Legal
Privacy Policy for HotelDsk
Effective date:
HotelDsk (“we,” “our,” or “us”) is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use the HotelDsk application — which runs in your browser, can be installed to your phone’s home screen, and is also distributed through Google Play as an Android app running that same application — and our website, https://hoteldsk.com/ (collectively, the “Service”).
Please read this privacy policy carefully. If you do not agree with the terms of this privacy policy, please do not use the Service.
1.Who the Service Is For
HotelDsk is a workplace tool. It is intended for the owners, managers, and staff of independent hotels, guesthouses, homestays, and villas, and is provided to them in the course of running a property. It is not designed for, marketed to, or directed at children, and it contains no content, characters, themes, or features intended to appeal to children.
Accounts on the Service are created by a property owner or manager for themselves and for the people who work at their property. You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of majority in your jurisdiction if that is higher, to hold a HotelDsk account.
2.Who Is Responsible for Your Information
There are two different relationships here, and which one applies determines who you should contact:
- Information about the account holder. When a property owner or manager signs up, we decide how their account information is used, and we are the data controller for it. Contact us directly for anything concerning that information.
- Information a property records about its own staff and guests. Shift logs, tasks, guest requests, gate entries and similar records are entered by a property to run its own operations. The property decides what to record and why; we process that information on the property’s behalf and under its instructions. If you are a staff member or a guest of a property that uses HotelDsk, please contact that property first — and contact us if you cannot resolve it with them, and we will help.
3.Information We Collect
We may collect information about you in a variety of ways when you interact with our operations platform. The information we may collect includes:
- Personal Data: Personally identifiable information, such as your name, email address, and telephone number, that you voluntarily give to us when choosing to participate in various activities related to the Service (such as creating an account, managing property operations, or contacting support).
- Device Data: Information your browser sends automatically when you access the Service, such as the browser and operating system you are using and the pages or screens you open. We use it to keep you signed in, to fit the screen to your device, and to diagnose failures — for example, recording which browser could not load the app. We do not collect your device’s location, and we do not collect advertising identifiers.
- Operational Data: Information related to your use of the HotelDsk platform, including shift logs, task management entries, and internal communications necessary for running your property.
- Photographs: Photographs you choose to take or upload through the Service — for example a bill, a completed job, a served meal, or a visitor at the gate. The Service uses your camera only when you tap a control that takes a photo.
- Notification tokens: If you turn on notifications, the identifier your browser or device issues so we can send them. You can turn notifications off at any time in your browser or device settings.
4.How We Use Your Information
Having accurate information about you permits us to provide you with a smooth, efficient, and customized experience. Specifically, we may use information collected about you via the Service to:
- Create and manage your user account.
- Facilitate daily property operations and task management.
- Improve the frictionless user experience and high-speed data entry workflows of the Service.
- Send notifications you have asked for, such as a job assigned to you or an alert about your property.
- Respond to customer service requests and support needs.
- Monitor and analyze usage and trends to improve your experience with the Service.
We do not use your information to build advertising or marketing profiles, and we do not use it to make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you.
5.Advertising
The Service displays no advertising of any kind. We do not show third-party ads, house ads for our own products, or promotional content from partner brands, to any user. We do not integrate any advertising network or advertising SDK, we do not use advertising identifiers, and we do not sell, rent, or share personal information for advertising or cross-context behavioural advertising purposes.
6.Children’s Privacy
The Service is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
- Under 13 (and the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, “COPPA”): The Service is not intended for and may not be used by anyone under 13. We do not knowingly collect, use, or disclose personal information from children under 13.
- Under 16 (and the EU General Data Protection Regulation, “GDPR”): Where local law sets a higher age for consent to information society services — between 13 and 16 depending on the country — the Service is not intended for and may not be used by anyone below that age.
- If we learn a child has used the Service: If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child, we will delete that information promptly. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us at privacy@hoteldsk.com and we will act on it.
Because the Service shows no advertising to anyone, no child using a device on which the Service is open can be shown an advertisement by us, whether from an advertising network or from us directly.
7.Who Else Processes Your Information
We do not sell your personal information to third parties. We use a small number of service providers to run the Service, each with access only to what their function requires, and each bound to protect it and to use it only for us:
- Clerk — sign-in and account authentication.
- Neon — the hosted database your property’s records are stored in.
- Netlify — hosting for the application and this website, and handling of the enquiry form on hoteldsk.com.
- Amazon Web Services — storage for photographs uploaded through the Service.
- Sentry — error monitoring, so we find out when something breaks.
- BugKit — the in-app “Report a problem” tool. If you send a report, it includes what you type plus technical details about the failure, so we can reproduce it.
- Tawk.to — the chat window on hoteldsk.com and, for property owners, inside the app. It processes what you type in that window, and the page you were on when you typed it. It runs only if you open the chat; nothing is sent by having the bubble on screen.
- Anthropic — used only when a property owner asks the app to draft a checklist. The words the owner types in that box are sent to draft the list; guest, staff, and financial records are not.
- Your browser or device vendor’s push service — used only to deliver notifications you have turned on.
We may also disclose information if we believe the release is necessary to respond to legal process, to investigate or remedy potential violations of our policies, or to protect the rights, property, and safety of others.
8.Where Your Information Is Stored
The providers above operate infrastructure in several countries, so your information may be stored or processed outside the country you are in, including in the United States and the European Union. Where information is transferred out of the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, we rely on the transfer mechanisms permitted under applicable law, such as the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.
9.How Long We Keep It
We keep your account information for as long as your account is open. We keep a property’s operational records for as long as that property uses the Service, because they are the property’s own working history. When an account is closed, we delete or anonymise the information we hold within a reasonable period, except where we are required to keep it to comply with a legal obligation or to resolve a dispute. You can ask us to delete your information sooner — see section 11.
10.Security of Your Information
We use administrative, technical, and physical security measures to help protect your personal information, utilizing secure database architecture and encrypted storage solutions. Access to the Service requires you to sign in, and within a property, what each person can see is limited by the role their owner or manager gives them. While we have taken reasonable steps to secure the personal information you provide to us, please be aware that despite our efforts, no security measures are perfect or impenetrable.
11.Your Rights Over Your Data
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask us to give you a copy of the personal information we hold about you, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, or provide it in a portable form. You may also withdraw consent where we relied on it, without affecting anything done before you withdrew it.
To make any of these requests, email privacy@hoteldsk.com. We will respond within the period required by applicable law. Please note the distinction in section 2: if your information was recorded by a property you work for or stayed at, we will pass your request to that property and support them in answering it.
If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area and you believe we have not handled your information properly, you have the right to complain to your local data protection supervisory authority. We would appreciate the chance to address your concern first.
12.Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will change the effective date at the top of this page, and for any material change we will give notice within the Service before the change takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after a change means you accept the updated policy.
13.Contact Us
If you have questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, or wish to exercise any of the rights described in section 11, please contact us at: