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Privacy Policy

This policy explains what Liverpool Tourism Guide (www.liverpooltourism.org) collects when you read the site, why, and what you can do about it. It describes what the site actually does today rather than a generic set of possibilities. It was last reviewed in September 2026.

Liverpool Tourism Guide is an independent publication. Readers in the United Kingdom and the EEA have rights under the UK and EU GDPR, set out below.

The short version

  • You can read every guide on this site without giving any personal information at all.
  • There is no newsletter, no account to register for, and no comment section — so there is nothing to sign up to and nothing published under your name.
  • Google Analytics measures how pages are used, in aggregate.
  • The contact form collects what you type into it, and uses it to reply to you.
  • Nothing is sold to data brokers.
  • Some booking links earn a commission if you book through them, which is explained below.

What is collected when you simply read

Like any website, this one runs on a web server that records requests. Those server logs contain your IP address, the time of the request, the page requested, your browser’s user-agent string and the referring page. They are generated by the hosting infrastructure, kept for a short period, and used for security and to diagnose faults. They are not used to build a profile of you.

Analytics

The site runs Google Analytics 4, loaded through Google’s tag on every page. It records which pages are viewed, roughly where in the world the reader is, what kind of device they are on, and how they arrived — for example from a Google search or a link on another site. This is what shows, say, that the Anfield ticket guide gets read far more in the weeks before a fixture list is announced, which determines what gets updated next.

Analytics data is processed in aggregate. It is not used to identify individual readers and IP addresses are truncated by Google before storage. Google acts as a data processor for this and holds the data under its own terms; its practices are described in Google’s privacy policy.

You can prevent analytics collection entirely by installing Google’s browser opt-out add-on, by using a browser or extension that blocks tracking scripts, or by declining analytics and advertising cookies where a consent choice is offered to you.

Consent, and how it differs by country

Analytics and advertising cookies are not strictly necessary to deliver the site, and where the law requires your consent before they are set, that consent is the legal basis relied on. A consent management platform certified by Google is being put in place to record those choices for readers in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, and this section will be updated with its details when it goes live. Until then — and at any time afterwards — you can control these cookies through your browser settings and the vendor opt-out links above, and blocking them will not stop you reading anything here.

The contact form

If you write in through the contact page, the form collects your name, your email address, an optional subject line and your message. These are emailed to the publisher and used for one purpose: to read and answer what you wrote. The legal basis is legitimate interest — you contacted a publisher expecting a response.

Form submissions are not added to any mailing list, are never sold or shared for marketing, and are deleted once the matter is closed and there is no longer a reason to keep them. Please do not send sensitive personal information, booking references or payment details through the form — it is not the right channel for any of those.

The form is provided by the Contact Form 7 plugin and messages are delivered by email. Delivery involves the site’s hosting provider and its outgoing mail service, which handle the message in transit.

Cookies used on this site

  • Analytics cookies set by Google Analytics, to distinguish one visit from another and measure page use.
  • Functional cookies set by WordPress and the site’s caching layer, which keep the site working and are not used to track you across other websites. If you are not logged in as an administrator — and readers never are — these are minimal.

Every mainstream browser lets you view, block and delete cookies. Blocking third-party cookies will not break this site.

Two more are worth naming. The cookie consent plugin sets a cookie recording your response to the cookie notice, so it is not shown again on every page. And the affiliate booking links described below involve two separate things: the booking site you land on sets its own cookie once you click through, while Stay22 identifies your device from the moment a page loads and keeps an identifier in your browser’s local storage rather than a cookie. Both sit in the marketing category of the cookie notice, and declining that category stops both.

Your choices, and what runs before you make them

What runs before you choose depends on where you are reading from, because the law does. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, and in Brazil, Chile, China, Israel, Nigeria, South Korea, Thailand, Türkiye and Vietnam, nothing beyond the strictly necessary runs until you answer the dialog on your first visit — not analytics, not Stay22 — and Reject all sits on that first screen next to Accept all, not behind a second click.

In the United States you are shown a bar rather than a dialog, and it is not only a notice. Analytics starts on arrival there, but advertising and booking-partner scripts stay switched off until you answer it. In Switzerland you get the dialog too, but analytics starts on arrival there and only advertising and booking-partner scripts wait for your answer. In Canada, and in the countries where notice is enough — among them Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, India and Mexico — everything described on this page starts when you arrive; the notice tells you so, and the same control switches it off. Everywhere else, and whenever we cannot tell where you are, the strictest setting applies: nothing beyond the necessary runs until you answer.

