Privacy Policy | Rupping Bush Retreats

Who We Are

Rupping Bush Retreats is a private, owner-hosted bush lodge located in the Shona Langa Nature Estate, Limpopo, South Africa. This website is operated by Mariska Rupping.

Under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), Rupping Bush Retreats (Pty) Ltd is the "responsible party": the business that decides how your personal information is used. Mariska Rupping is the appointed Information Officer for Rupping Bush Retreats and is responsible for ensuring compliance with this Act.

For any privacy-related questions, requests, or complaints, you can email us or WhatsApp Mariska.

Information We Collect

We collect two kinds of information: what you give us, and what our website collects automatically.

What you give us. This happens when you:

Send an enquiry through the form on our Contact page
Leave your email address on our Ditholo page, to hear when Ditholo opens
Book online on our booking page, which NightsBridge runs for us
Send us a WhatsApp message or email
Contact us by phone
Book through LekkeSlaap, Airbnb or Booking.com, which pass your booking details on to us

The information we may collect includes:

Your name and surname
Your email address
Your phone number
Your preferred travel dates
Number of guests in your party
Any additional information you choose to share in your message
For bookings, what you've paid and what's still due. If you pay by card online, you enter your card details on NightsBridge's booking and payment pages, not on our website. We never see your card details.

When you arrive, Shona Langa Nature Estate's security gate asks for your ID and vehicle details. The estate collects these for its own security.

You don't have to give us any of this. We do need your name and a way to reach you to answer an enquiry, and your booking details to confirm a stay.

What our website collects automatically. We also collect information automatically when you visit this website — including your IP address, device and browser type, the pages you view, how you arrived at our site, and your general geographic location (typically city or country level). This information is collected through Google Tag Manager and the third-party tools described in the Cookies & Tracking Technologies section below, which also explains what happens before and after you choose on our cookie banner. Like any website host, our hosting provider's servers also receive your IP address and browser details when a page loads.

Our WhatsApp buttons also add a line to the message they prepare, saying how you found us, for example "I came from Google search." Your browser works this out from the site or link that brought you here and remembers it until you close the tab. It only reaches us if you send the message, and you can delete the line before you do.

How We Use Your Information

We use your personal information only for the following purposes:

To respond to your booking enquiry
To confirm and manage your reservation
To send you arrival information and house guide after booking
To contact you about your stay if necessary
To send you news about Ditholo, if you asked for it on our Ditholo page
To keep the records that South African tax and company law requires
To improve our website and guest experience, and to see which of our ads work

We use your details because you asked us to (to answer your enquiry or take your booking), because the law requires it (for example, keeping invoices), or because you agreed to it (cookies and Ditholo news).

We only send you marketing messages if you've asked for them, and you can stop them at any time. We never sell your details, and we never hand your contact details to another business for its own marketing. We never upload guest or booking lists to Meta or Google for advertising, whether they come from NightsBridge or anywhere else. Our website's tracking tools are different: what Google and Meta receive through them is explained under Cookies & Tracking Technologies below.

Sharing Your Information

We do not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to anyone.

However, in order to operate this website, respond to your enquiries and manage your booking, we use the following third-party service providers (known as "operators" under POPIA) who process limited data on our behalf:

NightsBridge — our reservations system and online booking page (book.nightsbridge.com). It holds our booking records, sends your booking confirmation and payment links, and takes card payments through its own payment service. NightsBridge privacy policy.
Web3Forms — our form provider. When you send an enquiry or leave your email on our Ditholo page, your details are sent through Web3Forms to our email inbox. Web3Forms privacy policy.
Google (Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics 4, Google Ads, Google Fonts and Google Maps) — for website analytics, advertising measurement, the fonts on this website and the maps on our Contact and Shona pages. Our email inbox, booking calendar and cleaning schedule also run on Google (Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Sheets). Google privacy policy.
Meta Platforms (Meta Pixel) — for advertising measurement on Facebook and Instagram. WhatsApp, which is also part of Meta, carries the messages you send us on WhatsApp under its own privacy policy. Meta privacy policy.
LightWidget — shows our latest Instagram posts on our home page.
Make.com — an automation tool that copies upcoming stays from our booking calendars into our cleaning schedule and sends the schedule to our cleaner.
Hostinger — our website hosting provider. Hostinger privacy policy.
Other business software — tools that help us run the business, including AI assistants that may read our email inbox, booking calendar and booking system while they work for us.

