Privacy Policy

This site is operated by BestEuropeanChristmasMarkets.com, based in the USA. You can reach us through our contact page.

You can use this site without telling us who you are. We collect basic, aggregated information about how the site is used so we can improve it. If you give us your email address (for the newsletter, a trip itinerary, or a message), we use it only for that purpose. We don't sell your personal information.

Analytics. We use Google Analytics (through Google Tag Manager) and Microsoft Clarity to understand which pages are useful and where visitors run into problems, for example pages viewed, approximate location (country or city), device and browser type, and how people scroll and click. Analytics cookies are only set after you agree to them in our cookie banner (CookieYes), and you can change your choice at any time from the cookie settings link the banner provides. Until you agree, Google Consent Mode keeps analytics and advertising storage switched off.

Site performance. Our own servers record anonymous page-speed measurements (for example how quickly a page loaded) together with the page address. These don't include your name, email address or IP address.

Server logs. Like every website, our hosting provider briefly processes standard request data such as IP address and browser type to deliver pages and protect the site from abuse.

• Newsletter: your email address. Our newsletter is run by Beehiiv. Every email has an unsubscribe link.
• Trip quiz and itinerary: your quiz answers, and your email address if you ask us to send your itinerary. Itinerary emails are sent through Resend.
• Contact form: your name, email address, optional phone number and message, so we can reply.
• River cruise enquiries: your name, email address, optional phone number and trip preferences, so we can respond to your enquiry.

To block spam, our forms use Cloudflare Turnstile, and we store a one-way scrambled version (a hash) of the sender's IP address rather than the address itself.

Markets you save, and whether you've already seen our newsletter prompt, are stored in your own browser (local storage), not on our servers. Clearing your browser data removes them.

Some links on this site go to booking partners. When you click one, the partner's site may set its own cookies to record that you came from us, so we can earn a commission if you book. Their privacy policies apply on their sites. See our Affiliate Disclosure.

We use these service providers to run the site:

• Vercel (website hosting)
• Supabase (database)
• Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager (analytics)
• Microsoft Clarity (analytics)
• CookieYes (cookie consent)
• Beehiiv (newsletter)
• Resend (email delivery)
• Cloudflare Turnstile (spam protection)

We keep messages and enquiries for as long as we need them to respond and follow up, and newsletter subscriptions until you unsubscribe. Analytics data is kept according to the retention settings of the analytics provider.

You can ask us to show you, correct, or delete the personal information we hold about you (for example a contact message or quiz email). If you live in the UK or the European Union you also have rights under the GDPR, including the right to object to processing and to complain to your local data protection authority. To make a request, contact us.

This site is meant for adults planning trips. We don't knowingly collect information from children.

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top of this page.