Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

WelcomeFlo (“WelcomeFlo”, “we”, “us” and “our”) is an Australian software business providing digital guest-guide tools for short-stay hosts and property managers.

For privacy questions, requests or complaints, email privacy@welcomeflo.com, or use the contact form and choose “Privacy or security”.

2. Scope of this policy

This policy applies to personal information handled through:

• welcomeflo.com and its pages
• The WelcomeFlo dashboard and account area
• Published WelcomeFlo guest guides, including Ask Flo, Flo Translations and Guest Extras
• The guide-creation flow, including template, listing-import and document-import journeys
• WelcomeFlo emails, forms and support channels
• Other services that link to this policy

It does not apply to websites, booking platforms, property-management systems or other third-party services, which have their own privacy practices.

3. Our role when handling information

Information WelcomeFlo controls

We decide how and why information is handled for our accounts, subscription and billing administration, website and product operation, product analytics, security and fraud prevention, customer support, contact-form submissions, careers expressions of interest, and our own marketing. Where privacy laws use the term, WelcomeFlo is generally the “controller” of this information.

Information hosts place in their guides

Hosts and property managers decide what content goes into their guides and who receives each guide. Where a host uses WelcomeFlo to handle personal information, the host is responsible for why it is collected and for having an appropriate legal basis. WelcomeFlo acts as a service provider or processor to the extent applicable law requires.

Questions about information in a particular property guide should go to the host or property manager responsible for that guide.

Guest Extras

Where a host offers Guest Extras, the host decides what is offered, its price and its availability, and is the party a guest transacts with — payments for a paid Extra are processed directly to the host’s own connected Stripe account, and WelcomeFlo does not receive or hold guest funds. WelcomeFlo separately processes the information needed to operate that payment and communicate the request, as described below.

4. Personal information we collect

Account and profile information

• Name and email address
• Telephone number
• Business or organisation name
• Country, region or time zone
• Account preferences and subscription plan
• Authentication and sign-in records
• Records of account activity

Authentication is handled by our authentication provider. Passwords are hashed by that provider — WelcomeFlo cannot read your password, and cannot retrieve it for you.

Property and guide information

• Property name, address and descriptions
• Arrival and departure instructions
• Host and property-manager contact details
• Images, logos and branding
• Wi-Fi information
• House rules, safety and emergency information
• Local recommendations, links and uploaded files
• Guide web addresses and QR codes
• Other content you choose to publish

Some of this may be personal information, particularly where it identifies a host, property manager, contractor, co-host or other individual.

Billing and transaction information

• Billing name and address
• Subscription type, amount and currency
• Payment status, invoices and receipts
• Tax-related information
• The card brand and last four digits supplied by our payment provider

Payments are processed by Stripe. Card numbers are entered directly with Stripe and never reach WelcomeFlo’s servers. We store only a customer reference, your subscription status, and the card brand and last four digits shown in your billing settings.

Communications and support information

• Your name and email address
• The reason you selected and the content of your message
• Attachments or links you provide
• Relevant account or technical information
• Records of our correspondence with you

Contact-form submissions are used to answer your enquiry. They are not added to any marketing list.

Careers and talent-network information

• Your name and contact details
• Location and time zone
• Employment interests and professional experience
• LinkedIn, portfolio or website links, and any work samples you send
• Records of communications about potential opportunities

Registering interest is not an application for an existing vacancy and does not guarantee we will make contact. This information is used only for relevant employment, freelance or contract opportunities unless you separately agree otherwise.

Website and product usage information

When you use the website or dashboard, our hosting and security layer necessarily processes technical information including your IP address, in order to serve requests and protect the service. Separately, our product analytics record:

• Pages and features viewed, and actions taken
• Device category, browser and approximate country
• Referring source and campaign parameters, where present
• Date, time and duration of activity
• Error and diagnostic events, and performance information

Our product analytics do not store IP addresses. We use this information to operate WelcomeFlo, understand how it is used, improve it, diagnose problems and protect accounts.

