Hotels Above Par
ReadHotelsAbovePar.com Reader Privacy

The boutique hotel edit

Privacy Policy

A clear look at how we collect, use, disclose, and protect reader information across our website, newsletters, and print or digital offerings.

Effective June 30, 2026 ReadHotelsAbovePar.com CA, EU, UK aware

Privacy Policy

Effective Date: June 30, 2026
Website: ReadHotelsAbovePar.com
Publication: Hotels Above Par

Hotels Above Par respects your privacy. We publish boutique hotel, travel, restaurant, design, and destination coverage for readers who want sharper travel ideas without the noise of mass-market travel media. This Privacy Policy explains how Hotels Above Par (“Hotels Above Par,” “HAP,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, discloses, and protects personal information when you visit ReadHotelsAbovePar.com, subscribe to our newsletter, read our emails, interact with our content, purchase or subscribe to any print or digital products, participate in surveys, polls, contests, or promotions, or otherwise communicate with us.

This Privacy Policy is intended to be clear, reader-friendly, and legally practical. It includes additional disclosures for residents of California and for individuals located in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.

This Privacy Policy does not replace the privacy policies of third-party websites, hotel booking platforms, social platforms, payment processors, or other services we may link to. When you click a third-party link, interact with a hotel or travel partner, purchase through a third-party platform, or use a feature provided by another company, that company’s own privacy practices may apply.

1. Who We Are

Hotels Above Par is a digital and print travel publication focused on boutique hotels, independent-feeling stays, travel experiences, restaurants, destination ideas, and editorial recommendations.

For privacy questions or requests, contact us at:

Hotels Above Par
Email: editorial@hotelsabovepar.com
Mailing Address:
450 W 17TH ST
New York City, NY 10011, United States

2. Personal Information We Collect

The information we collect depends on how you interact with us.

A. Information You Provide Directly

We may collect personal information you choose to provide, including:

Name
Email address
Mailing address, if needed for print subscriptions, merchandise, gifts, or fulfillment
Account or sign-in information, if you create or access an account
Payment-related information, which is generally processed by our payment processors
Newsletter subscription details
Preferences, interests, survey answers, poll responses, and feedback
Communications you send to us
Information you provide when entering a promotion, giveaway, event, survey, or reader program
Information submitted through forms, comments, applications, pitch forms, or other interactive features

Please do not send us sensitive personal information unless we specifically request it and it is necessary for the interaction.

B. Information Collected Automatically

When you visit our website, open our emails, click links, or interact with our content, we and our service providers may automatically collect certain information, including:

IP address
Device type
Browser type
Operating system
General location inferred from IP address
Referring and exit pages
Pages viewed
Dates and times of visits
Newsletter opens, clicks, and interaction data
Links clicked
Search terms used on our site
Cookie identifiers, pixel identifiers, and similar online identifiers
Information about how readers interact with our website, newsletters, ads, recommendations, and offers

This information helps us operate the website, understand reader behavior, measure editorial performance, prevent abuse, improve deliverability, and make our content more useful.

C. Information From Third Parties

We may receive information from third parties, such as:

Newsletter and publishing platforms
Payment processors
Analytics providers
Advertising, sponsorship, and affiliate partners
Social media platforms
Referral partners
Contest, survey, or promotion partners
Publicly available sources
Service providers that help us verify, clean, or understand subscriber data

We may combine information from these sources with information we collect directly.

3. Cookies, Pixels, and Similar Technologies

We and our service providers may use cookies, pixels, local storage, software development kits, and similar technologies to operate our services and understand how readers use them.

These technologies may be used for:

Essential site functions
Newsletter subscription and sign-in functions
Security, fraud prevention, and abuse detection
Analytics and performance measurement
Email open and click tracking
Preference storage
Affiliate attribution
Advertising, sponsorship, and campaign measurement
Personalization of content, recommendations, or offers

You can often control cookies through your browser settings. Some features may not work properly if cookies are disabled.

If we provide a cookie preferences tool, you can use that tool to manage certain cookie choices. You may also be able to use browser-based privacy tools, including Global Privacy Control, where required by law.

