Privacy Policy

Accounts and sign-in

You can browse guides and preview available Locals without signing in. Where the guest trial is available, you can chat with eligible Locals without providing a name or email. There is no guest message cap; availability and anti-spam limits still apply. Saving conversations across devices, applying to become a Local, and managing your account require email or Google sign-in.

Guest conversations use a temporary authentication record, session cookies, and a private profile identifier. Locals see you as a Guest traveler. We still store messages and service data; guest chat does not mean no information is processed. Guest access is limited to that browser and expires 30 days after the guest profile is created. Clearing guest-session cookies or other browser data can cause you to lose access without deleting stored messages. Sign in before expiry to save your conversations to an account and access them across devices.

We store your email address, account and profile identifiers, account display name, account status, and authentication information to provide your account. When you finish signing up, we ask for a first name or preferred name, which you can edit in My account. You can sign in with an email and password, a one-time code delivered by email, or choose Continue with Google. Passwords are optional. Supabase, our authentication provider, stores password hashes and handles password verification and recovery.

If you choose Google sign-in, Google authenticates you and shares your Google account identifier, email address, and basic profile information, such as your name and profile picture when available, with Supabase, our authentication provider. Supabase stores this information with your authentication record to support sign-in and associate your Google identity with your Travocal account.

We request only basic identity permissions for Google sign-in, not access to your Gmail messages, contacts, or Google Drive files. Google handles your Google password. Choosing Google sign-in does not change your analytics consent; analytics remains optional.

Local profile drafts and public profiles

When you create a Local profile, we store your display name, introduction, city, expertise, languages, optional profile details, private review notes, consent choice, and review status. Authorized staff can access submitted details to review your profile. Drafts stay private until submitted and approved. Before sign-in, profile answers may be saved temporarily in this browser tab for up to 30 minutes so you can return from sign-in without losing them. Existing application records, including motivation and supporting information, remain private and are retained when carried into a profile.

With your consent and approval, your reviewed Local name, photo, headline, bio, destinations, primary specialty, expertise, knowledge areas, languages, city connection, and availability may be shown publicly on Travocal, including to visitors who are not signed in. Profiles may appear in Local search results, on the homepage, and on the For Locals page to help travelers discover Locals and prospective Locals understand the community. Your account email, motivation, and supporting application information are not part of the public Local profile. Your private account name is separate from your reviewed Local name.

Profile edits are saved privately and reviewed before publication. You can withdraw public-profile consent using Hide my public profile in My Local profile. Your profile will no longer appear when visitors load search results, homepage previews or For Locals previews. This retains existing conversations and stored application records. It does not remove a profile already loaded in another visitor’s browser or copies they may have saved. Setting your availability to Away also stops new discovery matches, but does not withdraw public-profile consent or close existing conversations.

With a traveler’s separate consent, anonymous helpfulness counts and common feedback tags may appear after feedback from at least five distinct confirmed travelers. Written feedback and individual reply helpfulness markers stay private. Response-time estimates use recent conversation timestamps, including overnight hours, and are shown only when there is enough response history.

During beta, a Local can separately authorize Travocal Team to prepare profile edits or read and answer conversations started after authorization. Assisted profiles and team replies are labeled. Earlier private conversations remain excluded. Locals keep profile ownership and can revoke assistance in My Local profile. We retain private records of permissions and the actual account that sent each team reply for accountability. Team replies count toward the profile’s response-time and feedback summaries.

Recommendations and contributor names

You can share a tip without an account or public Local profile. The tip form submits directly to Travocal when you choose Submit. Draft answers stay on the page while you fill it in; leaving the page may discard them.

When you submit, we store your private contact name and email, city and category, original tip, experience date, optional place/context details and business disclosures, and your publication, answer-reuse and public-name permissions. We use these details to review contributions, follow up, link recommendations about the same place, and prepare local content and traveler answers. Published, approved contributions may support future AI-assisted answers; your private contact details are excluded from that content. We also keep submission identifiers and hashed contact/network keys to limit spam and prevent duplicate submissions.

Showing a contributor name is optional and defaults to off. We show only the public name you choose when you explicitly give permission; otherwise we publish without your name. Your contact name and email are for our team, not for public attribution. Do not include other people’s private information in the recommendation itself. Tips are reviewed before publication, and publication is not automatic.

We retain original and reviewed contributions, permission versions and timestamps, review history, and related correspondence for review, accountability and permitted reuse. No automatic deletion schedule is currently published. Withdrawal or an outdated status excludes a contribution from future reuse; removal requests may also require deletion or redaction of retained originals and review records by our team. To change your public name, withdraw permission to show it, or request correction or removal of a recommendation or related information, contact hello@travocal.com. We will review your request and explain any retention needed for service operation or safety. Changes cannot recall copies already saved by others. A recommendation submission does not authorize publication of private conversations.

Local invitations

A registered Travocal Team operator can prepare an invitation using a prospective Local’s email address, public name, destination, specialty, and local background. We store these details, the operator’s identifier, invitation status, expiry, and a hash of the private invitation token to support onboarding. This information can be stored before the invited person submits an application.

The operator shares the invitation link manually. Access requires sign-in with the invited verified email address; invitation links expire after seven days. Expiry stops use of the link and does not itself delete the invitation record. An invitation does not publish a profile or authorize team access to conversations. Publication and team assistance require the Local’s separate choices and the applicable approval process. Contact us below about information in an invitation prepared for you.

