Privacy Policy | Key West Vacation Center

This policy describes what Key West Vacation Center collects when you visit www.keywestvacationcenter.com, why, and what you can do about it. It describes the site as it actually operates today rather than a generic worst case, and it will be revised — with the date below changed — if that changes.

Last updated: 25 September 2026

The short version

Reading this site requires nothing from you. There are no accounts, no logins, no newsletter, and no comment section. The only way to hand over personal information is to fill in the contact form, and the only thing that happens to it is that it is emailed to the editor. Google Analytics measures traffic in aggregate, and an affiliate network, Travelpayouts, credits bookings made through links here. What runs before you have made a choice depends on where you are reading from, and the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page switches either off. That is the whole of it.

Information you give us deliberately

The contact form asks for your name, your email address, a topic, an optional page link, and your message. When you submit it, those fields are sent as an email to the site’s editor. They are not written into a database on this site, not added to any mailing list, and not passed to anyone else.

That email sits in an ordinary mailbox. Correspondence is kept while it is useful — a correction, for instance, may be kept until the article has been fixed and checked — and deleted once it is not. If you would rather your message and email address were deleted straight away after it has been dealt with, say so in the message and it will be.

Because delivery runs through standard email, your message passes through the site’s web host and the mailbox provider in transit, as any email does.

Information collected automatically

Analytics. This site uses Google Analytics 4, added through the Site Kit by Google plugin, to count visits and see which guides are being read. It records things like the pages you view, roughly where in the world you are, the type of device and browser you use, and where you arrived from. Once it is allowed to run, it sets cookies in your browser (the _ga family) to recognise a repeat visit. This is used to decide what to write next, not to build a profile of you as an individual, and no analytics data is sold. One thing does leave with another company: when the booking partner described below is allowed to run as well, its script reads the identifier in the _ga cookie and includes it in its own reports. Google acts as our processor for this data and handles it under its own terms.

Whether analytics runs before you have made a choice depends on where you are reading from, as set out under “Your choices, and what runs before you make them” below. If you would rather not be counted, the practical options are the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page, your browser’s cookie controls or tracking protection, Google’s own Analytics opt-out browser add-on, or any content blocker.

Server logs. The web host records standard access logs — IP address, timestamp, the file requested, browser user-agent — for security and diagnostics. This is automatic to running a web server and is not connected to analytics or to anything you send through the contact form. Cloudflare, which delivers the site, handles each request on its way through.

Caching. A page-caching plugin serves stored copies of pages to make the site faster. It does not set a cookie for ordinary visitors.

Advertising

The site does not sell advertising space, and no display-advertising network runs on it. What it does carry is affiliate booking links, through the Travelpayouts network, and those are running now. They are advertising in the sense that matters to you — a company pays when you book through one — so every guide says so at the top, and the next section describes them in full.

If display advertising is ever added, this policy will be updated before it appears, to name the network, explain what it collects and describe the consent controls that come with it. The consent tool those controls would use is already running, and is described below.

Booking links and commission

Some links on this site earn a commission. Key West Vacation Center works with Travelpayouts, an affiliate network that connects the site to hotel, flight, transfer and activity booking companies. We do not paste tagged links into the guides: Travelpayouts runs a script that turns ordinary links to booking and travel sites into commission-tracking ones as the page loads, and it can add booking boxes and suggestions of its own. If you book after following one of those links, the booking company pays us a commission out of its own margin, and your price is the same either way. Every guide says so at the top, and the affiliate disclosure sets out the arrangement in full.

What that means for your data needs spelling out, because it is more than a cookie notice usually describes. When the script runs it receives your IP address and browser details, as any service your browser connects to does, and it reports to Travelpayouts how the page is used: the page’s address and the one you arrived from, which links you click, how many keys are pressed and in which part of the page (not what is typed), and whether an ad blocker or a private window is in use. Those reports are tied together by a random session identifier kept in a cookie on this site called am_user_session, which lapses 30 minutes after you stop reading, and, if Google Analytics is allowed as well, by the identifier Google Analytics keeps for your browser. The script also fetches typefaces for its booking boxes from Google Fonts, which gives Google your IP address, and keeps a note of the page’s colours in your browser’s local storage so that those boxes match the design.

If you follow one of its links, Travelpayouts and the booking site set identifiers of their own, on their own domains, so that a booking made afterwards can be credited here. We never see your name, your travel dates or your payment details — what comes back is a count of clicks and, sometimes, the fact that a booking happened. Once you are on a booking site you are under its privacy policy, not this one, and Travelpayouts handles what its script collects under its own privacy policy.

The script sits in the Advertising group of this site’s cookie settings and does not load at all until that group is allowed. Refusing it costs you nothing: the links still work, at the same price.

Your choices, and what runs before you make them

What runs before you choose depends on where you are reading from, because the law does. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, and in Brazil, Chile, China, Israel, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, Türkiye and Vietnam, nothing beyond the strictly necessary runs until you answer the dialog on your first visit — not analytics, not Travelpayouts — and Reject all sits on that first screen next to Accept all, not behind a second click.

