Privacy Policy
Last updated: 1 August 2026
Prairie & Pavement Tours ("we", "us" and "our") is committed to protecting your privacy and handling personal information in a lawful, fair and transparent manner. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, share and protect personal data when you visit prairiees.pro, contact us, make a booking, join one of our Oxford walking tours or otherwise interact with our business. We have drafted this policy with the UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018 and, where relevant, wider GDPR principles and consumer privacy expectations in mind. We also aim to describe our practices in a way that is understandable for international visitors, including those from the United States.
Who we are
Prairie & Pavement Tours provides guided tours and city walks in Oxford, United Kingdom. For the purposes of data protection law, we are the controller of the personal information you provide to us through our website, email correspondence, telephone bookings and booking administration processes. If you have any questions about this policy or about the way we use your information, you can contact us at [email protected] or write to us at our meeting address on Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3AZ.
What personal data we collect
We may collect identity and contact information such as your name, email address, telephone number, billing details and country of residence. We also collect booking-related information, including the tour selected, number of guests, preferred date and time, accessibility information you choose to provide, language preferences, special requests and communication history relating to your booking. If you make a purchase, payment card details are processed by our payment partners rather than stored directly on our own systems, but we may receive limited transaction records such as payment status, amount, booking reference and refund information.
When you browse our website, we may also collect technical and usage data such as your IP address, browser type, approximate location, operating system, device information, pages viewed, referring websites, session timing and interactions with site features. Where you consent to analytics or marketing technologies, we may collect additional information about how you use our site or respond to our communications.
How we collect information
We collect information directly from you when you fill in contact forms, make a booking, subscribe to updates, email us, telephone us or otherwise communicate with us. We collect technical information automatically through cookies and similar technologies, subject to your preferences where consent is required. We may also receive information from trusted service providers involved in booking administration, payment processing, email delivery, analytics and fraud prevention.
Why we use your information
We use personal information to provide and manage our services. This includes responding to enquiries, confirming bookings, sending joining instructions, adjusting arrangements where access to Oxford colleges changes, communicating about weather or route issues, taking payment, issuing refunds, keeping financial records and dealing with customer service matters after a tour. We may also use information to improve our tours, understand website performance, protect our business from fraud or misuse, comply with legal obligations and maintain accurate internal records.
Where you have actively chosen to receive marketing messages, we may send occasional updates about new walks, seasonal Oxford tours or relevant offers. You can unsubscribe at any time, and we do not make marketing consent a condition of booking a tour.
Our lawful bases
We rely on several lawful bases for processing. We process information because it is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract, for example when you ask us to arrange a private walk. We also process data where necessary for our legitimate interests, including improving our services, protecting our systems, maintaining business records and providing a responsive customer experience, provided those interests are not overridden by your rights. In some cases we process data to comply with legal obligations, including tax, accounting and consumer protection requirements. Where we rely on consent, such as for certain analytics or marketing communications, you can withdraw that consent at any time.
How long we keep data
We keep personal information only for as long as it is reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. Booking and transaction records may be retained for up to six years where required for accounting, tax and legal record-keeping. General enquiry correspondence may be retained for a shorter period where no booking follows. Marketing preference records are kept until you withdraw consent or ask us to stop contacting you. Technical data may be kept for shorter operational periods or in aggregated form for reporting and service improvement.
Sharing personal data
We do not sell your personal information. We may share it with carefully selected third parties where necessary to operate our business. These may include payment processors, online booking platforms, email service providers, website hosting providers, analytics providers, IT support services, professional advisers and public authorities where disclosure is legally required. We expect all such providers to handle personal data securely and only for appropriate purposes.
If we use suppliers located outside the United Kingdom, we take reasonable steps to ensure that lawful transfer mechanisms and appropriate safeguards are in place. Depending on the provider, this may include adequacy decisions, contractual protections or comparable measures designed to protect your information.
Your rights
Depending on your location and the law that applies, you may have rights to request access to the personal information we hold about you, to ask for inaccurate information to be corrected, to request deletion in certain circumstances, to object to some forms of processing, to request restriction of processing, to request portability of certain data and to withdraw consent where consent is the basis for processing. If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details in this policy. We may need to verify your identity before responding.
Residents of certain jurisdictions, including California, may also have rights to request information about categories of personal information collected, sources of that information, purposes of use, categories of recipients and deletion rights subject to legal exceptions. Because we do not sell personal information in the ordinary meaning of that term, we do not offer a conventional "sell my data" mechanism, but we still welcome privacy requests and will handle them in line with applicable law.
Security
We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal data. These measures may include access controls, secure hosting arrangements, password management, software updates, encryption in transit, role-based access where practical and careful handling of booking records. No online service can guarantee absolute security, but we take data protection seriously and aim to reduce risk to an appropriate level for a small professional tours business.
Children’s privacy
Some of our tours are suitable for families, but our website and booking systems are directed at adults making arrangements for themselves or for members of their household or group. We do not knowingly collect unnecessary personal information directly from young children. Where a parent or guardian provides information relevant to a child’s participation, such as age range or accessibility needs, we expect that information to be provided responsibly and only as necessary for the booking.
Links and third-party services
Our website may contain links to third-party websites, such as payment pages, social media platforms or visitor information resources. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those separate services, and we encourage you to review their policies before sharing personal information with them.
Complaints and contact
If you have concerns about how we use your personal information, please contact us first so that we can try to resolve the matter promptly and fairly. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office in the United Kingdom if you believe your data protection rights have been infringed.
Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services, technology, legal obligations or good practice. The latest version will always be published on our website with the revised date shown at the top. We encourage you to review it periodically, especially before making a booking or submitting personal information.
Contact
Questions about this policy can be sent to [email protected] or by post to Meeting point: Outside the Sheldonian Theatre, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3AZ, United Kingdom.