Privacy Policy

This policy explains what Auckland Tourism Guide (www.aucklandtourism.org) collects when you read it, why, and how to stop it. It describes the site as it is configured today, and is updated when that changes. Last updated: 30 September 2026.

The short version

You can read every guide on this site without giving us anything. We do not ask you to register, we do not run comments, and we do not run a mailing list. The only personal information we ever hold is what you type into the contact form. Google Analytics runs in the background and sets cookies; you can block it.

Information you give us deliberately

The contact form is the only place on this site where you can submit anything. It collects the name and email address you enter and the text of your message, and it emails them to the publisher. We use them to reply to you. We do not add you to any list, we do not sell or share them, and messages are deleted once the matter is dealt with.

Form submissions are handled by the Contact Form 7 plugin and delivered by our web host’s mail service.

Information collected automatically

Server logs

The site is hosted by DreamHost. Like any web server, it records requests — IP address, date and time, the page requested, referring page, and browser user agent. These logs exist for security and troubleshooting and are not used to build a profile of you.

Google Analytics 4

We use Google Analytics 4 to see which guides are read and how people arrive. It sets cookies in your browser and sends Google information about your visit, including a truncated IP address, the pages you view and general location at city level. We use it to decide what to write next. We do not use it to identify individual readers and we have not enabled Google Signals or advertising personalisation features.

You can opt out for every site you visit with Google’s browser add-on at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout, or block analytics cookies in your browser settings.

Google Search Console

Search Console reports aggregate search queries that led to this site. It sets no cookies on your device and shows us no personal information.

Caching

WP Super Cache serves stored copies of pages so they load faster. It may set a cookie to identify visitors who should be shown an uncached page. It does not track you across sites.

Cookies, and the notice about them

The cookies on this site come from four places: Google Analytics, described above; the Aegis Consent plugin, which sets two, recording your response to the cookie notice and the country it applies to, so the notice is not shown again on every page; the Travelpayouts booking-link script, which sets one session cookie once advertising is allowed, described below; and the booking sites you reach through the affiliate links described below, which set their own once you arrive there. WordPress itself sets cookies only for a logged-in administrator, which as a reader you never are.

Every browser can block or delete all of them, and nothing here is gated behind them, so refusing cookies costs you no content.

What runs before you choose, and how to change it

What runs before you choose depends on where you are reading from, because the law does. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, and in Brazil, Chile, China, Israel, Nigeria, South Korea, Thailand, Türkiye and Vietnam, nothing beyond the strictly necessary runs until you answer the dialog on your first visit — not analytics, not Travelpayouts — and Reject all sits on that first screen next to Accept all, not behind a second click.

In the United States you are shown a bar rather than a dialog, and it is not only a notice. Analytics starts on arrival there, but advertising and booking-partner scripts stay switched off until you answer it. In Switzerland you get the dialog too, but analytics starts on arrival there and only advertising and booking-partner scripts wait for your answer. In Canada, and in the countries where notice is enough — among them Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, India and Mexico — everything described on this page starts when you arrive; the notice tells you so, and the same control switches it off. Everywhere else, and whenever we cannot tell where you are, the strictest setting applies: nothing beyond the necessary runs until you answer.

Your answer is kept on your own device, in a first-party cookie called cookie_consent_83591b that only this site can read, so you are not asked again on every page. It lasts about a year. The Cookie settings link in the footer of every page reopens the choice, and withdrawing is the same two clicks as agreeing: what you switch off stops running, and if that includes analytics, the Google Analytics cookies are cleared. The one cookie Travelpayouts keeps on this site, am_user_session, is no longer renewed once its script stops and lapses within half an hour; anything Travelpayouts or a booking site set on their own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.

Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Auckland Tourism Guide is held back from readers who say no.

If you are reading this in the United States

Several US states give you the right to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, and those words are broader than they sound: letting an advertising or affiliate partner receive information about your visit can count as sharing even though no money changes hands for your data and we have never sold anything of the kind. Rather than argue the definition, Auckland Tourism Guide treats it as covered.

