Privacy Policy

1. About Dakota Invite

Dakota Invite is a hotel booking and travel platform operating in India, at https://dakotainvite.com and through our mobile application. We help travellers discover and book hotels and homestays, request travel and tour services, and send enquiries to hotel partners. We also provide hotel owners and their staff with tools to receive and manage customer enquiries and bookings.

In this policy, "Dakota Invite", "we", "us" and "our" mean the Dakota Invite platform and the company that operates it. "You" means anyone who uses our website, app or WhatsApp service, whether as a traveller or as a hotel partner.

2. Information we collect

We collect the following kinds of information.

Information you give us

• Your name.
• Your mobile number, including the WhatsApp number you message us from.
• Your email address.
• Account and login information, such as your sign-in identifier and an encrypted form of your password. We do not store your password in readable form.
• Booking information: the property you book, your check-in and check-out dates, the number of guests, the number of rooms, and your room and hotel preferences.
• Enquiries and messages you send us through the website, the app, WhatsApp, enquiry forms or customer support, including their content.
• For hotel partners: business information about the property, such as the property name, address, photographs, room types, rates, availability, and the contact details of the owner or staff.
• Anything else you choose to tell us, for example special requests or accessibility needs.

Information about payments

When you pay, we receive transaction information such as the amount, currency, date, status, and the reference identifiers issued by our payment provider.

Information collected automatically

• Device and browser information, such as device type, operating system, browser and app version.
• Your IP address, and the approximate location that can be derived from it — typically the city or region, not a precise position. If a feature needs your precise location, we ask your permission first and you can refuse.
• Usage and analytics information: the pages and listings you view, searches you run, links you follow, and the dates and times of those actions.
• Cookies and similar technologies. See section 11.

3. WhatsApp and Meta

You can contact Dakota Invite on WhatsApp, and many of our customers prefer to. If you do, the following applies.

• Messages you send to our WhatsApp business number are transmitted through Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform. Meta processes those messages as part of delivering the service, under its own terms and privacy policy.
• Incoming messages are delivered to Dakota Invite's servers through WhatsApp Business Platform webhooks, which is how a message you send reaches our system in real time.
• We receive the content of your message, your WhatsApp number, the display name on your WhatsApp profile, and the time the message was sent. Where you send a photograph or document, we receive that too.
• We process this to respond to your enquiry, understand what you are looking for, provide customer support, and arrange a booking.
• We may use automated and AI systems to read and interpret your message. See section 4.
• Where it is necessary to answer your enquiry, your message and the details in it may be shared with the relevant hotel partner so they can check availability, quote a price and complete your booking. See section 5.

Your use of WhatsApp itself is governed by WhatsApp's own terms and privacy policy, which we do not control.

4. Automated and AI processing

Dakota Invite uses automated systems, including artificial intelligence, to handle enquiries quickly. We think you should know exactly what that means in practice. We may use these systems to:

• understand the messages you send us, in the words you actually used;
• extract your booking requirements from that text — your name, the dates you want, the number of guests, the number of rooms, the property or area you asked about, and preferences you mention;
• qualify an enquiry, meaning work out whether it contains enough information to be acted on;
• suggest hotels that appear to match what you asked for;
• draft responses to your messages;
• route your enquiry to the hotel partner or partners best able to answer it.

People remain involved. Responses produced by these systems may be reviewed, corrected or replaced by a member of staff or by the hotel before you see them, and a hotel's team speaks to you directly to confirm a booking. If you would rather deal with a person at any point, say so in your message and we will arrange it.

These systems may be operated by third-party technology providers on our behalf. See section 8.

5. Hotel partners

Dakota Invite's purpose is to connect you with a hotel. When you enquire about or book a property, we share with that property the information it needs to respond to you and to host you: typically your name, contact number, requested dates, number of guests, number of rooms, and the content of your enquiry, together with any special requests you made.

Where your enquiry does not name a specific property, we may share it with a small number of suitable properties so they can tell us whether they have availability. Hotel partners receive this information to respond to your enquiry and to fulfil your booking, and are expected to use it for that purpose. Once a property has your details, its own handling of that information is also subject to its own practices and obligations.

6. Payments

Payments on Dakota Invite are processed by third-party payment providers, including Razorpay. When you pay, your card, UPI or banking details are collected and processed by the payment provider — not by us.

Payment providers process this information independently, as their own controllers, in accordance with their own privacy policies and with the card-scheme and regulatory rules that apply to them. We receive from them only what we need to run the booking: the amount, the status of the payment, and reference identifiers such as an order, payment or subscription identifier. Hotel partners who subscribe to a Dakota Invite plan are billed through the same provider, and the same applies.