Google and Meta also use the information they receive through our website for their own purposes, as their privacy policies explain. The specific data our website shares with them, and why, is described in the Cookies & Tracking Technologies section below.

If you book through a third-party platform such as LekkeSlaap, Airbnb, or Booking.com, those platforms have their own privacy policies which govern how they handle your data. We encourage you to review them directly. The platform shares your booking details with us through NightsBridge, and we use them to manage your stay as this policy describes.

Information stored outside South Africa. Some of these providers, including Google and Meta, store and process information on servers outside South Africa, for example in the United States and Europe. POPIA allows this in certain cases:

when the company receiving the information is bound by law, binding company rules or an agreement that protects your information in a way similar to POPIA
when the transfer is needed to carry out your booking
when you have agreed to it, for example by accepting cookies

Cookies & Tracking Technologies

This website uses cookies and similar tracking technologies for two purposes: to make the site work properly, and to measure how our advertising performs. We are honest that some of these technologies do track you across other websites — and we explain exactly what each one does below.

Essential cookies — These are required for the site to function (for example, remembering your cookie preferences). They cannot be switched off.

Before you choose — Google Tag Manager and Google's tags load on every visit, before you make a choice on the cookie banner. Until you accept, they set no cookies on your device. Instead, they send Google basic signals without cookies, for example that a page was viewed, a contact button was tapped or an online booking was made. Like every request your browser makes, these signals include your IP address and the address of the page. Google uses them to estimate visits and ad results. Meta's pixel doesn't load at all unless you accept marketing cookies.

Analytics & advertising cookies — These cookies are set only after you give your consent on the cookie banner, which offers two choices: Analytics and Marketing. The tools behind them include:

Google Tag Manager (container GTM-MWJP5VDX) — a tag management system that loads our other tracking tools. It loads on every visit and sets no cookies itself, but it is the mechanism that loads the tools below.
Google Analytics 4 (measurement ID G-KC1SN218FB) — with your Analytics consent, collects information about how visitors use the site: pages viewed, time on site, device, approximate location, traffic source, whether you tapped WhatsApp or sent an enquiry, and which "Book online" button you used. If you book online, it also records the booking's reference number, value and currency. This data helps us improve the website. Google Analytics deletes it after 14 months.
Google Ads conversion tracking — with your Marketing consent, records when you tap WhatsApp, phone, email or LekkeSlaap, send an enquiry, open our home page or complete an online booking (with the booking's value and reference number). Google uses this to tell whether you came from one of our ads. This helps us understand which ads work and avoid wasting money on ads that don't.
Meta Pixel (ID 1199580192086433) — a tracking pixel from Meta (Facebook and Instagram) that, with your Marketing consent, records pages viewed (including our Shona page), taps on WhatsApp, phone and email, enquiries, "Book online" clicks and completed online bookings (with the booking's value and reference number). Meta uses this data to measure our ad performance. This technology does track you across other websites that use Meta Pixel.
Our booking page — when you click "Book online", the link carries your cookie choice to our NightsBridge booking page (as rbr_c). If you accepted cookies, it also carries a Google code (_gl) that joins your website visit to your booking, and any dates you picked go along too. Our Google tags then work on the booking page under the same choice, and Meta's pixel runs there only if you accepted marketing cookies. Both record that the booking page was opened and, if you book, the booking's reference number, value and currency. The code we added to that page does not read your name, email address, phone number or card details. Meta's own matching feature is separate and is explained under "What we share with Meta and Google" below. If you reach the booking page another way, for example from our Instagram profile, it treats you as having declined.

Specific cookies and identifiers we set — When you grant consent, the following cookies may be placed on your device:

_ga, _ga_KC1SN218FB — Google Analytics 4. Identifies your browser and visit for analytics. Expires after up to 2 years (some browsers, such as Chrome, shorten this to about 13 months).
_gcl_au — Google Ads conversion linker. Links ad clicks to enquiries and bookings. Expires after 90 days.
_gcl_aw — Google Ads. Set only if you arrive by clicking one of our Google ads, to remember that click. Expires after 90 days.
_fbp — Meta Pixel browser identifier. Used to attribute conversions to ad clicks. Expires after 90 days.
_fbc — Meta Pixel. Set only if you arrive from a Facebook or Instagram link that carries Meta's click code, to remember that click. Expires after 90 days.
fr — Meta cross-site advertising cookie (read from facebook.com when the Pixel loads). Used for ad targeting. Expires after 90 days.
rbr_consent — our own cookie. Stores your consent choice so we don't show the banner again. Expires after 365 days. It's essential, and it's set as soon as you make a choice, whichever choice you make.

