SWFL Vacations Privacy Policy

1. Who we are#

SWFL Vacations LLC ("SWFL Vacations," "we," "us") operates swflvacations.com, a marketplace for Southwest Florida vacation rentals, services and experiences. This policy explains how we collect, use, share and protect the personal information of Guests, Hosts, Vendors and visitors.

This policy does not cover listings offered by Sands Property Management LLC, a separate affiliated brokerage. When you book one of those listings, Sands Property Management LLC collects your booking and payment information through its own reservation system, under its own privacy policy.

2. Information we collect#

Information you give us: name, email, phone and mailing address; account login details; booking details such as dates, party size and special requests; messages with Providers and with us; reviews and photos; and support requests and newsletter sign-ups. Hosts also give us property details, license and registration numbers, calendar links and access instructions. Vendors also give us business details, licenses and insurance certificates.

Guest accounts: if you create a guest account, we keep your name, email address, password (stored only as a one-way hash), an optional mobile number, the homes you save, and a record of which versions of our Terms of Service and this policy you accepted. Homes you saved in your browser before signing in are added to your account when you sign in.

Payment and identity information: Stripe processes payments and payouts. Stripe collects card details, bank account details, tax IDs for W-9 and 1099-K reporting, date of birth, and, for Hosts and Vendors, government ID images and selfie verification. We receive limited information from Stripe, such as verification status, the last four digits of a card, and payout status. We do not store full card numbers or ID images.

Information collected automatically: IP address, device and browser type, pages viewed, referring pages, approximate location based on IP address, and cookie and similar identifiers (see Section 8).

Information from others: Providers (for example, damage reports), other users (reviews, including reviews of your stay written by hosts, which only the host and our staff see), reviews from booking channels that we receive through our reservation software, calendar platforms you connect, our service providers, and public license databases we use to verify licenses.

3. How we use information#

We use information to:

• operate the marketplace, including accounts, listings, bookings, payments, payouts and stay pages
• verify identity and licenses
• prevent fraud, abuse and off-Platform booking, including by automated and staff screening of messages and listing content
• show your trips in your guest account, by matching bookings to the account's verified email address, including stays at SWFL Vacations homes booked through other sites
• send booking and account messages by email and text
• send marketing with your consent or as the law allows
• show and measure ads
• invite, confirm and publish reviews, and check them for contact details, offers to book elsewhere and abuse
• analyze and improve the Platform
• comply with law and tax obligations, and enforce our Terms

4. How we share information#

Between users, as a booking requires. Guests' names, party details and messages go to the Provider. Providers' listing information goes to Guests. Hosts' legal names and contact details are generally not shown to Guests. A Host who chooses to publish a profile shares the display name, photo, bio and languages they provide, which anyone viewing their listings can see, and can remove it at any time.

With service providers who work for us: Vercel (hosting), Strapi Cloud (content management and database), Cloudflare (file and image storage), Stripe (payments, payouts and identity verification), Mailgun (transactional email), GoHighLevel (customer relationship management, marketing email and text messaging), Google Analytics and Google Search Console (analytics), and Meta (advertising measurement and retargeting). Stripe and Meta also use data for their own purposes under their own privacy policies.

With affiliates. We may share information with our parent company, Sands Brands LLC, for administration. We share information with Sands Property Management LLC only if you ask about or book one of its listings, or with your consent.

For legal, safety and business reasons. We share information to comply with law, subpoenas and tax authorities; to protect rights and safety; and in connection with a merger, financing or sale of all or part of our business.

We do not sell personal information for money. Our use of advertising cookies, such as the Meta Pixel, may be considered "sharing" or "targeted advertising" under some state laws. See Section 8 to opt out.

We do not sell or share your SMS opt-in data or personal information with third parties for marketing purposes.

5. Text messages#

If you opt in, SWFL Vacations will text you about bookings and your account. If you separately opt in to marketing, we will also text you offers and local tips. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to cancel and HELP for help. Consent is not a condition of purchase. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. See our SMS Terms.

No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent will not be shared with any third parties, except with service providers, such as our text messaging platform, that help us deliver messages.

6. Email#

Booking and account emails, such as confirmations, receipts and security notices, are part of the service. You can unsubscribe from marketing emails at any time using the link in each message. We honor unsubscribe requests within 10 business days.

6A. Reviews#

Reviews you write

If you stayed at a home booked directly through SWFL Vacations, we may email you a private link to review the stay. A review is shown on the listing page. When you write one we collect:

• your overall rating, from 1 to 5;
• an optional headline (up to 100 characters) and your review text (20 to 2,000 characters);
• the name you choose to show with the review. It starts as your first name and last initial (for example, "Pat L."); you can change it (letters, spaces and a few punctuation marks, up to 30 characters). We never show your email address;
• the date you wrote it, and a private link between the review and the booking it is about, so that we can allow one review per stay and let staff check it.

Our staff read every review before it is published (see Terms Section 14). We keep a record of which staff member approved or rejected a review, when, and for which reason. Our system also checks the text for things that look like phone numbers, email addresses, web links or offers to book elsewhere. A match only alerts a staff member; it never removes or changes your review.

Who can review, and when

You can write a review after your stay is over, for 14 days. The window opens the day after check-out, and the link in your email works until the end of the 14th day after that (the email states the exact date). Only stays booked directly with us can be reviewed this way; stays booked through Airbnb, Vrbo or Booking.com are not invited.

Confirming it is you

The link in your email is personal to the stay. Before you can submit, we ask you to confirm the email address on the booking: either you are signed in to a SWFL Vacations account with that verified email, or we email you a 6-digit code. The code works for 10 minutes, the link allows 5 attempts in total, and a new code can be requested no more than once a minute.

