, Sustainable Development Fee and financial records with Bhutanese authorities.
• Legitimate interest, when we keep the website secure, prevent misuse of the enquiry form and keep a record of the advice we gave.

5. Who we share it with

• The Department of Immigration, for a visa or an entry permit.
• The Department of Tourism, for the Sustainable Development Fee, restricted area and trekking permits, and licence records.
• The hotels, lodges and farmstays on your itinerary, with the minimum information needed for the booking.
• The licensed guide and the licensed transport provider assigned to your journey.
• Airlines, where we hold a ticket or a domestic sector for you.
• Our bank in Bhutan, for payment receipt and refunds.
• The service providers that run our website, database and email. They hold data on our instructions only.
• A court, regulator or law enforcement body, where Bhutanese law requires disclosure.

We do not sell your data, rent it or pass it to advertising networks. Section 47 of the Tourism Rules and Regulations 2024 requires a licensed operator not to share tourist data with anyone other than the lawful authority.

6. Where your data is held

Our team works from Bhutan. Our website, enquiry records and database are hosted by Supabase and Vercel on servers outside Bhutan, and email is handled by an international provider. Where data is transferred outside Bhutan we keep it to what the journey needs and rely on the security measures those providers publish. Passport scans and visa documents are held in a private area of our system that is not indexed by search engines.

7. How long we keep it

• Enquiries that do not become a booking: twenty four months, so we can pick up the conversation if you return.
• Booking, visa and payment records: seven years, which is the period Bhutanese financial and tax rules currently require.
• Passport and visa document copies: ninety days after your departure, unless a longer period is required for a permit or a claim.
• Marketing preferences: until you ask us to stop.
• Website technical data: twelve months in aggregate.

8. How we protect it

• Traffic to this website is encrypted.
• Access to enquiry and booking records is limited to the staff who need it, through individual admin accounts.
• Itineraries, invoices and internal documents are held in a private area and are excluded from search engines.
• We do not hold card data, because no payment is taken on this website.
• If a breach affects your data, we tell you and the relevant Bhutanese authority without undue delay.

9. Your choices

• Ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct anything that is wrong.
• Ask us to delete data we no longer need, where we are not required to keep it.
• Withdraw consent for updates or marketing at any time.
• Object to a use you are not comfortable with, and ask us to explain it.
• Complain to the Bhutan InfoComm and Media Authority, or to the Department of Tourism about a matter connected to a licensed operator.

Write to us to use any of these. We reply within thirty days and may ask for proof of identity before we release personal data. There is no charge for a first request.

10. Cookies and measurement

• We use the cookies needed to keep an admin session and the enquiry form working. These are essential and are not used for advertising.
• We do not run third party advertising or cross site tracking cookies on this website.
• Aggregate page figures show which journeys and guides people read. They do not identify you.
• You can block or delete cookies in your browser. The enquiry form and the admin area may stop working if you do.

11. Children

We plan family journeys and hold the details of children travelling with you, given by a parent or guardian. We do not collect data from children directly and we do not market to them.

12. Marketing messages

• We send a planning update only if you ask for one.
• Every message includes a way to stop receiving them.
• Asking us to stop does not affect messages about a journey you have already booked.

13. Links to other services

This website links to WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, X and the Bhutan Tourism Services Portal. Those services have their own privacy terms and we do not control what they collect once you leave our site. Our PDF itineraries are prepared for you and your party, and we ask that you do not post them publicly.

14. The law behind this policy

• The Information, Communications and Media Act of Bhutan 2018, which sets the data protection duties that apply to us.
• The National Digital Identity Act of Bhutan 2023, which governs digital identity in Bhutan.
• The Tourism Rules and Regulations 2024, including the data protection provision at section 47.
• The Tourism Levy Act of Bhutan 2022, for the records that support a visa and a Sustainable Development Fee payment.

15. Changes to this policy

We update this policy when our practice, our suppliers or Bhutanese rules change. The date at the top of the page shows the current version. If a change affects a journey you have already booked, we tell you directly.