4. How We Use Personal Information

We may use personal information to:

Provide, operate, maintain, and improve ReadHotelsAbovePar.com
Send newsletters and other editorial communications
Manage subscriptions, sign-ins, paid products, print subscriptions, and fulfillment
Process transactions and related customer support
Respond to questions, requests, pitches, feedback, and reader communications
Personalize content, recommendations, and reader experiences
Measure website, newsletter, advertising, affiliate, and sponsorship performance
Understand audience interests and editorial performance
Run surveys, polls, giveaways, contests, promotions, reader programs, and events
Send administrative messages, policy updates, and service notices
Protect the security and integrity of our website, newsletter, and systems
Detect, investigate, prevent, or respond to spam, abuse, fraud, security incidents, or unlawful activity
Comply with legal obligations
Enforce our terms, policies, agreements, and rights
Evaluate or complete a business transaction, such as a merger, acquisition, financing, restructuring, or sale of assets

We do not use personal information to make decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about readers.

5. Legal Bases for Processing for EU, UK, and Similar Privacy Laws

If you are located in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, Switzerland, or another jurisdiction requiring a legal basis for processing personal information, we may rely on the following legal bases:

Consent

We may rely on consent when you subscribe to certain communications, accept certain cookies, enter optional promotions, or provide information for a specific purpose. You may withdraw consent at any time where consent is the legal basis.

Contract

We may process information to provide services you request, such as newsletter access, account features, paid subscriptions, print products, purchases, or customer support.

Legitimate Interests

We may process information for our legitimate interests, including operating our publication, improving editorial and reader experiences, measuring performance, preventing fraud and abuse, securing our services, managing business relationships, and marketing our content, provided those interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms.

Legal Obligation

We may process information when necessary to comply with laws, tax requirements, regulatory obligations, court orders, or lawful requests.

6. How We Disclose Personal Information

We may disclose personal information to the following categories of recipients:

Service Providers and Processors

We may disclose information to companies that help us operate our publication, including:

Newsletter and publishing platforms
Website hosting providers
Email delivery providers
Analytics providers
Payment processors
Subscription and fulfillment providers
Customer support tools
Survey, poll, and form tools
Security and fraud-prevention vendors
Data storage and infrastructure providers
Professional advisors, such as lawyers, accountants, and consultants

These providers may process personal information on our behalf and according to our instructions, subject to their contracts and applicable law.

Advertising, Sponsorship, Analytics, and Affiliate Partners

We may disclose or make available certain information to advertising, sponsorship, analytics, and affiliate partners to measure campaigns, attribute referrals, understand audience engagement, and support advertising or sponsored content.

Depending on the technology used and your location, some of these disclosures may be considered a “sale,” “sharing,” or use for targeted advertising under certain U.S. state privacy laws. See the California Privacy Details section below.

Business and Editorial Partners

We may disclose information to partners when you choose to interact with a co-branded feature, event, giveaway, survey, travel offer, or other partner opportunity. We will provide additional notice or request consent where required.

Legal, Safety, and Compliance Recipients

We may disclose information when we believe it is necessary or appropriate to:

Comply with law or legal process
Respond to lawful requests by public authorities
Protect the rights, property, safety, or security of Hotels Above Par, our readers, our partners, or the public
Detect, prevent, or respond to fraud, abuse, spam, security issues, or unlawful activity
Enforce our terms, policies, or agreements

Business Transaction Recipients

We may disclose information in connection with an actual or potential merger, acquisition, financing, restructuring, bankruptcy, sale of assets, or other business transaction.

With Your Direction or Consent

We may disclose information when you direct us to do so or when you consent.

7. Newsletter and Email Choices

You can unsubscribe from marketing or editorial newsletters at any time by using the unsubscribe link in our emails.

Even if you unsubscribe from marketing emails, we may still send non-marketing messages when needed, such as transaction confirmations, account notices, customer support responses, legal notices, or security messages.

Email analytics may help us understand whether emails are opened, clicked, forwarded, or otherwise engaged with. These signals help us improve content, deliverability, and reader experience.

8. Third-Party Links, Hotel Sites, Booking Platforms, and Social Media

Our content may include links to hotels, restaurants, booking platforms, travel partners, affiliate partners, advertisers, social media platforms, and other third-party websites or services.

We are not responsible for the privacy practices of third parties. When you click a third-party link, make a booking, purchase a product, use a social platform, or interact with a third-party service, your information may be collected and processed by that third party under its own privacy policy.