Guest-guide usage information

When someone opens a published guide, we record how the guide was used so the host can see which information is helping guests:

• Which guide was viewed, and when
• Categories, sections and places opened
• Actions taken, such as copying Wi-Fi details or opening directions
• Searches performed within the guide
• Device category, and country only
• How the guest arrived at the guide, such as a QR code or a link

Guest analytics are deliberately anonymous. They store no names, no email addresses and no IP addresses. Location is recorded at country level only, taken from a country code our hosting platform provides — we do not read or retain the IP address it was derived from. The visitor identifier is randomly generated by the browser and carries no personal meaning, so a host can see how a guide is used but cannot identify who used it.

Guests never need a WelcomeFlo account, app or password to view a published guide.

Information received from third parties

We may receive information from providers that operate parts of the service — authentication, payment, hosting, AI and email-delivery providers among them — and from a listing platform when you import a Guide from a listing URL. What we receive depends on the service.

5. Information you provide about other people

You may provide personal information about other people — a co-host’s contact details, a property manager’s information, a contractor’s instructions.

Only provide personal information you are authorised to use and publish. Where appropriate, tell the individual that their information will be handled through WelcomeFlo and point them to this policy. Do not upload unnecessary sensitive information about another person.

6. Published guides are link-accessible

Published guides are designed to be shared with guests by web link or QR code. There is no guest login.

A published guide can be opened by anyone who has or finds its link, including guests from past stays. Treat it as a public web page, not private storage.

Hosts should think carefully before publishing:

• Permanent door or alarm codes
• Private-network credentials
• Personal identification documents
• Financial or health information
• Information about children
• Staff schedules
• Anything revealing when a property is unoccupied
• Anything else that could create a safety or security risk

Where possible, share temporary or guest-specific access information through a booking, access-control or secure messaging system instead. If you need to cut off access to a guide, you can deactivate it or change its web address.

WelcomeFlo is not responsible for a host’s decision to publish information they did not have authority to use, or that was unsuitable for a link-accessible guide.

7. Tracked share links

When a host shares a guide from WelcomeFlo — by copying the link, printing a sign, exporting the offline PDF or emailing a guest — the link they hand out passes through a short WelcomeFlo address before redirecting to the guide. This lets a host see which of those methods guests actually use.

For each of these links we record when it was first opened, when it was last opened, and how many times. The link carries a one-time token that identifies the sharing method, not a cookie or a persistent identifier — we do not use tracking pixels to decide whether a guide was opened, and we do not fingerprint devices.

These links measure the way a guide was shared, not the person who opened it. A link can be forwarded, and a printed sign can be photographed, so a host is never shown these figures as evidence about an individual guest.

Where a host emails a guide to a named guest, the record also holds that guest’s email address and the first name the host typed, so the host can see whether the guide they sent was opened. That record is visible only inside the host’s own account, is never used for our own marketing, and is deleted after the retention period set out below. A host can revoke an individual sent link at any time, which stops it opening the guide without changing the guide’s own address.

Hosts are not shown IP addresses, precise locations or device identifiers for these opens.

8. Guest Extras

Where a host offers Guest Extras — optional services like early check-in, a late checkout or an airport transfer — a guest who requests or books one is asked to provide the information needed to complete that request:

• First and last name
• Email address
• Phone number, where the Extra needs one
• Stay dates, and guest and child counts where relevant
• Any note or special instruction the guest adds
• The Extra requested, and any date, time or quantity chosen

This information is collected once per order and shared with the host so they can fulfil the request. It is used for that purpose, is not added to WelcomeFlo marketing, and is different from the anonymous Guide-usage analytics described above.

Payment

Paid Extras are processed through Stripe, using the host’s own connected Stripe account. Card details are entered directly with Stripe. WelcomeFlo does not receive or hold a guest’s full card number, and does not receive or hold the funds — a payment for an Extra goes directly to the host, not through a WelcomeFlo account. Depending on how a host has set up an Extra, a payment may be authorised and held until the host approves the request, or only taken once a request is confirmed or a quote is accepted.