In the United States you are shown a bar rather than a dialog, and it is not only a notice: analytics starts on arrival there, but advertising and booking-partner scripts stay switched off until you answer it. In Switzerland you get the dialog too, but analytics starts on arrival there and only advertising and booking-partner scripts wait for your 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 instead: everything described on this page starts when they arrive, the notice says so, and the same control switches it off. Everywhere else, and whenever we cannot tell where you are, the strictest setting applies: nothing beyond the necessary runs until you answer.

Your answer is kept on your own device, in a first-party cookie called cookie_consent_8753de that only this site can read, so you are not asked again on every page. 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 in the footer of every page reopens the choice, and withdrawing is the same two clicks as agreeing: 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.

Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Key West Vacation Center is held back from readers who say no.

If you are reading this in the United States

Several US states give you the right to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, and those words are broader than they sound: letting an advertising or affiliate partner receive information about your visit can count as sharing even though no money changes hands for your data and we have never sold anything of the kind. Rather than argue the definition, Key West Vacation Center treats it as covered.

So the bar shown to US readers carries a Do not sell or share button, and for US readers the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page reads Do not sell or share my personal information. The button switches off everything except the strictly necessary — Travelpayouts and any ad partner included — and the link reopens the full choice at any time. Travelpayouts stops running from that point; the session cookie it kept on this site lapses within half an hour, and anything it set on its own domains is cleared in your browser rather than from here.

This site also honours Global Privacy Control. If your browser or an extension sends a GPC signal, it is treated as a valid opt-out on arrival — you do not have to find the control and click it as well, and we do not ask again on later visits. Do Not Track is a different and long-abandoned signal, and to be straight about it: this site does not act on DNT, because nothing agreed what it ought to mean.

The record kept of your choice

Proving that a choice was offered and honoured means keeping a record of it. Each answer is logged with the date and time, the two-letter country the choice was made from, which of the rule sets above applied, a reference to the exact wording you were shown, and the choice itself, against a random identifier generated for your browser.

That record contains no name, no email address and no IP address. It holds a salted hash of your browser’s user-agent string, and the salt changes every day, so two visits on different days cannot be linked back together through it. Records are deleted after 26 months. If you want to see or delete the entries tied to your browser, ask through the contact form.

Things this site does not do

No user accounts, registration or logins for readers
No newsletter or mailing list, and no email is ever collected for one
No comments — the comment system is closed site-wide, so no commenter names, emails or IP addresses are stored
No payments, and no card or banking details collected anywhere on the site
No selling, renting or trading of personal information for money (US state laws define “sale” and “sharing” more broadly; the section for US readers above explains the opt-out)
No content aimed at children under 13, and no knowing collection of their information

Links to other sites

Guides here point to hotels, charter operators, museums, the Florida Park Service, the National Park Service and other outside sites so you can book or verify directly. Once you follow one of those links you are on somebody else’s site under somebody else’s privacy policy, and this one no longer applies. Being linked from here is not an endorsement of a business’s data practices. Some of these links earn a commission, as described under “Booking links and commission” above.

Your rights over your information

Depending on where you live — the UK and EEA under GDPR, California under the CCPA and CPRA, and a growing list of other US states — you may have the right to ask what personal information is held about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to it being processed, or to receive a copy of it.

In practice, the personal information this site holds about a reader is a contact-form email, if you have sent one, and the record of your cookie choice described above. Ask through the contact form and either will be found and deleted. Requests are answered within 30 days, and no request will result in you being treated differently. The opt-out of “sale” or “sharing” that US state laws provide is described above: it takes one click, and a Global Privacy Control signal does it for you.

Where a legal basis is required, analytics and the booking partner described above rest on your consent, which is why, where the GDPR applies, neither runs until you have agreed, and why you can withdraw that agreement at any time from the Cookie settings link. Answering a message you send rests on legitimate interest in responding to correspondence you started, and so does keeping server logs for security.

Data retention and security

Contact-form emails are kept only while they are useful, as described above. Analytics data is retained under the retention period set in Google Analytics. Server logs are rotated by the host on its own schedule. Records of cookie choices are deleted after 26 months.

The site is served over HTTPS, so traffic between your browser and the server is encrypted. No transmission over the internet can be guaranteed completely secure, and this site does not ask for anything sensitive enough that you should have to weigh that.

International visitors

This site is operated from, and hosted in, the United States, and it is written primarily for people planning a trip to Key West, Florida. If you use it from elsewhere, the information described here is processed in the United States. Travelpayouts, the affiliate network described above, is a separate company and handles what its script collects under its own privacy policy.

Changes to this policy

Material changes — a new advertising network, a change in what is collected — will be reflected here with a new date at the top before they take effect. Continuing to use the site after a change means the revised policy applies.

What changed on 25 September 2026. This version adds the Travelpayouts booking links and the cookie consent tool. Both went live on the site shortly before this policy caught up with them, and the earlier statements that the guides carried no affiliate links and that the site had no consent banner were removed.

Getting in touch about privacy

Privacy questions, access requests and deletion requests all go through the contact form. Choose “Something else” as the topic and say what you need.