Privacy Policy

Last updated 21 September 2026.

This policy explains what Manchester Tourism Guide (manchestertourism.org) collects when you visit 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, and it is updated when that changes.

The short version

• You can read every guide on this site without giving us anything.
• We use Google Analytics to see which guides are read and how people arrive. That is the only analytics tool running.
• There are no accounts, no newsletter, and comments are closed, so there is nothing here for you to sign up to.
• The only personal information we ever hold is what you type into the contact form.
• We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with anyone except the service providers named below.
• Some booking links earn a commission if you book through them, which is explained below.

Information you give us

The contact form is the only place on this site that asks you for anything. It collects the name, email address and message you enter. Submissions are delivered to us by email and are kept only for as long as they are useful — typically until the exchange is finished and any correction has been made, after which they are deleted. We do not add contact form addresses to a mailing list, because there is no mailing list.

The form is provided by WPForms, which runs on this site’s own hosting. Your message is not passed to a third-party ticketing or CRM system.

Information collected automatically

Google Analytics

This site runs Google Analytics 4, installed through the Site Kit plugin. It records which pages are viewed, roughly where in the world the visit came from, the type of device and browser, and which site or search you arrived from. It sets cookies in your browser to tell one visit apart from another. Google processes this data on our behalf; we see only aggregated reports and cannot identify an individual reader from them. IP addresses are handled by Google and are not stored by this site.

If you would rather not be counted at all, Google publishes a browser add-on that opts you out of Analytics on every site that uses it, and most browsers offer tracking protection that has the same effect.

Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights

Both are connected to the site through Site Kit. Neither collects anything from you as a visitor: Search Console reports on how the site appears in Google’s results, and PageSpeed Insights measures how quickly pages load.

Server logs and caching

Our web host keeps standard access logs, which include IP addresses, for a limited period and for security and diagnostic purposes only. The site uses a page cache to serve pages quickly; it does not set a cookie for ordinary visitors who are not signed in.

Cookies, and the notice about them

The cookies on this site come from three places: Google Analytics, described above; the consent manager, which sets one recording your response to the cookie notice so it is not shown again on every page; and the booking sites you reach through the affiliate links described below, which set their own once you arrive on them. Our own booking partner, Stay22, sets no cookie at all — it identifies your device and uses your browser’s local storage instead, which is explained under affiliate links below. WordPress itself sets cookies only for a logged-in administrator, which as a reader you never are.

Every browser can block or delete all of them, and nothing here is gated behind them, so refusing cookies costs you no content.

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_f6fe1e 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 Manchester 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, Manchester 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.

Legal basis, if you are in the UK or the EEA

We rely on legitimate interests for the analytics described above — understanding which guides are useful so that the site can be improved — and on your consent where consent is required for a particular cookie. For the contact form we rely on your having chosen to write to us, and on our legitimate interest in replying.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask what personal information we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to object to how we use it, or to receive a copy of it. In practice the only thing we are likely to hold is a message you sent through the contact form, and we will delete it on request without asking why. Write to us through the contact page and we will respond within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled a request, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live.

Children

This site is written for adults planning travel, including adults travelling with children. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has sent us something through the contact form, tell us and we will delete it.

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. Manchester 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. Stay22 does not do this with a cookie, so blocking third-party cookies does not stop it. Its script identifies your device from the characteristics of your browser and stores an identifier in your browser’s local storage. What does stop it is refusing the marketing category in this site’s cookie settings: the script is held back until you agree to it, and if you refuse, it never loads. Every guide reads exactly the same either way, and the price you pay is unchanged.

Links to other sites

The guides link out to museums, transport operators, venues and clubs so that you can check current prices and opening times at source. Those organisations run their own sites under their own privacy policies, and we have no control over what they collect once you leave this one.

Changes to this policy

When the way this site handles data changes this page is updated and the date at the top is revised. Questions about any of it go through the contact page.