We store records of the request and its outcome — amount, currency, status, and identifiers Stripe uses to reference the payment — so the order can be tracked, refunded if applicable, and reconciled for accounting.

Cancelling and refunding

A guest cancelling within a host’s stated policy is refunded automatically. Outside that window, cancellation generally needs the host’s agreement. Refunds are issued by the host from their own connected Stripe account; WelcomeFlo does not separately hold or move that money.

9. AI-assisted features

Several WelcomeFlo features are powered by artificial intelligence, currently provided by Google Gemini: Ask Flo, which answers a guest’s question using the host’s own Guide content; Flo Assistant, which helps a host rewrite, shorten or expand Guide text; Flo Places, which suggests nearby places for a host to review; Flo Translations, described below; and parts of the listing and document import process.

What may be sent for processing

Using one of these features can send relevant content to Gemini to generate a response — for example, the Guide section a host asks Flo Assistant to improve, a question a guest asks Ask Flo together with the Guide content needed to answer it, or content extracted from an imported listing or document. Flo Places sends only a host’s optional free-text preference (such as “somewhere quiet”) and the categories being searched, never Guide content.

What we store

A guest’s question to Ask Flo and Flo’s answer are stored against the Guide, together with an anonymous session identifier and, where given, whether the guest marked the answer helpful — on the same anonymous basis as other Guide analytics, with no guest name, email address or IP address. Flo Assistant’s suggestions are not separately logged: if a host accepts one, it simply becomes ordinary Guide content. Flo Places does not store its suggestions at all unless a host adds one to their Guide, at which point it is handled the same as any other place a host adds.

We have not independently audited or obtained a specific contractual commitment from Google about how content sent to Gemini through WelcomeFlo is retained or whether it is used to improve Google’s own models, and we do not make a claim about that here. If this matters for how you use an AI feature, avoid putting information you would not want processed this way into a question, a note, or Guide content you ask Flo to rewrite.

AI features can misread, omit or summarise inaccurately. Guests should treat an Ask Flo answer as a starting point rather than the final word for anything important, and hosts remain responsible for the accuracy of their published Guide content, including anything an AI feature helped produce.

10. Automatic translations

Where Flo Translations is available, a guest can choose to view supported Guide content translated into another language. The translation is generated automatically and a copy is cached so the same content does not need to be translated again for the next guest, until the host changes it.

A guest’s chosen language is remembered only in their own browser, for that Guide — it is not stored against a WelcomeFlo account or shared with the host as personal information. Cached translations are Guide content, handled the same way as the rest of a Guide, and are not deleted on a fixed schedule; a translation is replaced automatically once the host edits the source content it came from.

11. Listing imports and document imports

A host can start a Guide from a supported Airbnb or Booking.com listing URL, or by uploading an existing PDF or DOCX guest guide. Both routes create a draft the host reviews and edits before anything is published.

For a listing import, we use extraction providers to retrieve the publicly available information from the listing URL a host supplies. We keep the structured details produced from that process, not the raw provider response. For a document import, the file is processed to extract its content and is not itself kept afterwards — any images inside it are kept as part of the resulting Guide.

An abandoned draft — one a host never finishes reviewing — is automatically marked inactive after a short idle period, and anything staged for it is queued for deletion shortly afterwards.

12. How we collect personal information

We may collect personal information:

• Directly from you, through the website, dashboard or a form
• When you create, edit or publish a guide
• When you contact us, subscribe or make a payment
• Automatically through your browser or device
• From a host or property manager using WelcomeFlo
• From service providers acting on our behalf
• Through integrations you choose to connect

You can browse the public website without identifying yourself. Certain information is needed to create an account, take a payment, answer a support request or provide particular features. If it is not provided, we may be unable to deliver the service you asked for.

13. How we use personal information

To provide and operate WelcomeFlo

• Creating and managing accounts, and authenticating users
• Providing the dashboard and guest-guide service
• Publishing guide content and generating links and QR codes
• Processing subscriptions and payments, including Guest Extras payments
• Powering AI-assisted features such as Ask Flo, Flo Assistant, Flo Places and Flo Translations
• Sending account and service messages, and providing support

To improve the product

• Understanding how WelcomeFlo is used
• Identifying popular or confusing features
• Improving usability and performance, and developing new features
• Measuring onboarding and conversion
• Producing aggregated business and product reports

Where possible we use aggregated or de-identified information for these purposes.

