Privacy policy

1. Who is responsible for your details

The owner of The Loft, Plot 2989 Madikwe Crescent, Extension 11, Gaborone, Botswana, is responsible for the personal details collected through this website. The apartment is let directly by the owner, so the same person who takes your booking is the person who looks after your details and who answers any request you make about them.

2. What we collect

When you book a stay — or send an enquiry about one — we keep the details you type into the form: your name, phone number, WhatsApp number, email address, arrival and departure dates, number of guests, the extras you ask for and any message you add. When you sign the terms, your typed name is stored as your signature together with the date and time you signed.

During your stay, anything you send through your booking page — a breakage you report or an extra you request — is stored against that booking with the date and time you sent it, and it stays there as the written record of what was asked for and what was agreed or charged for it.

Two further things are recorded automatically. A one-way hash of the IP address you book from is stored with the booking and with your signature, so that a signed agreement can be tied to the session that signed it and repeated automated submissions can be stopped. The hash cannot be turned back into an address, and the IP address itself is not stored in your booking record. These pages place no cookies and run no analytics.

The booking emails we send you do contain one invisible image, a single pixel square. If your mail program is set to load images, it fetches that pixel from this website and we record that the message was opened, with the time. The first open only is recorded; opening it again adds nothing, and nothing about your device is stored beyond that ordinary request. It exists for one reason: so the owner can see that your confirmation arrived and was read, rather than chasing you for a reply you already gave. Blocking images in your mail app stops it, and that changes nothing about your booking.

3. Why we use it

Your details are used to hold and confirm your dates, to send your booking confirmation and the terms you signed, to reach you during your stay with arrival directions, the gate code and housekeeping times, to schedule housekeeping on every third day of your stay, to deal with a breakage you report or an extra you request and to settle what that costs, and to keep the booking and accounting records the owner is required to keep. The read receipt in those emails is used for one thing only: to show whether the message reached you. That is the whole list. We write to you only about your own stay — there is no newsletter and no marketing.

4. Payments

Card payments are taken by DPO, a payment provider, on their own secure pages. Your card number, expiry and security code are entered there and are never sent to, seen by or stored on this website. What comes back to us is a payment reference and the result — paid, pending or failed — and that is what is kept with your booking. Where a stay is paid another way, or where a stay of a month or longer is quoted by the owner, the arrangement is confirmed with you in writing and only the outcome is recorded.

5. Who else sees your details

Beyond the owner, your details reach only the services needed to run the booking:

• The hosting provider that publishes this website and stores the booking records in its database.
• DPO, when you pay by card, to process that payment.
• The email delivery service that sends your confirmation and the owner's notification — it sees only the addresses and the message needed to deliver them.
• WhatsApp or your phone network, if the owner messages or calls you about your stay; that message travels under their own terms.
• OpenStreetMap and Google Fonts, whose map tiles and typefaces your browser fetches directly when you view the location map or open the site. They see your IP address as part of that ordinary request; we share nothing else with them.

Nobody else. Your details are not sold, rented, brokered or shared for advertising, and they are not transferred to any party who would use them for their own purposes.

6. Cookies and your own browser

This site sets no cookies. One small preference is saved in your browser's local storage: the currency you choose on the rate card — pula, rand, dollars or pounds — so that the indicative prices remember your choice when you come back. It stays on your device, holds no personal details and you can clear it at any time in your browser settings. The read receipt described in section 2 sits in the email we send you, not in these pages, and it stores nothing on your device. The owner's private console keeps its passphrase in that browser tab only, and it disappears when the tab is closed; that page is not part of the guest website.

7. How long we keep it

Your booking record is kept for the length of your stay and afterwards for as long as the owner must retain booking and accounting records. Breakages and extras you report are part of that record and are kept with it. An enquiry that never becomes a booking is kept only long enough to answer it. Ask for your details to be deleted and they are, unless a record still has to be kept for those legal reasons — in which case it is kept no longer than required and is not used for anything else.

8. How your details are protected

Booking records are held in the website's database and are reached only through the owner's sign-in page, which is protected by a passphrase. Every page of this site is served over an encrypted connection. Signature and IP records are stored as one-way hashes rather than as raw addresses. No card details are stored at all, and the site holds no more about you than it needs to run your stay.

9. Your rights

Botswana's Data Protection Act, 2018 gives you rights over your personal data. You may ask what is held about you and receive a copy of it, ask for anything wrong to be corrected, ask for it to be deleted where there is no longer a reason to keep it, and object to how it is used. Write to the owner and you will have an answer without undue delay, normally within 30 days, at no charge. If you are not satisfied with the answer, you may raise the matter with Botswana's data protection regulator.

10. Changes to this policy

If the way your details are handled changes, this page is updated and the date at the top shows the version you are reading. Bookings are handled under the policy in force when you made them.

11. Questions and requests

To ask what we hold about you, or to have it corrected or deleted, reply to the booking confirmation you received, or write to the owner at [email protected] quoting your booking reference — it begins LOFT- and is on your confirmation and your guest link. Please do not send card numbers, passwords or a copy of your ID by email; the owner will ask for what is needed in a safer way.