1. Who is responsible and how to contact us
This notice covers personal information handled by the operator of MatchdayHotels in running matchdayhotels.com. For privacy questions or requests concerning that information, use the contact below.
For a privacy question or rights request, contact privacy@matchdayhotels.com. Please identify the service or interaction concerned and provide enough information to locate the relevant records. Do not include payment-card details, passwords or a copy of an identity document in an initial enquiry.
2. Browsing and planning a trip
You do not need to subscribe to emails or allow optional guide analytics to read our public guides. Delivering the site still involves technical information such as an IP address, requested URL, time, browser/device information and security or error signals being handled by hosting infrastructure.
Planning choices may include a club, ground, fixture, stay dates, area, guests or rooms. These can appear in a URL, be used to prepare a guide or booking link, or be remembered in browser storage. A shared URL can disclose the choices encoded in it, so check a link before sharing it. These planning values are not hotel reservations and do not identify a booking customer by themselves.
The site does not require payment-card details to read a guide or compare its hotel choices. Bookings are made with external providers, which collect the information needed for their own service.
3. Information you provide directly
If you email us or submit a supporter report, we may receive your email address, the message, relevant page or fixture, source links, attachments and any other details you choose to provide. Give us only what is necessary. Information about accessibility needs or another person's private circumstances can be sensitive; avoid sending medical histories or unnecessary third-party details.
For email services where available, records may include an address, selected club or fixture, alert and marketing choices, consent wording and times, confirmation/unsubscribe state, delivery/suppression information and limited technical data used to protect the form. Administration accounts also generate authentication, saved-edit and publication records. Public visitors do not need an administration account.
4. Why we use information and our lawful bases
- Providing the website and requested planning functions: delivering pages, handling selected fixtures and responding to a requested action. Our legitimate interests are operating a useful, reliable football-travel website. Where a specific service involves a contract with you, processing necessary to perform that contract may also apply.
- Corrections and enquiries: investigating reported errors, replying where appropriate and keeping a proportionate evidence trail. Our legitimate interests are accurate editorial information, resolving enquiries and preventing misuse.
- Requested email alerts and optional promotions: consent for the messages you select, including applicable electronic-marketing requirements. Optional promotional consent is separate from editorial or fixture alerts.
- Optional guide analytics: consent for the guide/hotel interaction measurement described below. Declining it does not prevent access to public guides.
- Security, abuse prevention and research protection: legitimate interests in protecting visitors, private research, accounts and service availability, investigating incidents and detecting prohibited automated access.
- Rights requests and legal matters: complying with applicable legal obligations and, where relevant, establishing, exercising or defending legal claims.
You are not required to provide optional marketing consent or an optional report email simply to browse. Without the information necessary for an enquiry or requested email service, we may be unable to reply or provide that particular service. We consider the nature of the information and the effect on individuals when relying on legitimate interests.
5. Optional analytics and your choice
Some guides offer an Analytics choices control. Guide analytics are off unless you allow them for that browser session. The choice is remembered in session storage; you can use the available control to keep analytics off or withdraw the session choice. Closing a browser session normally clears session storage, although browser session restoration behaviour can vary.
When allowed, the guide event handler records a limited set of events such as a guide view, fixture selection, hotel-selector use or a hotel-link interaction. The accepted event fields relate to the club, ground, guide type, fixture identifier, stay area, provider or hotel-choice identifier. The handler does not copy an arbitrary full URL, name, email address or unknown fields into that event record.
These events use the hosting platform's logging facilities. That does not mean the hosting platform receives no technical request information: delivery, error and security systems can separately handle IP addresses and other connection data. We do not describe all website processing as anonymous simply because an optional event omits a name.
7. Security and automated-access monitoring
Cloudflare supplies the site's hosting and security infrastructure. Requests may be checked to protect forms, private administration, researched material and service availability. Where Turnstile is used, technical signals can be processed to distinguish genuine use from automated abuse. A failed or suspicious request may be limited or challenged; this is not used to decide eligibility for employment, credit, insurance or similar services.
The research-access observation code can record route categories, relevant club/ground, a date, whether a crawler is verified by the provider, and a keyed daily value derived from a requesting IP address. That value is designed to group activity for abuse monitoring without placing the raw IP address in that particular observation record. It is pseudonymous security data, not a guarantee of anonymity, and infrastructure logs may separately contain connection information.
Optional analytics consent does not disable necessary security processing. We do not publish private security records as part of the public research network.
8. Email services and unsubscribe choices
The email implementation uses address confirmation before a requested subscription becomes active. Alert choices and optional special offers are treated separately. When email services are available and configured, delivery and suppression records help send requested messages, handle bounces and avoid continuing to send to an unsubscribed address.