Questions and private conversations

When you search for a Local, your question and selected city are sent to Travocal’s backend to interpret the question and find eligible Locals. Searching does not send your question to a Local or create a conversation. When you explicitly send an opening question to a Local, we store its text, destination, topic, selected Local, participants, messages, timestamps, and read progress so you can continue the conversation and see unread messages.

Conversations are not published as destination content. Participants can access their history. Where a Local has authorized team replies, designated Travocal Team members can also read and answer eligible conversations as described above. Authorized staff can review reported content and retained evidence for moderation. Private conversations are access-controlled; they are not end-to-end encrypted. Avoid including information you do not want the other participant to receive.

Message notifications

Optional message emails default to on. Locals and team accounts authorized to reply can receive separate notices about traveler questions. Notices contain a conversation link without question or message text. You can manage your own preferences in Notification settings. Sign-in and security emails are separate. Reading a Local conversation also clears unread progress for its authorized team.

We store delivery preferences and temporary notification records. Completed email payloads, including recipient email addresses, become eligible for cleanup 24 hours after completion; completed delivery records become eligible after 30 days. Removal occurs when notification cleanup runs, rather than at an exact deletion time. An email already submitted for delivery may arrive after you turn notices off.

Safety and moderation

We store blocking choices, conversation closure, helpful feedback, reports, report details, relevant evidence, and moderation decisions to operate safety controls and investigate abuse. Staff actions are recorded in audit logs.

Closing a conversation or blocking someone does not delete its history. Removing content from a conversation view may leave a separate evidence copy available to authorized moderation staff.

Browser storage and service operation

We use cookies to maintain your sign-in session and temporary cookies to complete Google sign-in and attach a guest conversation to your verified account securely. Browser session storage preserves travel questions, conversation handoffs, and reply drafts while you navigate or recover from interrupted requests. Local application answers are held on the application page while you fill it in. If you continue with Google while recovering an application, unfinished answers are temporarily saved in this tab and can be restored to the same account for 30 minutes. Saved answers are removed when restored, on sign-out, or when this tab's session storage is cleared. Analytics preferences are saved in browser local storage when available. If the browser cannot save the preference, your explicit choice applies only to the current tab until reload, and the preferences dialog explains this limitation.

Our hosting and authentication services process request and security information to deliver the site and protect it. Anonymous matching requests use a short-lived derived visitor key for rate limiting. Travocal’s server derives this key from the visitor IP address rather than sending the raw address to the matching API.

Optional analytics

Google Analytics is enabled when you choose to allow analytics and the service is configured. It helps us understand page visits, destination discovery, Local searches, conversation starts, and Local replies. You can continue without analytics or change your choice using Analytics preferences in the footer.

Before you allow analytics, the site does not load its Google Analytics tag. The preferences dialog opens only when you select Analytics preferences. Closing it without making a choice preserves your existing preference; if you have no saved choice, analytics stays off. Your preference applies to this browser, not your account or other devices; saved changes also apply to other open Travocal tabs in the same browser. Essential sign-in and security storage do not depend on analytics consent.

Withdrawing permission disables further collection by our Google Analytics tag and stops our application events. It does not recall data already sent or automatically remove existing analytics cookies. You can manage cookies through your browser. Allowing analytics again enables collection for subsequent activity. Advertising consent stays off.

Our application events exclude names, email addresses, questions, message text, and account or conversation identifiers. They use selected public page paths without query strings or URL fragments, with generic page titles. Private or unknown paths and referrers are replaced with the homepage URL. Local and guest conversation events use the homepage URL and, where relevant, bounded result counts and statuses. Google Analytics may also process browser, device, and service information when analytics is enabled.

Services used by Travocal

Vercel hosts the website, Render hosts the API, Supabase provides authentication and database storage, and Resend delivers authentication and optional message notification emails. These providers process information needed to deliver their services. Google Analytics processes optional analytics information when enabled with your consent.

Where verification is enabled, Cloudflare Turnstile helps protect guest-session creation and email sign-in from bots.

Google also provides optional Google sign-in. Google's handling of information through its services is described in its Privacy Policy.

Contact email links open your email application. If you send an email, Travocal receives the information you include, such as your name, email address, or feedback. Tips and recommendations submitted through the website form are sent directly to Travocal, as described in Recommendations and contributor names above. Tip submissions are separate from Local profile applications. We do not currently offer newsletter subscriptions.

Stored information and your choices

Guest access expires 30 days after the guest profile is created. Our guest cleanup process removes ordinary question and message text from expired, unclaimed guest conversations when it runs. Access expiry and text removal are separate; removal may occur after access expires. Identity, conversation, and message metadata remain to preserve history boundaries; reported evidence follows the separate moderation retention process. Signing in to save a conversation excludes it from guest expiry. Browser drafts remain in session storage until cleared or the session ends.

Account, application, conversation, and safety records are stored to provide the service, preserve history, and support moderation. The beta does not currently provide self-service account deletion. Apart from expired guest text and the notification records described above, other records, including Local invitations and moderation evidence, have no published automatic deletion schedule. Signing out or clearing browser storage does not delete server records.

You can edit your private account name, choose your Local availability if approved, manage analytics consent, and use conversation safety controls. For access, correction, or deletion requests concerning stored information, contact us below. We will review the request and explain what can be changed or removed, including any records retained for safety or service operation.

Privacy questions and requests

Contact Travocal at hello@travocal.com. Please describe your request without sending passwords or sign-in codes.