Privacy, cookies & your data

This page explains, in plain language, what this website does with personal data when you browse it or send us a travel enquiry. It describes browsing and travel enquiries; it does not cover a future booking or payment service.

Who is responsible for this website

This website promotes private journeys in Sichuan, China. The operator and controller is Chengdu Ruiyi Jinqu Culture Communication Co., Ltd., based in China. Contact address: 成都市天府新区天津路东段269号 (No. 269, East Section of Tianjin Road, Tianfu New Area, Chengdu, China). Contact person: ChengJie He. For privacy enquiries, email chengjiehe@offpathnow.com. Our enquiry WhatsApp number is +86 156 8317 0320.

What data is involved, and why

1. Your website enquiry. If you choose “Send my enquiry”, we send your name, email address, service preference, party size, travel timing, interests and any optional budget, notes or pasted itinerary to our website server in Germany. The request is saved in a private WordPress enquiry record for authorised administrators; no public account is created. We use it to review your plans and reply. A receipt email contains a reference and fixed acknowledgement text. Separate operational notifications go to our business mailboxes hosted by QQ/Tencent, with only the reference and a sign-in-protected administration link, not your contact details or full itinerary. Email delivery also involves the website’s configured mail provider and the receiving email providers. Temporary keyed hashes of the connection IP address and email are used for up to 15 minutes to limit abusive submissions; the enquiry record contains no IP address. Form values, email addresses and enquiry references are not sent to analytics. The optional WhatsApp and clipboard actions remain separate choices.

2. Messages you send us on WhatsApp. If you send the summary (or write your own message), your message, your phone number and any further correspondence are processed by WhatsApp under WhatsApp’s own terms and privacy policy. On our side, we use the message to reply to your enquiry, prepare suggestions and quotations, and keep the history of our conversation so we can continue where we left off. We may record contact details, travel preferences and follow-up status in an Excel file for enquiry management. We do not use AI to translate or organise customer messages and do not pass enquiry information to travel agencies, hotels, drivers or other travel suppliers.

3. Technical logs kept by the hosting provider. Like every website, our hosting provider (Hostinger) may record technical logs — for example IP address, browser type and the time of visits — to deliver pages, ensure security and prevent abuse. The exact log fields and retention settings are being checked with the hosting service.

Why we process enquiry information

Where GDPR applies, we process the information necessary to answer your requested quotation and prepare a proposed journey in order to take steps at your request before entering into a contract (Article 6(1)(b)). This does not authorise unrelated marketing. Any separate processing purpose must have its own applicable legal basis.

How an enquiry travels (data flow)

• You enter your plans. Editing the form alone does not submit its contents.
• Choosing “Send my enquiry” transmits the form to our website and stores a private record. You receive an on-screen reference; notification or email failure does not remove a saved request.
• Our authorised team in China reviews the request in the protected administration area and replies by email. We may keep follow-up correspondence and an Excel export.
• Alternatively, opening the WhatsApp summary link shares the prefilled travel summary with WhatsApp before you send a chat message. Copying the summary places it on your clipboard. These actions do not submit the website form.
• We do not use AI to process customer messages, sell enquiries, forward them to travel suppliers or subscribe you to marketing. Any different processing needed for a booking will be explained before collection or sharing.

The form deliberately does not ask for passports, ID numbers, payment card details or medical records. Please do not include such information in your first message.

Where data is stored

The website and its private enquiry records are hosted by Hostinger in Germany. Our authorised business team is based in China and can access these records to respond. Correspondence may be stored in our email, WhatsApp or Excel records. Operational notifications use QQ/Tencent business mailboxes in China; customer acknowledgements use the configured website email service and your receiving email provider. German web hosting does not mean all processing takes place in the European Economic Area. Relevant provider arrangements and any required international-transfer safeguards must be verified for each data flow; no blanket guarantee is made.

Hosting details

Web hosting: Hostinger; data centre country: Germany. Verification of hosting logs, backups and enabled third-party services is pending.

Cookies, maps and similar technologies

Optional website analytics. With your consent, we use Matomo hosted on this website in Germany to understand which journeys and information visitors find useful. Analytics records page paths, referring domains or campaign labels, approximate country, browser and device type, visit duration, language and actions such as preparing or copying an enquiry summary and opening WhatsApp or email links. Stored IP addresses are masked by removing the last two bytes; the full IP may be used briefly to estimate country before masking. We do not send form answers, contact details or the text of WhatsApp messages to analytics. A WhatsApp link click is not confirmation that a message was sent or a booking made. Analytics data is accessible to our authorised website administrators, including our team in China.

Interactive route maps. Itinerary pages offer an interactive map whose software is bundled on this site. The map background images (tiles) are provided by OpenStreetMap (OpenStreetMap Foundation, United Kingdom) and are requested from OpenStreetMap only after you choose to load the map; until then, no such request is made. When you open the map, OpenStreetMap receives technical data such as your IP address in order to deliver the tiles.

Matomo analytics is blocked until you choose “Allow analytics”. Where GDPR applies, its legal basis is your consent (Article 6(1)(a)). You may refuse without affecting your visit, or withdraw consent at any time using “Privacy settings”; withdrawal does not affect earlier lawful processing. We do not set analytics, advertising or social-media tracking cookies. Your allow/refuse choice is stored on your device in local storage for up to 180 days, without a visitor identifier. Essential hosting session or cache mechanisms may still be used. Logged-in website users are excluded from analytics, and we honour browser Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals. Analytics retention periods are being finalised; you can request information or deletion at chengjiehe@offpathnow.com.

How long we keep things

For enquiries that do not result in a booking, our website deletes private enquiry records 12 calendar months after the last substantive communication, except records with a documented legal or dispute hold. Merely viewing or editing a record does not restart that period. WhatsApp, email and Excel copies must be deleted on the same schedule by our team. Booked records and documented exceptions require separate retention review; only necessary information should be kept. Hosting logs and backups have separate retention settings that remain to be verified, so deletion from the active enquiry database is not a promise of immediate removal from every backup.

Your rights

Where the GDPR applies to you, you have the right to ask us for access to the personal data we hold about you, and to have it corrected, deleted or its use restricted; you also have rights to data portability and to object to processing, and the right to lodge a complaint with your national data protection authority. These rights depend on the applicable conditions and may be subject to exceptions. To make a request, email chengjiehe@offpathnow.com or contact our WhatsApp number. We normally respond within one month. Where a permitted extension is necessary because of complexity or the number of requests, we will notify you within that month and explain the reason.

Children

This website is intended for adults planning travel. Enquiries should be made by adults. An adult may provide the number of children and approximate ages where relevant to travel planning. Please do not provide children’s names, identity documents or other unnecessary personal details.

Changes to this page

We keep this page accurate; if our practices change, we will update it and note the date. Last updated: 26 October 2026.

Photography credits are listed separately on the image credits page.