We may receive affiliate or referral information when readers click certain links or make purchases through certain links.

9. Payments, Print Subscriptions, and Fulfillment

If you purchase a paid subscription, print product, merchandise, event access, or other paid offering, payment information is generally processed by third-party payment processors. We may receive limited transaction details, such as payment status, product purchased, subscription tier, billing contact information, and fulfillment details.

For print subscriptions or physical products, we or our fulfillment partners may collect and process mailing address and delivery-related information.

We do not intend to store full payment card numbers unless clearly disclosed and necessary. Payment processors may collect and store payment information according to their own privacy policies and security standards.

10. Data Retention

We keep personal information for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.

The length of time may depend on factors such as:

The type and sensitivity of the information
The purposes for which we collected it
Whether you maintain a subscription or account
Legal, tax, accounting, reporting, or compliance requirements
Security, fraud-prevention, and abuse-prevention needs
Whether retention is needed to resolve disputes or enforce agreements

When information is no longer needed, we may delete, de-identify, aggregate, or retain it as permitted by law.

11. Data Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational measures designed to protect personal information from unauthorized access, loss, misuse, alteration, or disclosure.

No website, email system, platform, or storage method can be guaranteed to be completely secure. You use our services at your own risk. Please use care when sharing information online and notify us promptly if you believe your interaction with us is no longer secure.

12. International Data Transfers

Hotels Above Par is based in the United States. If you access our services from outside the United States, your personal information may be processed in the United States and other countries where we or our service providers operate.

These countries may have data protection laws that differ from the laws in your country. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards for international transfers, such as standard contractual clauses, data processing agreements, or other lawful transfer mechanisms.

13. Children’s Privacy

Our services are not directed to children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16.

If you believe a child has provided personal information to us, contact us at editorial@hotelsabovepar.com and we will take appropriate steps to delete the information where required by law.

We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of individuals under 16.

14. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights regarding your personal information. These rights may include the right to:

Confirm whether we process personal information about you
Access personal information we hold about you
Receive a copy of certain personal information in a portable format
Correct inaccurate personal information
Delete certain personal information
Restrict or object to certain processing
Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent
Opt out of certain processing, including targeted advertising, sale, or sharing where applicable
Appeal a decision we make about a privacy request, where required by law
File a complaint with a data protection authority, where applicable

To exercise your rights, contact us at editorial@hotelsabovepar.com.

We may need to verify your identity before completing certain requests. We may also ask for information reasonably necessary to process your request. We will not discriminate against you for exercising privacy rights.

Some rights may be limited by law, and we may deny or partially fulfill a request when an exception applies.

15. Privacy Rights for California Residents

This section applies to California residents and supplements the rest of this Privacy Policy.

California law requires certain businesses to disclose information about the categories of personal information they collect, the sources of that information, why they use it, whether it is sold or shared, and the categories of third parties to whom it is disclosed.

A. Categories of Personal Information Collected

During the 12 months before the effective date of this Privacy Policy, we may have collected the following categories of personal information:

Category	Examples	Sources	Purposes
Identifiers	Name, email address, mailing address, IP address, device identifiers, cookie identifiers, account identifiers	You, your device, service providers, newsletter platforms, payment processors, partners	Provide services, send newsletters, manage subscriptions, fulfill products, analytics, security, marketing
Customer records information	Contact details, billing-related details, subscription details, transaction records	You, payment processors, subscription platforms	Process transactions, provide support, fulfill subscriptions, maintain records
Commercial information	Products or subscriptions purchased, content or offers viewed, affiliate or referral interactions	You, your device, payment processors, affiliate partners, service providers	Fulfillment, analytics, advertising, affiliate attribution, customer support
Internet or other electronic network activity	Browsing activity, pages viewed, email opens and clicks, referring URLs, interaction data, search activity	Your device, cookies, pixels, analytics tools, newsletter platforms	Operate and improve services, measure performance, personalize content, security, advertising
Geolocation data	General location inferred from IP address	Your device, service providers	Analytics, security, localization, fraud prevention
Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information	Messages, form submissions, feedback, survey responses, or other communications you send us	You	Respond to requests, support, editorial and business operations
Professional or employment-related information	Job title, company, publication, or professional details if submitted through pitches, forms, surveys, or partnerships	You, public sources, partners	Editorial review, partnerships, communications
Inferences	Preferences, interests, likely travel interests, engagement patterns	We infer from interactions with our site, emails, surveys, and content	Personalization, analytics, audience development, editorial planning
Sensitive personal information	Account log-in credentials where applicable, payment details handled by processors, and other sensitive information only if necessary	You, service providers	Account access, payment processing, security, legal compliance

We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes that would require a right to limit under California law unless we provide the required notice and choice.

