Privacy & Cookie Policy

Last updated: 14 September 2026

This policy explains what personal information Backpacking Tours collects when you visit backpackingtours.com, get in touch, book a trip or travel with us, what we do with it, who we share it with and the choices you have. If anything here is unclear, email us at admin@backpackingtours.com.

Who we are

Backpacking Tours is a trading name of Backpacking Through Thailand Co., Ltd., 26 Soi Nakniwas 42 Yak 5, Nakniwas Road, Ladpraw, Bangkok 10230, Thailand (business number 0105556085748, Tourism Authority of Thailand licence 11/12642). We are the controller of the personal information described here. Honeymoon Tours (honeymoontours.com) is run by the same company.

What we collect

• When you get in touch: your name, email address and message, whether you use the contact form, the live chat or email. If you ask for a discount code through our pop-up, your first name and email address.
• When you book: the lead traveller's and every other traveller's name, email address, phone number, date of birth, nationality, gender and postal address, the trip and dates you choose, any extras, discount codes and your payment status. We never see or store your card details: payments are taken by PayPal.
• Before you travel: passport details (name as printed, number, issue and expiry dates), an emergency contact (name, relationship, phone, email and address), travel insurance details (provider, policy number and dates) and your flight and airport transfer details.
• Health information: if you tell us about medical conditions, allergies, dietary needs, medication, disabilities or pregnancy, at checkout or on our participation and health declaration form. This is sensitive information. You choose whether to give it to us, and we use it only to make sure your trip is safe and suitable for you.
• Your account: your login details (we store your password in a form that cannot be read back), your currency and your booking history.
• When you browse: the pages and tours you look at, how long you spend and how far you scroll, what you search for on the site, how you arrived (for example a search engine, an email or an advert), the country your connection comes from, and your device and browser type. We do not store your IP address with this. See Cookies below.
• From our emails: whether an email was opened and which links were clicked, and if you click a link in one of our emails we can connect that visit to your email address.

How we use it, and why we are allowed to

• To take and run your booking, pass it to the operator running your trip, take payment, send confirmations and reminders, and look after you before, during and after the trip. We need this information to perform our contract with you.
• To keep you safe on tour. Health information is used, with your explicit consent, only for this, and shared only with the operator and guides running your trip. You can withdraw that consent, although we may then be unable to confirm that a trip is suitable for you.
• To answer your enquiries and to filter out spam. This is in our legitimate interests and yours.
• To send you news, offers and trip ideas by email. We do this if you have asked for them, or if you have booked or enquired about a trip with us, in which case we may send you information about similar trips. Every email has an unsubscribe link and you can opt out at any time.
• To understand and improve the website, using our own statistics about how the site is used. With the Analytics setting on, our statistics recognise your browser from one visit to the next. In the UK this is on unless you switch it off in Cookie Settings; elsewhere in Europe only if you allow it. With it off, we still count your visit anonymously: no cookie, nothing stored on your device, no IP address, and nothing that connects the visit to you or to your other visits. This is in our legitimate interests, and you can object to it too: stop counting my visits.
• To show you our trips on other websites and social media and measure which adverts work, only with your consent where the law requires it.
• To meet our legal obligations (for example accounting, tax and tourism licensing) and to protect the site and our customers from fraud and abuse.

Automated decisions

• Our statistics give each browser an engagement score based on what was looked at, so we can see which pages and trips interest people. It is used for reporting only and never decides a price, an offer or whether you can book.
• Messages sent through our contact form and live chat are checked by an automated classifier (Google's Gemini AI service) to tell genuine travellers from spam and business pitches. Only messages judged genuine lead to the sender being added to our mailing list. It never affects whether we reply to you.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only where it is needed for the purposes above:

• The tour operators and local partners who run your trip: traveller details, passport details, emergency contact, flights, dietary and medical information.
• PayPal, to take payments (name, email, phone, billing address and the amount).
• Postmark and Google Workspace, to send and receive email, and Google Sheets, which our team uses to manage bookings.
• Crisp, which provides our live chat.
• Google's Gemini AI service, to filter enquiries as described above.
• Hostinger (our servers), Cloudflare (security and delivering the site) and imgix (images).
• Google, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and TikTok, for advertising and measuring adverts, only through the marketing cookies and tags described below, and only where you have allowed them.
• Trustpilot, to invite you to review your trip after you travel.
• Authorities, insurers or professional advisers where the law requires it or to establish or defend legal claims.

Where your information is stored

We are based in Thailand. Our website and database are hosted in Malaysia, with backups in India, and several of the providers above store data in the United States and elsewhere. Where information about customers in the UK or Europe is handled outside those regions, we rely on the safeguards our providers offer, such as standard contractual clauses.

How long we keep it

• Account and booking records are kept while your account is in use and afterwards for as long as we need them for accounting, tax, licensing and legal purposes.
• Detailed browsing statistics are deleted after 90 days. The browser identifier behind them expires after 400 days without a visit, and an unlinked browser record is deleted after 14 months without a visit.
• Enquiries are kept so we can see the history of our conversations with you.
• You can ask us to delete your information sooner (see below). We will, unless we have to keep something by law.

Your rights

Depending on where you live you have the right to ask for a copy of your personal information, to have it corrected or deleted, to restrict or object to how we use it (including for direct marketing, at any time), to receive it in a portable form, and to withdraw any consent you have given. Email admin@backpackingtours.com and we will reply within one month. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first; you can also complain to the Personal Data Protection Committee in Thailand, the Information Commissioner's Office in the UK (ico.org.uk) or the data protection authority where you live.

Children

The lead booker must be 18 or over. If you book a place for someone under 18, you confirm you are their parent or guardian or have their parent or guardian's permission to give us their details.

Cookies

Cookies are small files a website stores in your browser. We also use the browser's local storage for the same purposes. We group them the same way as our cookie banner:

• Strictly necessary (always on): your session and login (backpacking_tours, 30 days), your basket (cart, until you close the browser), your chosen currency (currency_user, until you close the browser), whether you have closed the announcement bar or already seen or answered our discount pop-up (browser storage), and your cookie choices (cookie_consent, 12 months).
• Functional: our live chat by Crisp, which remembers your conversation from page to page (crisp-client, up to 6 months).
• Analytics: our own statistics about how the site is used (bt_vid, 400 days, plus browser storage for which tour galleries you opened in a visit). This information stays with us.
• Marketing: Google Ads (_gcl_au, _gcl_aw, IDE, about 3 months to 13 months), Meta (_fbp, _fbc, fr, about 3 months) and TikTok (_ttp, _tt_enable_cookie, ttcsid, up to 13 months). These let those platforms show you our trips, measure our adverts and build audiences for them. When you allow marketing cookies we also share a scrambled (hashed) version of our analytics identifier with Meta and TikTok to help them match visits to adverts.

If you are in the UK or Europe, nothing in the functional or marketing groups runs until you allow it, and in the European Economic Area our analytics cookie is not set either (visits are still counted anonymously, as described above). Elsewhere they run unless you switch them off. Google's tags are told your choice and adjust what they collect. Cloudflare may also measure site performance without setting cookies.

You can change your choices at any time: open Cookie Settings, or use the link in the footer of every page. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings, although parts of the site, such as booking, need the strictly necessary ones.

Changes to this policy

We will update this page when the way we use personal information changes, and change the date at the top. If a change affects you significantly, we will tell you by email or on the site.