Google and Meta may add similar cookies of their own; their privacy policies list them. If you accepted cookies on our website, the same Google cookies, and Meta's if you accepted marketing cookies, may also be set on our booking page at book.nightsbridge.com. NightsBridge's own cookies on that page are covered by its privacy policy.

Other storage in your browser — We also keep a few small notes in your browser's session storage, which is cleared when you close the tab: the "how you found us" line for our WhatsApp buttons (rbr_booking_source_label, on this website), and, on our booking page, your cookie choice and a note that your booking has been counted, so it isn't counted twice (rbr_c and rbr_sent_).

Content from other companies — Some parts of our pages load from other companies, whatever you choose on the cookie banner. The fonts on every page come from Google Fonts, the maps on our Contact and Shona pages come from Google Maps, and the Instagram feed on our home page comes from LightWidget (its photos may load from Instagram's servers). When these load, those companies receive your IP address and browser details. Google Maps may also set Google's own cookies, under Google's privacy policy. Google says its fonts service doesn't use cookies.

What we share with Meta and Google — We never upload guest or booking lists to Meta or Google for advertising, whether they come from NightsBridge or anywhere else. We don't use Meta's Conversions API, so nothing goes to Meta from a server of ours.

With your Marketing consent, Google and Meta may use your visit to our website to show our ads to you again later, for example on Google, Facebook or Instagram.

Meta's pixel has a setting called "automatic advanced matching", and we leave it switched on. If you have accepted marketing cookies and you type contact details, such as your email address or phone number, into a form on our website or on our booking page, the pixel may send Meta a scrambled (hashed) version of them. Meta uses this to match your visit to a Facebook or Instagram account and to measure how our ads perform. Google's tags may do the same where that feature is switched on. We don't use this to contact you, and the tracking we have set up does not send your contact details to Meta or Google in plain text.

Your choice — When you first visit this website, you will see a cookie banner asking whether you accept analytics and advertising cookies. You can choose to accept all, reject all, or adjust your preferences. You can change or withdraw your choice at any time with the "Cookie Preferences" link at the bottom of every page on this website. It opens the cookie banner again so you can choose afresh. If you reject analytics and advertising cookies, the site still works normally, but we can't measure how our ads perform as accurately.

You can also disable cookies in your browser settings, or opt out of advertising profiling directly with Google (Google Ad Settings) and Meta (Meta Ad Preferences).

Your Rights

Under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), you (the "data subject") have the right to:

Know what personal information we hold about you
Request a copy of your personal information, and ask who has had access to it
Request that we correct inaccurate information
Request that we delete your personal information
Object to the processing of your personal information
Withdraw your consent at any time: for cookies, use "Cookie Preferences"; for Ditholo news, tell us
Not receive marketing messages you didn't agree to
Complain to the Information Regulator (see Contact Us below)

To exercise any of these rights, please email us. We may first need to confirm that the request comes from you. We will respond within a reasonable time.

Data Security

We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from unauthorised access, loss, or misuse. Your enquiry data is transmitted over an encrypted connection (HTTPS) via Web3Forms and received in our private email inbox. Online bookings and card payments happen on NightsBridge's booking and payment pages, not on our website.

If you send us an enquiry and don't book, we delete your details within 12 months. If you book, we keep your booking, invoice and payment records for 5 years, as South African tax law requires. Google Analytics deletes website analytics data after 14 months. We do not keep your data indefinitely.

Third-Party Links

This website contains links to third-party websites including LekkeSlaap, Airbnb, Booking.com, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Google (for reviews). We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these platforms. We encourage you to read their privacy policies before submitting any personal information to them. NightsBridge runs our online booking page for us, so it is covered under Sharing Your Information above.

Children

This website is not directed at children under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has submitted personal information to us, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated date at the top. We encourage you to review this page periodically.

If a change needs your consent, we'll ask for it.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or how we handle your personal information, please get in touch:

Information Officer: Mariska Rupping
Email: Email Us
WhatsApp: WhatsApp Mariska
Property: Rupping Bush Retreats, Shona Langa Nature Estate, Limpopo, South Africa

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator of South Africa: inforegulator.org.za.