7. How we use information

We use the information described above to:

• process and manage hotel bookings, including confirmations, changes and cancellations;
• receive, understand and respond to enquiries;
• provide customer support;
• communicate with you on WhatsApp, by email, by SMS or by telephone about your enquiry or booking;
• match enquiries with suitable hotels and route them to the right partner;
• process payments and handle refunds, chargebacks and billing for hotel partners;
• detect, investigate and prevent fraud, abuse and security incidents;
• improve our website and app, fix faults and develop new features;
• carry out analytics to understand how the service is used in aggregate;
• send you service communications, such as booking confirmations and important notices about your account;
• meet our legal, tax and regulatory obligations and respond to lawful requests.

8. Who we share information with

We share information with the following categories of recipient, and only as far as each needs it:

9. How long we keep information

Our data retention rule is simple: we keep personal information only for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes it was collected for. In practice that means for as long as needed to:

• complete and support your bookings and enquiries;
• provide customer support and handle any follow-up;
• meet legal, accounting and tax obligations, which may require transaction records to be kept for a period set by law;
• resolve disputes and enforce our agreements;
• prevent fraud and abuse.

When information is no longer needed for any of these purposes, we delete it or anonymise it so that it can no longer be linked to you.

10. Security

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal information. These include encryption of traffic in transit, storing passwords only in hashed form, restricting access to the people who need it for their role, verifying the authenticity of incoming payment and messaging webhooks before acting on them, and keeping an audit record of changes to billing and account data.

No website, application or method of transmission can be guaranteed to be completely secure, and we do not claim otherwise. If we become aware of a breach that affects your personal information, we will act promptly and notify you and the relevant authorities where we are required to do so.

11. Cookies and similar technologies

We use cookies and similar technologies, such as browser local storage, for the following purposes.

• Essential cookies and storage — needed for the site to work at all, for example to keep items in a booking flow or to remember a preference you set.
• Authentication and session — to keep you signed in and to keep your session secure. Without these you would have to sign in on every page.
• Analytics — to understand, in aggregate, which pages are used and where people encounter problems, so we can improve the service.

You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings. If you block essential or authentication cookies, parts of the site — including signing in and completing a booking — will not work.

12. Your rights

Subject to the law that applies to you, you may ask us to:

• access the personal information we hold about you;
• correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• delete your information — see section 13;
• withdraw consent where we rely on it, including opting out of non-essential messages;
• object to or restrict certain processing;
• receive a copy of information you gave us in a portable form, where that right applies.

Write to us at the address in section 18 and we will respond within a reasonable period. We may need to verify your identity first, so that we do not disclose your information to someone else. Some information may be retained after a request where we are legally required to keep it, or where we need it to resolve a dispute or prevent fraud; if that applies, we will tell you.

13. Deleting your account and data

You can ask us to delete your Dakota Invite account and the personal information associated with it at any time.

How to request deletion

Email clubdakota00@gmail.com with the subject "Account deletion request", from the email address registered on your account, or send us the request on WhatsApp from your registered mobile number. Please tell us the name and mobile number or email on the account so we can find it.

What happens next

• We verify that the request comes from the account holder.
• We delete your account and the personal information held against it, or anonymise it where deletion is not possible.
• We aim to complete this within 30 days and will confirm when it is done.
• What we may keep, and why: records of completed bookings and payments that we are required to retain for legal, tax or accounting purposes, and the minimum information needed to resolve an open dispute or to prevent fraud. These are kept only for as long as the relevant obligation lasts, and are then deleted.
• Information already shared with a hotel partner in order to fulfil your booking is also held by that property. Tell us if you would like us to pass your deletion request on to them.

14. Children

Dakota Invite is intended for adults. The service is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information directly from a child. Accounts and bookings must be created by an adult.

An adult making a booking may give us the number of children travelling, and occasionally a child's name or age where a property requires it. That information is provided by the adult, used only to arrange the stay, and kept under the same rules as the rest of the booking.

If you believe a child has given us personal information directly, please contact us and we will delete it.

15. International processing

Dakota Invite operates in India. Some of the providers we rely on — including Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform, cloud and hosting providers, payment providers, analytics providers and AI technology providers — may store or process information on servers outside India.

Where that happens, we take reasonable steps to ensure the information continues to be protected, including by using established providers and relying on the contractual protections they offer.

16. Third-party links

Our website and app may link to third-party websites and services — for example a hotel's own site, a payment provider's page, or a map. We do not control those services, and this policy does not apply to them. Their privacy practices are governed by their own policies, which we encourage you to read.

17. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as our services change or as the law requires. When we do, we will change the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Where a change is material, we will take reasonable steps to bring it to your attention, for example by a notice in the app or a message to you.

18. Contact us

If you have a question about this policy, want to exercise any of the rights in section 12, or wish to make a complaint about how we handle your information, please get in touch.