Privacy Policy
We are a travel agency licensed in China. To quote a trip, book a hotel and issue an air ticket we have to handle personal information — usually your name, passport details and the dates you are travelling. This page says what we collect, why we need it, who else sees it, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do with it. It is written to comply with China’s Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) and, for visitors from the EU and the UK, with the GDPR.
Who is responsible
China Travel Planner is the trading name of EFIND TRAVEL CO., LTD., a travel agency licensed in the People’s Republic of China under travel agency licence L-GX-CJ00096, operating from Guilin, Guangxi, China. The company is the controller of your personal information and the handler under PIPL.
Our privacy contact is the same as our general contact: contact@chinatravelplanner.com, telephone +86 773 586 8086, Monday to Friday 09:00–18:00 Beijing time (UTC+8). We answer privacy requests within 15 working days.
What we collect
Information you give us
- Identity and contact — the name as printed in your passport, email address, telephone or WhatsApp number, country of residence, preferred language.
- Traveller details needed to book — passport number, date of birth, nationality and passport expiry, and gender where an airline or a hotel requires it. For China domestic flights and high-speed rail the passport number is the ticket.
- Trip requirements — dates, cities, number of travellers, budget range, walking and mobility limits, dietary needs, and any health information you choose to tell us, such as concerns about altitude on a Tibet or Yunnan route.
- Payment details — the name on the account and the reference of a bank transfer or online payment. We do not store full card numbers on our own servers; they are handled by the payment provider.
- Correspondence — the content of your enquiry form, emails and WhatsApp messages, including anything you attach.
Information collected automatically
When you browse the site we record the IP address, browser and device type, referring page, the pages you open and how long you stay. This is done through Google Analytics 4 under measurement ID G-WB2LDY43L4. We do not attempt to identify individual visitors from this data.
Information about other travellers
If you enquire or book on behalf of other people, you must have their permission to pass their details to us. We use those details only to make and operate their booking.
Why we use it
| Purpose | What it involves | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Answering an enquiry | Your contact details and what you have told us about the trip | Your consent, and steps taken at your request before a contract |
| Quoting and booking a journey | Names, dates, itinerary, passenger numbers | Performance of the contract with you |
| Issuing tickets, hotel vouchers and permits | Passport details, date of birth, nationality | Performance of the contract, and our legal obligations as a licensed agency |
| Tibet and border-area permits | Passport, Chinese visa, nationality, itinerary | Legal obligation — permits are issued by the authorities and cannot be applied for without this data |
| Taking payment and keeping accounts | Payer name, amount, reference, invoice data | Legal obligation under Chinese accounting and tax rules |
| Improving the site | Aggregated analytics | Consent where a cookie banner is shown, otherwise our legitimate interest in a working website |
| Handling a complaint or a legal claim | Correspondence and booking records | Our legitimate interest, and legal obligation where a claim is made |
We do not carry out automated decision-making or profiling, and we do not make decisions about you by algorithm alone.
Sensitive personal information
Passport numbers, health and dietary information, and anything that reveals your religious belief — a pilgrimage, halal or vegetarian meals, a monastery stay — count as sensitive personal information under PIPL. We collect it only where a booking cannot be completed without it, and we ask for your separate consent at the point we collect it. We never use it for marketing and we do not share it beyond the parties listed below. You may refuse; where that makes a booking impossible we will tell you before you commit to anything.
Who we share it with
| Recipient | What they receive | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Hotels, guesthouses, cruise ships, domestic airlines, China Railway | Guest name, dates, room or cabin type, dietary requirements | To hold and confirm the reservation |
| Licensed local guides and drivers | Name, dates, itinerary, a contact number for the day | To meet you and run the journey |
| Visa and permit agents | Passport and visa data | Only where a permit or visa letter is required |
| Banks and payment providers | Payer name, amount, reference | To receive and reconcile payment |
| Our email and hosting providers | Whatever passes through the enquiry form or an email | To deliver and store the correspondence |
| Google Analytics | Truncated IP, device, pages viewed | Site statistics |
We do not sell personal information. We do not pass it to advertising networks, data brokers or list resellers. We disclose it to a public authority only where Chinese law requires it, or where we are compelled by a valid legal process, and we will tell you unless we are legally barred from doing so.
