Privacy Policy

Last updated: 30 September 2026.

This policy explains what Sydney Tourism (sydneytourism.org) collects when you read the site, why, and what you can do about it. It describes the site as it actually runs today; when that changes, this page changes with it and the date above moves.

Who is responsible

Sydney Tourism is an independent guide to Sydney. It is not connected to Destination NSW, the City of Sydney, Transport for NSW or any other tourism authority or operator. For the purposes of the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation, the site’s publisher is the data controller for everything described here.

Reading the site

You do not need an account to read anything here, and nothing asks you to register, subscribe or identify yourself. There is no newsletter and nothing for sale.

Like every website, the server records ordinary technical information when a page is requested: your IP address, the time, the page, the referring page if there is one, and your browser’s user-agent string. These logs are kept by the hosting provider to keep the site running and to investigate faults and abuse, are rotated on the host’s own schedule, and are not used to build a profile of you.

Analytics

The site uses Google Analytics 4, connected through Google’s Site Kit plugin, to see which guides are read and how people arrive at them. It sets cookies (names beginning _ga) and records the pages you view, your device and browser, the page that referred you and your approximate location, which Google derives from your IP address. That reaches us only as aggregate reports: it tells us a guide is popular, not who read it. Google’s own account of this processing is at policies.google.com/privacy.

Whether it runs before you have made a choice depends on where you are reading from; see “Your choices” below. You can switch it off in this site’s cookie settings at any time, or block it everywhere with Google’s opt-out browser add-on.

Booking links and commission

Some links on this site earn a commission. Sydney Tourism works with Travelpayouts, an affiliate network that connects the site to hotel, flight, transfer and activity booking companies. We do not paste tagged links into the guides: Travelpayouts runs a script that turns ordinary links to booking and travel sites into commission-tracking ones as the page loads, and it can add booking boxes and suggestions of its own. If you book after following one of those links, the booking company pays us a commission out of its own margin, and your price is the same either way. Every guide says so at the top, and the affiliate disclosure sets out the arrangement in full.

What that means for your data needs spelling out, because it is more than a cookie notice usually describes. When the script runs it receives your IP address and browser details, as any service your browser connects to does, and it reports to Travelpayouts how the page is used: the page’s address and the one you arrived from, which links you click, how many keys are pressed and in which part of the page (not what is typed), and whether an ad blocker or a private window is in use. Those reports are tied together by a random session identifier kept in a cookie on this site called am_user_session, which lapses 30 minutes after you stop reading, and, if Google Analytics is allowed as well, by the identifier Google Analytics keeps for your browser. The script also fetches typefaces for its booking boxes from Google Fonts, which gives Google your IP address, and keeps a note of the page’s colours in your browser’s local storage so that those boxes match the design.

If you follow one of its links, Travelpayouts and the booking site set identifiers of their own, on their own domains, so that a booking made afterwards can be credited here. We never see your name, your travel dates or your payment details — what comes back is a count of clicks and, sometimes, the fact that a booking happened. Once you are on a booking site you are under its privacy policy, not this one, and Travelpayouts handles what its script collects under its own privacy policy.

The script sits in the Advertising group of this site’s cookie settings and does not load at all until that group is allowed. Refusing it costs you nothing: the links still work, at the same price.

Advertising

Sydney Tourism carries no display advertising, and no display-advertising network runs on it. The booking links and booking boxes described above are the only commercial arrangement the site has; if that changes, this page will change with it.

Comments

Comments are open on some guides. If you leave one, the name, email address and website you enter are stored with the comment, along with your IP address and your browser’s user-agent string, which help to catch spam. Your name, your website and the comment itself are shown on the page; your email address and IP address are never published.

If you tick the box to save your details for next time, three cookies (comment_author_*, comment_author_email_* and comment_author_url_*) keep them in your browser for just under a year; leave it unticked and none is set. A comment and its details are kept until the comment is deleted.

Cookies and similar technologies

The cookies and browser storage used here fall into four groups, the same four the cookie settings use: necessary, functional, analytics and advertising. The cookie policy lists every one of them, generated from the services actually running here. The site sets two cookies of its own: once you answer the cookie dialog or bar, your choice is kept in cookie_consent_342e5b so that you are not asked again on every page, and cookie_consent_342e5b_loc remembers for a day which country you are reading from, so the right rules apply without looking it up again.

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, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, Türkiye and Vietnam, nothing beyond the strictly necessary runs until you answer the dialog on your first visit — not analytics, not Travelpayouts — 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. Readers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates get a notice instead: everything described on this page starts when they arrive, the notice says 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_342e5b that only this site can read, so you are not asked again on every page. An answer lasts up to a year, and a refusal given in the dialog six months, before you are asked again. The Cookie settings link in the footer of every page reopens the choice, and withdrawing is the same two clicks as agreeing: what you switch off stops running, and if that includes analytics, the Google Analytics cookies are cleared. The one cookie Travelpayouts keeps on this site, am_user_session, is no longer renewed once its script stops and lapses within half an hour; anything Travelpayouts or a booking site set on their own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.

Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Sydney Tourism 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, Sydney Tourism 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. The button switches off everything except the strictly necessary — Travelpayouts and any ad partner included — and the link reopens the full choice at any time. Travelpayouts stops running from that point; the session cookie it kept on this site lapses within half an hour, and anything it set on its own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.

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.

Photographs, embeds and links

Photographs are served from this site’s own server, not hot-linked from elsewhere, so viewing a guide does not report your visit to a photo library. The credits at the foot of each guide link to Wikimedia Commons and to the licence each image is used under; following one takes you to a site with its own privacy policy, over which this one has no control.

Where a guide embeds something from another site — a map, a video, a post — that embed is held back behind a placeholder until the relevant category is allowed, so it cannot quietly set anything on your device before you have chosen. Clicking the placeholder loads that one item.

Your rights

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, you have the right to ask what personal data is held about you, to have it corrected or erased, to object to or restrict its processing, and to receive a copy in a portable form. You can also complain to the data protection authority where you live. If you are in the United States, your rights are described under “If you are reading this in the United States” above.

In practice, the only personal data this site holds that could identify you by name is a comment, if you left one. Analytics and server-log data are not linked to a name and cannot be traced back to an individual by this site, so a request to delete them cannot be honoured here — switching analytics off in the cookie settings is the effective remedy.

Children

This is a travel guide written for adults planning trips, including trips with children. It is not directed at children, and no data is knowingly collected from anyone under 16.

How long information is kept

Server logs are rotated by the host on its own schedule. Analytics data is kept for the retention period set in Google Analytics, and comments until they are deleted. Consent records are deleted after 26 months, your cookie choice expires on your own device as described above, and the booking partner’s session cookie lapses 30 minutes after you stop reading.

Changes to this policy

When the site’s setup changes — a new analytics tool, advertising going live, a new partner — this page is updated to describe the new arrangement and the date at the top changes with it.