To communicate with you

• Responding to enquiries and providing support
• Sending security, account and billing notifications
• Confirming form submissions
• Telling you about material service changes
• Sending marketing communications where permitted

To protect WelcomeFlo and its users

• Preventing spam, fraud and abuse, and investigating suspicious activity
• Enforcing our Terms of Service
• Protecting accounts and systems, and diagnosing technical problems
• Establishing, exercising or defending legal claims
• Complying with lawful requests and legal obligations

To manage future opportunities

We use careers information to review expressions of interest, assess suitability for potential work, contact people about relevant opportunities and manage employment, freelance or contractor discussions.

14. Legal grounds for processing

Where the law of your location requires a legal ground, we rely on one or more of the following.

Performance of a contract

Where processing is necessary to provide the service, manage an account, process a subscription, or take steps you asked for before entering a contract.

Legitimate interests

Where reasonably necessary to operate and improve WelcomeFlo, provide support, understand product use, secure our systems, prevent fraud and abuse, communicate with customers, run the business, and establish or defend legal claims. We consider the effect of this processing on the people involved.

Consent

Where required, including for certain marketing communications and optional analytics. You can withdraw consent at any time; withdrawal does not affect processing that was lawful beforehand.

Legal obligations, and protection of rights and safety

Where we must comply with laws, regulations, court orders, tax requirements or valid government requests; and, in limited circumstances, where necessary to protect someone’s vital interests or the rights, safety and security of WelcomeFlo, our users or others.

15. When we share personal information

We do not sell personal information.

Service providers

We rely on a small number of providers to run WelcomeFlo. Each processes information only for the services it provides to us, under its contractual obligations and applicable law:

• Vercel — application hosting, deployment and content delivery
• Supabase — database, authentication and file storage
• Stripe — payment processing, subscription billing, and Guest Extras payments through each host’s own connected account
• Resend — transactional email, such as contact-form messages and guides emailed to a guest
• Google Gemini — the AI model behind Ask Flo, Flo Assistant, Flo Places and Flo Translations
• Google Maps Platform — maps and place information inside guest guides. Where a guide shows a map, the guest’s browser communicates with Google
• Apify and Bright Data — retrieve publicly available listing information when a host imports a Guide from a listing URL

Hosts and property managers

If you view a guest guide, we provide the host with anonymous, aggregated analytics about how that guide was used. If you use a host-controlled feature that sends them information, that information reaches the host as necessary to deliver the feature.

Professional advisers, legal and safety

We may share information with lawyers, accountants, insurers and auditors where reasonably necessary, and may disclose information where we reasonably believe it is needed to comply with a law or enforceable request, respond to a court order, protect rights, property or safety, investigate fraud, abuse or a security incident, or establish or defend legal claims.

Business transactions

If WelcomeFlo is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, restructuring or sale of assets, personal information may be reviewed or transferred as part of that transaction. We will take reasonable steps to ensure it stays protected and is used consistently with this policy.

With your direction or consent

We share information when you ask us to, when you connect a third-party integration, or where you otherwise give valid consent.

16. International processing and transfers

WelcomeFlo is based in Australia, but our providers operate globally. Our primary database and file storage are hosted in the United States, and our AI provider, Google, may process content submitted to an AI feature in the United States or elsewhere it operates infrastructure. Information may also be processed in Australia, the European Economic Area and other countries where our providers or their infrastructure operate.

Privacy laws in those countries may differ from those in your location. Where required, we use reasonable contractual, technical or organisational safeguards for international transfers, which may include data-protection terms, standard contractual clauses or another legally recognised mechanism. Using a third-party integration may also direct information to the countries where that provider operates.