B. Categories of Personal Information Disclosed for Business Purposes

We may disclose the categories listed above to service providers and contractors for business purposes, including newsletter delivery, website operation, hosting, payment processing, fulfillment, analytics, security, customer support, professional services, and compliance.

C. Sale, Sharing, and Targeted Advertising

California law defines “sell” and “share” broadly. We do not sell personal information for money.

However, depending on the tools enabled on our website or emails, we may “share” or “sell” personal information in the legal sense when certain advertising, analytics, affiliate, or tracking technologies make identifiers, commercial information, or internet activity information available to third parties for cross-context behavioral advertising, campaign measurement, or similar purposes.

The categories of personal information that may be sold or shared in this sense include:

Identifiers
Internet or other electronic network activity information
Commercial information
Inferences

The categories of third parties that may receive this information include:

Advertising partners
Analytics providers
Affiliate partners
Social media platforms
Sponsorship measurement partners

You may opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information by contacting us at editorial@hotelsabovepar.com with the subject line “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information.” If we offer a cookie preferences or “Your Privacy Choices” link on our website, you may also use that link where available.

We will also honor legally recognized opt-out preference signals, such as Global Privacy Control, as required by applicable law.

D. California Privacy Rights

California residents may have the right to request that we:

Disclose the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you
Disclose the categories of sources from which personal information was collected
Disclose the business or commercial purposes for collecting, selling, sharing, or disclosing personal information
Disclose the categories of third parties to whom we disclose personal information
Delete certain personal information
Correct inaccurate personal information
Provide a copy of certain personal information in a portable format
Opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information
Limit the use and disclosure of sensitive personal information where applicable
Not discriminate against you for exercising privacy rights

To submit a request, email editorial@hotelsabovepar.com.

E. Authorized Agents

California residents may use an authorized agent to submit a privacy request. We may require the agent to provide proof of authorization and may require you to verify your identity directly with us, unless an exception applies.

F. Non-Discrimination

We will not deny goods or services, charge a different price, provide a different level of service, or otherwise discriminate against you because you exercised your California privacy rights.

G. California Shine the Light

California’s “Shine the Light” law permits certain California residents to request information about certain disclosures of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make this request, contact us at editorial@hotelsabovepar.com with the subject line “California Shine the Light Request.”

16. Privacy Rights for Residents of the EEA, UK, and Switzerland

If you are located in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, or Switzerland, you may have the following rights, subject to applicable limits:

Right of access
Right to rectification
Right to erasure
Right to restrict processing
Right to object to processing
Right to data portability
Right to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent
Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority

To exercise these rights, contact us at editorial@hotelsabovepar.com.

If you have a concern, we ask that you contact us first so we can try to resolve it directly.

17. U.S. State Privacy Rights Outside California

Residents of certain U.S. states may have privacy rights similar to those described above, including rights to access, correct, delete, obtain a copy of personal information, and opt out of certain processing such as targeted advertising, sale of personal information, or profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects.

To exercise these rights, contact us at editorial@hotelsabovepar.com.

18. “Do Not Track” and Opt-Out Preference Signals

Some browsers offer “Do Not Track” signals. There is not currently a uniform industry standard for responding to all Do Not Track signals.

Where required by law, we will honor recognized opt-out preference signals, such as Global Privacy Control, for browser-based opt-outs of sale or sharing.

19. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the effective date above. If changes are material, we may provide additional notice, such as by posting a notice on our website or sending an email.

Your continued use of our website, newsletters, or services after an updated Privacy Policy is posted means the updated policy applies going forward.

20. Contact Us

For privacy questions, requests, or concerns, contact us at:

Hotels Above Par
Email: editorial@hotelsabovepar.com
Mailing Address:
450 W 17TH ST
New York City, NY 10011, United States