Sending data outside China
We are based in China, so information you send us is transferred to and stored in China. If you are in the EU, the UK or another country with data export rules, this is a transfer to a third country; it is necessary to perform the contract you asked us to perform, and we rely on that basis.
The flow also runs the other way. Under PIPL, before we pass your information to a recipient outside China we tell you the recipient’s name and contact details, the purpose, and the categories of data involved, and we obtain your separate consent. That happens, for example, when a hotel group’s reservation system sits on a server abroad, or when we use an analytics service operated outside China. Where a transfer is not necessary, we keep the data in China.
Cookies
We use three kinds of cookie. Strictly necessary cookies keep the site working and remember a form you have half-filled. Analytics cookies from Google Analytics 4 tell us which pages are read and which are abandoned. Preference cookies remember choices such as language. You can refuse the analytics and preference cookies in your browser settings without losing access to any part of the site; Google also publishes an opt-out browser add-on for Analytics. Blocking strictly necessary cookies may stop the enquiry form from submitting.
How long we keep it
| Record | Retention | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiries that never become a booking | 12 months | So a conversation resumed within the year still makes sense |
| Booking files and travel documents | At least 3 years after travel | Chinese e-commerce rules require transaction records to be kept for no less than three years |
| Accounting, invoices and tax records | 10 years | Chinese tax and accounting rules |
| Analytics | No longer than 14 months, at the setting in our analytics property | Site statistics only |
| Marketing consent | Until you withdraw it | Proof that we were allowed to write |
When a retention period ends we delete the record or, where deletion is impractical, irreversibly anonymise it.
Security
The site is served over HTTPS and form submissions are encrypted in transit. Access to booking files is limited to the planner handling your trip and the staff who issue tickets and vouchers, each with their own account. Passport scans are stored on access-controlled storage, not in email archives, and are deleted once the booking is complete and the retention period allows. Full card numbers never reach our servers. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach occurs that is likely to affect your rights, we will notify you and the regulator as PIPL and the GDPR require.
Your rights
You can ask us to:
- confirm whether we hold information about you, and give you a copy;
- correct anything that is wrong or incomplete;
- delete it, where we no longer have a lawful reason to keep it;
- restrict or object to a particular use;
- withdraw a consent you gave earlier, without affecting what we did before you withdrew it;
- explain the rules we apply when we process your information;
- receive the information you gave us in a structured, machine-readable format, and have it sent to another provider where that is technically possible.
Write to contact@chinatravelplanner.com and say what you want. We may ask for proof of identity so that we do not hand your file to someone else. There is no charge. If a request cannot be met — for example because we must keep an invoice for tax purposes — we will tell you why and for how long.
Complaints
Please tell us first; almost everything is settled in one exchange. If you are not satisfied you may complain to the Cyberspace Administration of China on 12377, to the market regulator on 12315, or bring a claim before a competent Chinese court. If you are in the EU or the UK you may also complain to your national data protection authority.
Children
This site is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18 except as part of a family booking, and then only from the adult who makes it. A booking that includes a minor must be made by a parent or guardian.
Other sites
Some pages link to hotels, transport operators and other websites. Once you leave this site their privacy policies apply, not ours.
Changes
This version is dated 5 November 2026. If we change how we handle personal information we will update this page and change the date. Where a change materially affects a booking already in progress, we will also write to you at the address on that booking.
How to reach us
EFIND TRAVEL CO., LTD. (China Travel Planner) · Guilin, Guangxi, China · contact@chinatravelplanner.com · +86 773 586 8086 · Monday to Friday 09:00–18:00 Beijing time (UTC+8).