17. How long we keep information

We keep personal information only as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes in this policy, including providing the service, meeting legal obligations, resolving disputes and protecting our rights. Our usual approach:

Account and guide information

Kept while the account is active. After deletion, some information may be kept briefly to complete the deletion, guard against accidental loss, resolve disputes and clear backups, or longer where legally required or necessary for security and fraud prevention.

Billing and Guest Extras transaction records

Generally kept for at least five years, or longer where the law requires. Some transaction and order references may be kept for accounting and dispute purposes even after an account is deleted, with the connection to your account removed.

Support, contact and careers information

Contact-form and careers submissions reach us by email rather than as a separate record in our systems, so they are retained as part of our normal email records, generally for no longer than reasonably necessary to handle the enquiry and keep an adequate business record. You can ask us to delete a specific message or careers submission at any time.

Records of guides emailed to guests

Kept for up to 400 days from the date the guide was sent, then deleted along with the record of whether it was opened. The permanent links behind a copied link, a printed sign or an offline PDF hold no personal information and stay in place for as long as the guide does, so a sign on a wall keeps working.

Ask Flo questions and answers

A guest’s question and Flo’s answer are kept as part of the Guide’s usage information, on the same basis as other Guide analytics described above. We intend to bring this onto the same up-to-24-months cycle as our other analytics; as of the date of this policy that cleanup has not yet been automated, and we are treating that as an implementation gap to close rather than a change to the policy.

Cached translations

A cached translation of Guide content is kept as part of that Guide until the host edits the source content, at which point it is regenerated. It is not deleted on a separate schedule.

Import drafts

A listing or document import a host does not finish reviewing is automatically marked inactive after a short idle period, and anything staged for it is queued for deletion shortly afterwards.

Usage, analytics and security information

Generally kept for up to 24 months. Security logs may be kept for a different period where reasonably necessary to investigate incidents or protect the service.

Backups and legal holds

Information may remain in secure backups for a period after removal from active systems. We may keep information longer where required by law, subject to a legal hold, or reasonably necessary for an investigation or legal claim. When information is no longer needed, we take reasonable steps to delete it, de-identify it or make it inaccessible.

18. Security

We use reasonable technical and organisational safeguards designed to protect personal information against loss, misuse, interference, unauthorised access or disclosure, alteration and destruction. These include:

• HTTPS for all traffic, including every published guest guide
• Encryption at rest by our infrastructure providers
• Row-level security enforced in the database, so access rules apply even if the application layer is bypassed
• Authentication handled by a specialist provider, with hashed passwords
• Administrative access restricted to named accounts and enforced in the database
• Secrets held in server-side environment configuration, never exposed to the browser
• Monitoring, logging, backups and routine software updates

No internet transmission or storage system can be guaranteed completely secure. You are responsible for protecting your account credentials, using a strong and unique password, and keeping control of your email account and devices.

If you believe your account or information may have been compromised, contact privacy@welcomeflo.com promptly. If a data breach occurs we will investigate and act, and where the law requires we will notify affected individuals and the relevant regulators. Our Security page describes our current safeguards and limitations in more detail.

19. Cookies and similar technologies

Essential

Used to keep you signed in, maintain sessions, protect against fraud and abuse, remember essential preferences and operate features you ask for. Disabling these may stop parts of WelcomeFlo working.

This includes browser storage set on a published Guide itself: a randomly generated visitor and session identifier used for the anonymous analytics described above, and — only on the device that opened the Guide — the guest’s chosen Guide language and any in-progress search or Ask Flo history, none of which is sent to WelcomeFlo’s servers as personal information.

Analytics

Used to understand which pages and features help hosts, and where errors or usability problems occur. On our marketing site, optional analytics only run after you accept them — nothing is stored and no analytics run beforehand, and rejecting clears any identifier already stored.

Analytics within the signed-in dashboard cover an account holder’s own use of the product, are described in this policy, and are not separately gated.

Managing your choice

Use the Cookie Settings link in the website footer to change your choice at any time. You can also control cookies through your browser, though blocking them may affect how parts of the service work.

