Privacy policy

Who we are

SriLankanStory.com is run by SriLankanStory Travels, a destination management company based in Ratnapura, Sri Lanka. We plan and arrange trips to Sri Lanka for travellers, including visitors from the European Union, the United Kingdom and Australia. SriLankanStory Travels is the “controller” of the personal information described here. You can reach us at hello@srilankanstory.com or on +94 70 799 4009.

What we collect

When you use our enquiry form (or email or message us) you may give us:

• your name and email address;
• your country;
• who is travelling, including the number of adults and the ages of any children;
• your travel dates or the time of year you have in mind;
• your preferences and anything else you tell us about the trip;
• optionally, a phone or WhatsApp number;
• whether you would like to receive our marketing emails.

We do not ask for payment card details on this website. We do not ask for passport details until a trip is being booked, and then only what is needed to arrange it.

Why we use it

• To reply to you and to plan and quote your trip. This is the main reason.
• To keep a record of our conversation so you do not have to repeat yourself.
• To send you news and trip ideas, but only if you ticked the marketing box. You can stop these at any time.
• To keep the site secure and prevent abuse of the form.

Our legal bases

If you are in the EU or UK (GDPR / UK GDPR), we rely on:

• Steps before a contract: answering your enquiry and preparing a quote at your request.
• Legitimate interests: keeping enquiry records, running and securing the site, and following up on trips we have discussed, balanced against your rights.
• Consent: marketing emails. You can withdraw consent at any time without affecting anything we did before.
• Legal obligation: keeping accounting records once you book.

If you are in Australia, we handle your information in line with the spirit of the Australian Privacy Principles: we tell you what we collect and why, collect only what we need, keep it secure, and let you access and correct it.

Who helps us handle it

We do not sell your information. We use a small number of service providers to run the site and our business:

• Hosting and infrastructure: Cloudflare (website delivery and analytics), Fly.io (our application server) and TiDB Cloud (our database).
• Email: Resend sends us a notification when you submit the form; Zoho Mail is where we correspond with you.
• Marketing emails: only if you opted in, sent from our own mailbox. If we start using a mailing service we will name it here first.
• AI tools: we may use AI providers (such as Anthropic, OpenAI or Google) to help us draft replies, itineraries and quotes. A person on our team reviews what is sent to you. Client information is handled under our internal AI policy and is not used by us to train models.
• Our team and trusted local partners such as hotels and drivers, but only the details needed to deliver a trip you have agreed to.

How long we keep it

Enquiries that do not become a booking are kept for 24 months, then deleted or anonymised. If you book, we keep the booking and accounting records for 7 years, as tax and accounting rules require. Marketing details are kept until you unsubscribe.

International transfers

We are based in Sri Lanka. Our website server (Fly.io) and our database (TiDB Cloud) run in Frankfurt, in the European Union; other providers operate in several countries, so your information will leave your own country, including the EU, UK and Australia. Where required we use safeguards such as the standard contractual clauses published by the European Commission, or the providers’ own transfer terms. Ask us if you would like more detail.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• tell you what we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct anything that is wrong;
• delete your information;
• stop using it for something you object to, such as marketing;
• withdraw your consent whenever consent is the basis we rely on.

To do any of this, email hello@srilankanstory.com. We will reply within one month. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to your local data protection authority (for example the ICO in the UK or the OAIC in Australia), though we would always like the chance to put things right first.

Cookies and analytics

We use only the cookies and storage that are essential for the site to work, plus two analytics tools that we switch on only if you say yes in the banner. If you decline or ignore it, neither tool loads and nothing is sent to them. To understand how many people visit we also use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookie-less and does not track you across other sites. We do not use advertising cookies.

• Microsoft Clarity (Microsoft) records how visitors use pages, as session recordings and heatmaps, so we can spot confusing parts of the site. Text you type into forms is masked and not recorded. Clarity sets cookies in your browser. Recordings are kept for 30 days (Microsoft may keep a small sample for up to 9 months) and heatmaps for up to 9 months, after which Microsoft deletes them.
• PostHog (EU Cloud, data stored in the European Union) is product analytics: which pages are viewed and which buttons are used, for example “enquiry sent” or “WhatsApp clicked”. It does not receive your name, email, phone number or message, and typed form values are masked in its session replays. Session replays are kept for 30 days and usage events for up to 12 months.

The legal basis is your consent. You can change your mind at any time: use the Cookies link in the footer, or the button below. Withdrawing stops both tools and clears their cookies; it does not affect anything done before. These tools are never loaded in our back office.

Change my cookie choice

Children

This site is for adults planning travel. We do not knowingly collect information directly from children. If you tell us children’s ages when enquiring, we use that only to plan the trip for your family.

Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date above. If the change is significant we will tell people we are in touch with.

Contact

Questions? hello@srilankanstory.com or use the enquiry form.