We do not store the link, the code or your email address in the review tables. We store only one-way hashes: a keyed hash of your email address (used to match a review to your account if you later download or delete your data), a hash of the link, and a hash of the code. A code hash left on an invitation is cleared once its code expired 90 days ago, and the whole invitation is deleted after 90 days (see below).

Review emails

We send an invitation the day after check-out and one reminder 7 days later, to the booking email address, unless you have already reviewed or you have opted out or been suppressed. These emails are about your stay only: no marketing, no offer and no incentive. If you ask for a code, we email it. Review emails follow our usual limits on how often and when we message you.

IP address and form protection

The review pages are protected by an invisible check (Cloudflare Turnstile), a hidden field, a minimum time on the page and a per-address rate limit. Your IP address is used for these checks while you use the page. We do not store your IP address with a review or an invitation. The IP address is also passed to Cloudflare when the check is verified.

Hosts' reviews of guests

For stays booked on our marketplace, the host may also write a private review of the guest (a rating and text) during the same 14 days. It is visible only to that host and to our staff, is never published and is not shown to the guest. It is not part of a guest's data download, because it is about the guest and was not written by them.

When a review appears

A guest's review is held back until a staff member has approved it and either the host has written their review or the 14-day window has closed, whichever comes first. This keeps the two reviews independent of each other. For Sands-managed stays, which have no host review, a review appears once it is approved and the window has closed.

How long we keep review information

• Reviews are kept for as long as the listing exists.
• Review invitations (the booking reference, the three hashes above, and send and use times) are deleted 90 days after the invitation expired or was used, by a job that runs every day.

Your choices

• Download your data. "Download my data" on your account's Privacy page includes the reviews you wrote: the listing, rating, headline, text, display name, dates, and whether the review has been approved and is public. It does not include internal identifiers or hashes.
• Delete your account. Your review text and rating stay, shown as "Past guest". We clear the email hash from the review, replace the display name and delete any open review invitations. If you want the text itself removed, email privacy@swflvacations.com and we will consider your request.
• Opt out. You can opt out of review emails (Section 6).

Reviews from booking channels

Many of our homes are also listed on Vrbo, Airbnb and Booking.com, and some stays are booked directly. On each home's page we also show reviews that guests wrote on those channels or on direct bookings, which we receive through our reservation software, OwnerRez. These appear in a separate box, "Reviews from our booking channels", with their own averages, and are never combined with reviews written on SWFL Vacations. Each one is shown with the channel's name, the month it was written and the name the channel gave us, usually a first name and last initial, or "Guest". We show the text of Vrbo, Booking.com and direct reviews; for Airbnb reviews we show only the rating and date, not the text. Reviews that the channel has hidden are not shown. We show every review we receive for a home, newest first, and we do not choose which to show by rating. We keep these reviews as long as the home is listed.

7. How long we keep information#

We keep information only as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy:

• account information, including a guest account's profile and saved homes, while your account is active or until you delete it
• records of which versions of our Terms of Service and this policy you accepted, for as long as we need to show what was agreed
• links to manage a booking, which stop working 30 days after checkout
• booking, payment and tax records for 7 years
• messages for 3 years
• review invitations and their one-way hashes, for 90 days after they expire or are used
• reviews, for as long as the listing exists; the reviews of a deleted account are kept without the author's name
• stay page access information, including lock codes, until 30 days after checkout

8. Cookies, pixels and your advertising choices#

Strictly necessary cookies support login, security, fraud prevention and checkout, including Stripe cookies on payment pages.

Analytics. Google Analytics uses cookies to help us understand how the site is used. Learn how Google uses this information at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. You can opt out with the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

Advertising. The Meta Pixel lets Meta and us measure ads and show you SWFL Vacations ads on Meta platforms based on your visits to our site. Meta may combine this with other information under its own privacy policy. You can change your preferences in Meta's ad settings, or opt out through the Digital Advertising Alliance (optout.aboutads.info) or the Network Advertising Initiative (optout.networkadvertising.org).

Your choices on our site. Use the "Cookie Preferences" or "Do Not Share My Personal Information" links in the site footer to turn off analytics or advertising cookies. We honor Global Privacy Control (GPC) browser signals as an opt-out of advertising cookies.

We do not use session recording or replay tools.

9. Your rights#

Wherever you live, you may ask to access, correct or delete your personal information, and you may opt out of marketing and targeted advertising. Email privacy@swflvacations.com to make a request. We will verify your request and respond within 45 days. We may keep information we are required to keep by law, such as tax records, or need to resolve disputes. If you live in a state whose consumer privacy law applies to us, you may have additional rights, including the right to appeal a denied request and to use an authorized agent. We will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights.

Guest accounts. From the Privacy and data page of your account you can download a copy of your account data and delete your account. Deleting it removes your profile, saved homes and login; booking records and records of what you accepted are kept as described in Section 7. If your login is also a host account, you can delete your guest profile and saved homes there; to close a host account, contact us. Changing your password signs you out everywhere else. The data download includes the reviews you have written, and deleting your account keeps them as "Past guest" (see Reviews).

10. Children#

The Platform is intended for adults and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, and account holders must be at least 18. A parent or guardian may include minors in their party details, such as guest counts or ages needed for an experience's safety requirements. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

11. Security#

We use reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards, including encryption in transit, access controls, and private links for stay pages. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires, including under the Florida Information Protection Act.

12. Where information is processed#

We and our service providers process information in the United States and may process it in other countries where our providers operate.

13. Changes to this policy#

We will post updates here with a new effective date. For material changes, we will also notify you by email or in-app notice.

14. Contact#

SWFL Vacations LLC 3645 Bonita Beach Rd SW, Unit 1 Bonita Springs, FL 34134 privacy@swflvacations.com · 239-900-1682

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