Privacy & Cookie Policy

The short version

TopOfHotel is a hotel review site — we don't take bookings, don't store credit card numbers, and don't ask you to create an account. Every time you click "Book on Agoda / Booking.com / Trip.com", we send you directly to that site. Your payment and personal data stay entirely with them.

We use 3 groups of cookies: functional cookies (to remember your language preference and cookie consent), analytics cookies — Google Analytics 4 (the _ga cookie, activated only after you click "Accept" on the cookie banner), and affiliate cookies from Agoda / Booking.com / Trip.com that tell us a booking came via our site — which is how we earn a small commission to keep the lights on, at no extra cost to you.

Data we do not collect

Name, phone number (no account system) — one exception for email: if you subscribe to our newsletter yourself, see "Newsletter" below
Credit card or payment information (bookings happen on Agoda/Booking/Trip, not here)
Permanent IP address records — only short-lived Cloudflare logs for bot protection
GPS location data

If you enter your email in our newsletter form, it is stored by Buttondown (a US-based email service — see the Buttondown privacy policy). We use it solely to send the newsletter — never sold or shared. Unsubscribe any time via the link in every email, or ask us to delete your address entirely via the contact channels below; we act within 30 days.

Data stored in your browser

We use localStorage to store one value: cookie_consent = accepted or rejected — so we know whether to show the cookie banner again.

Changed your mind? Click "Cookie settings" in the footer of any page — it resets your choice to "rejected" and reopens the banner so you can decide again. Withdrawing consent is as easy as giving it.

Third-party cookies

When you click a hotel booking button, you leave our site and land on our partner's site, which has its own cookie policy:

We also use Cloudflare as our CDN (short-lived access logs for DDoS protection) and Google Analytics 4 to count pageviews and affiliate-link clicks (an affiliate_click event) so we can improve the content — GA4 runs only after you accept cookies, with IP anonymization, and we never send names, emails, or any identifying data to it (see the Google privacy policy).

Your rights

The only personal data we hold is the email address of newsletter subscribers (if you subscribed) — you can request access, correction, or deletion any time via the contact channels below; we respond within 30 days. For analytics cookies, withdraw consent instantly via the "Cookie settings" link in the footer.

Policy changes

If we update this page, we'll note the date above. Current version: July 5, 2026.

Questions?

Reach the team at hello@topofhotel.com or Facebook: TopOfHotel — we read every message.