Use the unsubscribe link in a received message or contact us if you have difficulty. Withdrawing marketing consent does not make earlier processing unlawful, and a minimal suppression record may need to remain so an address is not inadvertently added again. Delivery depends on the provider, mailbox and service configuration; this notice is not a guarantee that every alert feature is currently available or that an email will arrive.
9. Booking providers, affiliate links and other recipients
Following a hotel or other commercial link can take you through an affiliate network, including CJ, to a booking provider such as Booking.com. The handoff can include selected stay dates, guests, rooms, the property/destination and campaign or placement identifiers. The network and provider receive the connection information involved in the visit and apply their own privacy and cookie notices.
MatchdayHotels does not pass a mailing-list email address in its standard hotel-link builder. Information you subsequently enter into a provider's website is handled by that provider for its own purposes. Browser or provider cookie choices may affect attribution; a booking link is not a promise of a particular tracking outcome.
Service-provider categories include hosting, security, database/media storage, email routing/delivery and operational support. The email implementation uses Brevo where configured. Authorised people helping operate the site may access information where necessary for their role. Information may also be disclosed where lawfully required or necessary for handling a legal claim. This notice does not authorise a new use of mailing-list information for another organisation's independent marketing.
10. Research sources and AI-assisted work
Research may include public-facing names, business contact information, attributed material, photographs and source evidence obtained from publicly accessible pages or submitted reports. Public availability does not remove data-protection responsibilities. Our purpose is to evaluate and present relevant football-travel information, not to assemble private personal profiles.
AI-assisted research and drafting can form part of the editorial workflow. The weekly research desk prepares prompts for manual use; it does not itself send a visitor's correspondence to an AI service. Avoid including unnecessary personal information in research material or submissions. A materially different use of personal information must be assessed and explained before it is introduced.
11. How long information is kept
Retention depends on the purpose, the record and whether it remains necessary. The email system includes a routine intended to remove unconfirmed subscriptions older than 30 days when its processing cycle runs. Active subscription details are kept to provide the requested service; suppression and evidence of consent can be retained where needed to honour preferences and demonstrate how a subscription was handled. We do not claim an automatic 24-month deletion rule that the implementation does not establish.
Enquiries and correction correspondence are retained for the time needed to investigate, respond, address follow-up issues and keep an appropriate evidence trail. Security and service logs follow the configured infrastructure retention and any proportionate incident-investigation needs. Editorial research and revision history may be retained to support accuracy, provenance and recovery, with unnecessary personal details removed or restricted where appropriate.
Backups can retain a copy after removal from active systems until the backup is rotated or expires. A record may need to be kept longer for a legal obligation, dispute, consent/suppression evidence or incident. Retention is not unlimited merely because storage is available. Contact us about the records relevant to you and any deletion or restriction request.
12. International processing and security
Infrastructure, affiliate, email and booking providers may process information outside the UK. The applicable transfer arrangements depend on the provider, service and destination. UK data-protection requirements may require an adequacy basis or appropriate safeguards for a restricted transfer. Contact us for information about the arrangements relevant to personal information we control; we will not describe every provider as UK-only.
The site uses controls such as encrypted connections, authenticated administration, access restrictions and saved revision/recovery mechanisms. Access should be limited to a legitimate operational need. No website, email service or backup arrangement can be guaranteed completely secure, and a copy of a research record should not be treated as a reason to share it more widely than necessary.
13. Your rights and complaints
Depending on the circumstances and lawful basis, you may ask for access to your personal information, correction, erasure, restriction, portability or object to processing based on legitimate interests. You may withdraw consent and object to direct marketing at any time. These rights have conditions and exceptions; they do not automatically require deletion of every editorial, legal or security record.
Send requests to privacy@matchdayhotels.com. We may ask for proportionate information to verify that a request concerns your records, particularly before disclosing information. Requests are normally handled without charge and within the applicable statutory time limit, generally one month, subject to lawful extensions or exceptions. We will explain a restriction or refusal where required.
You can raise a concern with us or complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/. You do not have to obtain our permission to complain. This notice does not waive a statutory right or make an editorial correction a substitute for a privacy remedy.
14. Children and changes to this notice
Public football-travel guides may be read by people of different ages. Alcohol content is intended for adults aged 18 and over, and external booking providers set their own eligibility and contract requirements. We do not need a child's detailed personal information to provide public guides; contact us if you believe unnecessary information about a child has been submitted.
The page's revision date will show when the notice is updated. Material changes to how personal information is used need appropriate notice, and new consent where required; changing the words on this page does not itself make a new purpose lawful. Read this notice with Cookies, Corrections, Affiliate Disclosure and Terms of use.
Use the relevant contact route and include the page or service concerned. Our contact page lists the available addresses.
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