20. Marketing communications

We may send product news, educational content or offers where you have asked for them, consented, or where otherwise permitted by law. Marketing messages identify WelcomeFlo and include a way to opt out.

Opting out does not stop necessary service messages such as security alerts, password resets, billing notices, changes affecting your account or replies to your enquiries.

Submitting the contact form, requesting support or registering interest in careers does not subscribe you to marketing.

21. Your choices and privacy rights

Your rights depend on where you live. Subject to applicable law, you may be able to:

• Ask whether we hold personal information about you, and request access to it
• Request correction of inaccurate, incomplete or outdated information
• Request deletion, or restriction of certain processing
• Object to certain processing, including direct marketing
• Withdraw consent
• Request a portable copy of information you provided
• Complain to a privacy regulator

Some rights have exceptions — we may need to keep information to meet a legal obligation, complete a transaction, protect security, or establish or defend a legal claim.

Making a request

You can view and update much of your information directly in your account settings, including requesting account deletion. For anything else, email privacy@welcomeflo.com. We may ask for information reasonably necessary to confirm your identity, and for evidence of authority where an agent makes a request on your behalf.

We respond within the period applicable law requires. If we cannot fulfil a request we will explain why where required, and tell you what options you have. We do not ordinarily charge for privacy requests; a reasonable fee may apply where the law permits and a request is manifestly unfounded, excessive or requires an unusual form of access.

22. Additional rights in the EEA and United Kingdom

Where EU, EEA or UK data-protection law applies, you may have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection to processing based on legitimate interests, objection to direct marketing, withdrawal of consent, and the right to complain to your local supervisory authority.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, you can ask for more information about them. WelcomeFlo does not use personal information to make decisions based solely on automated processing that produce legal or similarly significant effects.

23. Information about children

WelcomeFlo accounts are intended for adults and people authorised to act for an accommodation business. Do not create an account if you are under 18 unless a parent, guardian or authorised organisation has approved and manages your use.

Published guides may be viewed by guests of any age, but WelcomeFlo does not require anyone to provide personal information in order to view a guide. Hosts must not add unnecessary personal information about children to a guide.

If you believe a child has provided personal information to WelcomeFlo without appropriate authorisation, contact privacy@welcomeflo.com so we can review it.

24. Sensitive information

WelcomeFlo is not designed to collect or store sensitive personal information — such as information about health, race or ethnicity, political opinions, religion, sexual orientation, biometric identifiers, criminal history or membership of certain organisations — unless genuinely necessary for a particular lawful purpose.

Do not place sensitive information in a published guide unless you have a clear legal basis, the information is necessary, and the person concerned has been properly informed. We may remove or restrict content that creates an unreasonable privacy, safety or legal risk.

25. De-identified and aggregated information

We may combine, aggregate or de-identify information so it no longer reasonably identifies anyone, and use it to understand product usage, measure performance, produce business insights, improve WelcomeFlo, develop features and describe general service trends.

We take reasonable steps not to re-identify information that has been properly de-identified, except where permitted or required by law.

26. Third-party links and services

Guides and website pages may link to third-party websites and services — restaurants and attractions, map and direction services, booking platforms, transport providers, social media and host-selected resources.

We do not control the privacy practices, security or content of those third parties. When you follow a link or use an integration, that provider’s terms and privacy policy apply.

27. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as WelcomeFlo develops, our practices change or legal requirements evolve. When we do, we update the “Last updated” date above.

If a change materially affects how we use personal information, we will take reasonable steps to give additional notice through the website, the dashboard or email.

28. Privacy questions and complaints

Send privacy questions, requests and complaints to privacy@welcomeflo.com, or use the contact form and choose “Privacy or security”. Please include enough detail for us to understand and investigate.

Do not send passwords, complete payment-card details or unnecessary identity documents by email.

We will acknowledge and investigate privacy complaints and aim to respond meaningfully within a reasonable period. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may be entitled to complain to the privacy or data-protection authority where you live. In Australia, that is the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. In the EEA or United Kingdom, it is your local supervisory authority.

For general questions that are not privacy-related, please use our contact page.