Cookie Policy

This page lists the cookies and similar technologies used on this site, what they are for, and how long they last. The table is generated from the services actually running here, so it stays accurate as those change.

§ 01

What the four groups mean

The table above sorts the services into the same four groups the cookie dialog uses. Necessary covers security, load balancing and remembering the choice you make — these cannot be switched off, because the site does not work without them. Functional makes embedded things like maps work. Analytics counts which guides get read. Advertising is where Travelpayouts, the affiliate network behind the booking links, sits.

§ 02

When each group is allowed to run

That depends on where you are reading from, because the law does. Readers in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Brazil, Chile, China, Israel, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, Türkiye and Vietnam get a dialog on their first visit, and nothing outside Necessary runs until it is answered — Reject all included, on that first screen. Readers in Switzerland get the dialog too, but analytics starts on arrival there and they are asked about advertising. Readers in the United States get a bar: analytics starts on arrival, but Advertising waits for an answer. Readers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates get a notice, and all of it starts on arrival. Everywhere else, and wherever we cannot tell, gets the dialog.

Your answer is stored in cookie_consent_8753de, a first-party cookie set by Key West Vacation Center itself and readable by nobody else, and a companion cookie, cookie_consent_8753de_loc, remembers for a day which country you are reading from. An answer lasts up to a year, and a refusal given in the dialog six months, before you are asked again. The Cookie settings link at the foot of every page reopens the choice (in the United States it reads Do not sell or share my personal information). If you withdraw, what you switch off stops running, and if that includes analytics, the Google Analytics cookies are cleared. The one cookie Travelpayouts keeps on this site, am_user_session, is no longer renewed once its script stops and lapses within half an hour; anything Travelpayouts or a booking site set on their own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.

§ 03

What the Travelpayouts script stores

The Travelpayouts entry in the table needs more than the table shows. Once Advertising is allowed, the script sets one cookie on this site, am_user_session: a random session identifier that is renewed while you read and lapses 30 minutes after you stop, and that ties together the reports it sends Travelpayouts about how the page is used. It also keeps a note of the page’s colours in your browser’s local storage, under the name YeaMoAvnmSamSLml, so that its booking boxes match the design, and it fetches their typefaces from Google Fonts. If you follow one of its links, Travelpayouts and the booking site set identifiers on their own domains so that a booking made later can be credited here; those are theirs, and your browser’s settings clear them.

None of this happens until Advertising is allowed, because the script is held back at the source rather than by cookie name. The privacy policy sets out what its reports contain.

Where a guide embeds something from another site — a map, a video, a post — that embed is held back behind a placeholder until the relevant category is allowed, so it cannot quietly set anything on your device before you have chosen. Clicking the placeholder loads that one item.