Your answer is kept on your own device, in a first-party cookie called cookie_consent_a8462e that only this site can read, so you are not asked again on every page. It lasts about a year. The Cookie settings link in the footer of every page reopens the choice, and withdrawing is the same two clicks as agreeing: the scripts stop and what they stored on your device is cleared, including visitor_id_id22, cache_id22 and the thumbmark_* keys.

Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Liverpool Tourism Guide is held back from readers who say no.

If you are reading this in the United States

Several US states give you the right to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, and those words are broader than they sound: letting an advertising or affiliate partner receive information about your visit can count as sharing even though no money changes hands for your data and we have never sold anything of the kind. Rather than argue the definition, Liverpool Tourism Guide treats it as covered.

So the bar shown to US readers carries a Do not sell or share button, and for US readers the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page reads Do not sell or share my personal information. Using it stops the advertising category, which is what Stay22 and any ad partner sit in, and clears what they have already stored on your device.

This site also honours Global Privacy Control. If your browser or an extension sends a GPC signal, it is treated as a valid opt-out on arrival — you do not have to find the control and click it as well, and we do not ask again on later visits. Do Not Track is a different and long-abandoned signal, and to be straight about it: this site does not act on DNT, because nothing agreed what it ought to mean.

The record kept of your choice

Proving that a choice was offered and honoured means keeping a record of it. Each answer is logged with the date and time, the two-letter country the choice was made from, which of the rule sets above applied, a reference to the exact wording you were shown, and the choice itself, against a random identifier generated for your browser.

That record contains no name, no email address and no IP address. It holds a salted hash of your browser’s user-agent string, and the salt changes every day, so two visits on different days cannot be linked back together through it. Records are deleted after 26 months. If you want to see or delete the entries tied to your browser, ask through the contact form.

Affiliate links and booking partners

Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. Where a guide points at somewhere to stay, that link is usually one of them. Accommodation links are handled by Stay22, a booking-link service that adds a referral tag when you click through to a hotel or booking site. If you go on to book, the booking site pays us a small commission. The price you pay is the same either way, and nothing on this site is behind a paywall or conditional on using those links.

What that means for your data: when you click one of these links, the partner receives the fact that the click came from this site, along with the standard technical details any website receives, and sets its own cookie or identifier so that a booking made afterwards can be attributed and the commission paid. Liverpool Tourism Guide never sees your booking, your travel dates, your name or your payment details — what comes back to us is a count of clicks and, occasionally, the fact that a booking happened.

Once you follow one of those links you are on the booking partner’s own site, under their privacy policy, and this one stops applying. If you would rather not be tracked that way, declining the marketing category in the cookie notice stops it before it starts. Blocking third-party cookies in your browser stops the booking site’s own attribution, but not Stay22’s, which does not use a cookie at all — the paragraph below explains how that one works. Either way the links still work and the price is unchanged.

Stay22 works differently from a cookie, and it is worth being plain about it. Its script identifies your device from characteristics of your browser and device, and stores an identifier in your browser’s local storage, so that a booking made later can be credited to this site. It runs only if you accept the marketing category in the cookie notice, and declining costs you nothing you can read here.

Links to other sites

Guides here link out constantly — to National Museums Liverpool, the National Trust, Merseytravel, Liverpool FC, festival organisers and hotel booking pages, so you can check a price or book something directly with whoever provides it. Once you follow such a link you are on someone else’s website, under their privacy policy, and this one no longer applies. Their practices are outside the control of Liverpool Tourism Guide.

Your rights

Under UK and EU data protection law you have the right to ask what personal data is held about you, to have it corrected, to have it erased, to object to or restrict its processing, and to receive a copy in a portable form. In practice, unless you have written in through the contact form, this site holds no personal data about you that could be retrieved — analytics data is aggregated and not linked to your identity.

To exercise any of these rights, or to have a form submission deleted, use the contact page. Requests are answered within one month. If you are unhappy with the response, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live.

Children

This site publishes travel guides for adults planning trips, including family trips to Liverpool. It is not directed at children, and no personal information is knowingly collected from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has submitted information through the contact form, write in and it will be deleted.

Changes to this policy

This policy is updated when what the site does changes. The review date at the top shows when it was last checked. Material changes will be reflected here rather than announced individually.

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