TheCentralCoast.com is an editorial travel guide to California’s Central Coast, published by The Central Coast (“we,” “us”). This policy explains what information we collect, why we collect it, and what we do with it — in plain language, because that’s how we write everything.

The short version

• We only collect personal information you choose to give us — through the trip concierge, a venue inquiry, a comment, a purchase, or an email.
• We use it to do the thing you asked for. We don’t sell it, rent it, or share it for advertising.
• We don’t run third-party advertising or analytics trackers.
• Trip details you submit to the concierge are processed by an AI service to draft your itinerary.
• Want something corrected or deleted? Email [email protected] and we’ll take care of it.

What we collect, and why

The trip concierge. When you ask our concierge to plan a trip, we collect your name, email address, phone number if you provide one, and the details of the trip you describe — dates, party size, budget range, interests, and anything you write in the notes. We use this to draft your itinerary, email you a copy, and follow up if you reply. Our editors can see every request.

Venue and wedding inquiries. When you inquire about an event venue through the site, we collect your name, contact details, event date, guest count, budget range, and message. We use this to respond and, when you ask us to, to connect you with the venue in question.

Business listings and purchases. If you buy a listing or other product through our store, we collect the billing details needed to process the order. Payment card details are handled by our payment processor and never touch our servers.

Comments. If you leave a comment, we collect the name and email you enter, the comment itself, and your IP address (which helps us catch spam).

Technical basics. Like nearly every website, our servers and our content-delivery network keep standard logs — IP address, browser type, pages requested — used for security, spam prevention, and keeping the site running. The concierge also applies short-lived rate limits keyed to a scrambled version of your IP address, which is discarded automatically.

How the AI concierge handles your details

Our concierge drafts itineraries with the help of an AI model. To do that, the trip details you submit (not your contact details beyond your first name) are sent to our AI infrastructure provider, OpenRouter, which processes them solely to generate your itinerary. Your request and its draft are also stored with us so our editors can review and improve it.

Who we share information with

We share personal information only with the service providers that make the site work, and only for the purposes described here:

• Hostinger — hosts our servers and database.
• Cloudflare — delivers the site, filters malicious traffic, and routes our email addresses.
• Postmark — delivers the emails we send you (itineraries, confirmations, replies).
• OpenRouter — processes concierge trip briefs to generate itineraries, as described above.
• Our payment processor — handles store transactions.
• The venue you ask about — receives your inquiry details when you ask us to make an introduction.

We may also disclose information if the law genuinely requires it. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with anyone for their own marketing.

Cookies

We use only functional cookies: the ones WordPress sets when you comment or log in, the ones our store uses to remember your cart, and the security cookies our content-delivery network sets to tell humans from bots. We don’t set advertising or cross-site tracking cookies, and we don’t run third-party analytics.

Content loaded from other services

Some parts of the site load directly from other companies’ servers, which means your browser shares your IP address with them the same way it does with any website: Mapbox (our interactive maps), Google Fonts (typefaces), Cloudflare’s CDN (icons), Gravatar (author photos on articles), Open-Meteo and NOAA (the live weather and tide readings on our homepage), and occasional embedded media in articles, such as 3D room tours. Each operates under its own privacy policy.

How long we keep things

Concierge requests and venue inquiries are kept while they’re useful for serving you and improving our recommendations, and deleted when you ask. Order records are kept as long as tax and accounting rules require. Comments stay with their articles until removed. Server logs rotate automatically.

Your choices and rights

You can ask us at any time to show you the personal information we hold about you, correct it, or delete it. Email [email protected] from the address in question and we’ll handle it promptly. If you’re a California resident, these are the same rights the CCPA describes — access, deletion, correction, and freedom from discrimination for exercising them — and we honor them for everyone, not just Californians. Since we don’t sell or share personal information for advertising, there’s nothing to opt out of on that front.

Children

The site is written for adults planning travel and isn’t directed at children under 13. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from them; if you believe a child has submitted information to us, email us and we’ll delete it.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS everywhere, access to our systems is limited and credentialed, and we collect as little as we can in the first place — the least data to lose is data never collected. No website can promise perfect security, so we won’t; if a breach ever affects your information, we’ll tell you.

Changes to this policy

When the site gains a capability that changes what we collect, we’ll update this page and the effective date at the top. Meaningful changes get a plain-language note here, not silent edits.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your information: [email protected]. We’re a small editorial team on the Central Coast, and a real person reads that inbox.