Privacy notice

Who we are

FreeGuides Tours (tours.freeguides.com) is run by FreeGuides Pty Ltd, a company registered in Australia, at Level 5/24 Campbell St, Haymarket NSW 2000, Australia. We decide how the information on this page is used. Privacy questions: privacy@freeguides.com.

This page covers FreeGuides Tours. Our full Privacy Notice covers every FreeGuides product, including the hotel apps and What’s On.

What we collect and why

• When you browse: your IP address, browser and device details and the pages you ask for, in our hosting provider’s logs. We use them to run the site and keep it secure.
• When you buy a tour: payment happens on Stripe’s checkout page. Stripe collects your email and card details; card details go straight to Stripe and never reach us. We receive your email, the tour you bought, what you paid, and any referral or campaign tag the link you followed carried (for example a hotel’s ref). We use these to deliver the tour, help you if something goes wrong, credit the partner who sent you, prevent fraud and keep tax records. We don’t use your email for marketing.
• When you start a free tour or open a tour you bought, the tour player at tour.freeguides.com takes over. It has its own notice in the player.
• With your consent only: analytics about how the site is used, including session recordings. See the next section.

Cookies and analytics

One cookie, fg_consent, remembers your cookie choice for 180 days. It is shared across freeguides.com sites so you aren’t asked again on each one.

Only if you accept do we load Google Tag Manager with Google Analytics 4 (cookies such as _ga, kept up to 14 months), Microsoft Clarity (cookies such as _clck and _clsk; it records how pages are used, including clicks and scrolling, kept 30 days) and, if you also accept marketing cookies, the marketing tags in our Tag Manager container. Until you choose, they are blocked and Google tags run in consent mode without cookies. You can change your choice at any time: Cookie settings.

Eli, the trip planner

Where Eli appears on a city or tour page, what you type, together with the city and tour you are looking at, is sent to Google Gemini to write a reply. Please don’t share personal details such as health information or card numbers in the chat. Eli can be wrong; check anything important on the tour page.

Who we share it with

Only the providers we need to run the site, each for its own part:

• Stripe, for payments and receipts;
• Vercel, which hosts this site;
• Google, for the tour data (Firebase), analytics if you accept, and Eli’s replies;
• Microsoft, for Clarity if you accept analytics.

Some of them are outside your country, including in the United States. We rely on their standard contractual protections for those transfers. We don’t sell personal information.

How long we keep it

• Tour purchases and payment records: 7 years, as Australian tax law requires.
• Hosting logs: about 30 days.
• Google Analytics: up to 14 months. Clarity recordings: 30 days.

Your rights and complaints

You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted (unless we must keep it, such as payment records), or object to how we use it. In the EEA and UK you also have the rights to restriction and portability, and you can withdraw consent at any time. Email privacy@freeguides.com; we answer within one month.

If you’re not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au), or to the data protection authority where you live. Questions about a purchase go to hello@freeguides.com; see also our Terms and refund policy.