So the bar shown to US readers carries a Do not sell or share button, and for US readers the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page reads Do not sell or share my personal information. Using it stops the advertising category, which is where Travelpayouts and any ad partner sit. Travelpayouts stops running from that point; the session cookie it kept on this site lapses within half an hour, and anything it set on its own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.

This site also honours Global Privacy Control. If your browser or an extension sends a GPC signal, it is treated as a valid opt-out on arrival — you do not have to find the control and click it as well, and we do not ask again on later visits. Do Not Track is a different and long-abandoned signal, and to be straight about it: this site does not act on DNT, because nothing agreed what it ought to mean.

The record kept of your choice

Proving that a choice was offered and honoured means keeping a record of it. Each answer is logged with the date and time, the two-letter country the choice was made from, which of the rule sets above applied, a reference to the exact wording you were shown, and the choice itself, against a random identifier generated for your browser.

That record contains no name, no email address and no IP address. It holds a salted hash of your browser’s user-agent string, and the salt changes every day, so two visits on different days cannot be linked back together through it. Records are deleted after 26 months. If you want to see or delete the entries tied to your browser, ask through the contact form.

What this site does not do

• No comments. Comments are switched off across the site, so there is no comment data and no Gravatar lookup.
• No newsletter or mailing list. We do not collect email addresses for marketing.
• No user accounts. There is nothing for a reader to register for.
• No selling of data, ever, to anyone.
• No paid placements. Some booking links do earn a commission, which is set out below.

Legal bases and your rights

Where the UK GDPR or EU GDPR applies, we rely on legitimate interests for server logs — running the site securely — and on your consent for audience measurement and for the booking partner script described below, which is why neither runs there until you have agreed. Where you have given consent you can withdraw it at any time.

You can ask us what personal information we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted. In practice the only thing we are likely to hold is a contact-form message. Ask through the contact page and we will action it.

California readers: we do not sell personal information. Because the booking partner receives information about your visit, the site treats that as potential “sharing” under the CCPA and offers a Do not sell or share control, described under “If you are reading this in the United States”. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13.

Affiliate links and booking partners

Some links on this site earn a commission. Auckland Tourism Guide works with Travelpayouts, an affiliate network that connects the site to hotel, flight, transfer and activity booking companies. We do not paste tagged links into the guides: Travelpayouts runs a script that turns ordinary links to booking and travel sites into commission-tracking ones as the page loads, and it can add booking boxes and suggestions of its own. If you book after following one of those links, the booking company pays us a commission out of its own margin, and your price is the same either way. Every guide says so at the top, and the affiliate disclosure sets out the arrangement in full.

What that means for your data needs spelling out, because it is more than a cookie notice usually describes. When the script runs it receives your IP address and browser details, as any service your browser connects to does, and it reports to Travelpayouts how the page is used: the page’s address and the one you arrived from, which links you click, how many keys are pressed and in which part of the page (not what is typed), and whether an ad blocker or a private window is in use. Those reports are tied together by a random session identifier kept in a cookie on this site called am_user_session, which lapses 30 minutes after you stop reading, and, if Google Analytics is allowed as well, by the identifier Google Analytics keeps for your browser. The script also fetches typefaces for its booking boxes from Google Fonts, which gives Google your IP address, and keeps a note of the page’s colours in your browser’s local storage so that those boxes match the design.

If you follow one of its links, Travelpayouts and the booking site set identifiers of their own, on their own domains, so that a booking made afterwards can be credited here. We never see your name, your travel dates or your payment details — what comes back is a count of clicks and, sometimes, the fact that a booking happened. Once you are on a booking site you are under its privacy policy, not this one, and Travelpayouts handles what its script collects under its own privacy policy.

The script sits in the Advertising group of this site’s cookie settings and does not load at all until that group is allowed. Refusing it costs you nothing: the links still work, at the same price.

Links to other sites

Guides link out to operators, Auckland Transport, Auckland Council, DOC and similar. Those sites have their own privacy policies and we have no control over them.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes materially, the updated version is published here with a new date. Questions about it go through the contact page.