Privacy policy
What the enquiry form collects, where it goes, how long we keep it and how to have it deleted.
This page says what happens to the details you send us, in plain words. It covers the enquiry form, the booking system, WhatsApp and cookies. If anything here is unclear, ask us and we will explain it.
Who holds your details
My Local Guide Istanbul runs walking, food and private tours in Istanbul. Salih Batkin is responsible for the details you send us.
Zeyrek Mah. Nevşehirli İbrahim Paşa Cad. No 24/8, Fatih, İstanbul.
Email: info@mylocalguideistanbul.com
Phone and WhatsApp: +90 534 200 55 65
What the enquiry form collects
When you send the form on this site it records your name, your email address, and a phone or WhatsApp number if you give one. It also records the date you have in mind, how many of you there are, the language you would prefer, the tour or theme you asked about, your hotel or pickup area, and whatever you write in the last box. That last box is usually allergies, dietary needs, mobility, or who is travelling with you.
The layover form also asks for your flight numbers, flight times and which airport, because that is what decides how much of the city fits in the gap.
The form records the address of the page you sent it from, so we know which tour you were reading. Only your name and email address are required. Leave the rest blank if you would rather.
Where it goes
Two places, and no further. It is saved in this website’s own database, where it appears in the admin as an enquiry, and it is emailed to us. Nobody else is sent a copy. We do not sell it, rent it out, or hand it to anyone for marketing.
You get an automatic email back confirming that it arrived. That message is plain text. It carries no images, no tracking pixel and no link that reports back whether you opened it.
Keeping robots off the form
The form has a field that is hidden from people and filled in by robots, and it checks how long the page was open before you pressed send. It also stores a scrambled one way version of your IP address for one hour, so that a single machine cannot send hundreds of messages. The scrambled value cannot be read back as an address and it deletes itself after the hour.
Booking and payment
Tours that can be booked online use a booking system operated by TuriTop. When the booking panel opens on a tour page, TuriTop’s script loads from their servers and the booking is made with them.
TuriTop takes the payment. Card details are handled by TuriTop and their payment provider. They never pass through this website and we never see a card number. TuriTop gives us the details we need to run your day: your name, how to reach you, the date, how many people are coming and any notes you added.
Most of our correspondence happens on WhatsApp, because it is faster than email and you are usually on a phone. Those messages sit on the business phone and inside WhatsApp, which is run by Meta under their terms rather than ours. Please do not send passport scans, card numbers or anything of that kind. We never need them.
Cookies and tracking
There are no advertising trackers on this site, no social media pixels and no profiling of visitors.
One cookie is set when you arrive. It is called pll_language and it stores a two letter language code, so the site opens in the language you were reading last. It lasts a year and you can delete it whenever you like. WordPress sets a few more cookies, but only for people who log in to the admin.
A visitor counter is switched on, and this is the page saying so. It is Google Analytics, set up to count without storing anything on your device: no cookie, no identifier, nothing that ties one visit to the next or follows you to another site. It tells us which pages get read and which do not, which is the only thing we use it for. Because it stores nothing, there is nothing to ask your permission for, and the language cookie above is still the only one this site sets.
Why we are allowed to hold it
If you sent an enquiry, we hold your details because you asked us a question and we cannot answer it otherwise. If you booked, we hold them because a tour cannot be run without knowing who is coming, where to meet you and what you cannot eat.
Allergies, dietary needs and mobility are health details, so we treat them separately. We only have them because you chose to tell us. They go to the guide leading your tour, and to a restaurant where the kitchen needs to know. Nowhere else.
How long we keep it
Enquiries that do not turn into a booking are kept for two years and then deleted. People often write to us a year before they travel, and it helps to still have the earlier message. Booking records are kept longer, for as long as accounting and tax rules require us to hold them. If you want something deleted sooner, ask, and we will.
Asking for a copy, a correction or a deletion
Email info@mylocalguideistanbul.com and say what you want. You can ask for a copy of everything we hold about you, ask us to correct something, or ask us to delete it. We reply within thirty days and usually within the same week. We may ask you one question to confirm that you are the person who sent the enquiry. There is no charge.
Turkish data protection law applies to us, because we are based in Istanbul. If you live in the UK or the European Union you also have rights under the GDPR, and they are the rights described above.
Changes to this page
If what we do with your details changes, this page changes with it, and so does the date below.
Last updated: 3 September 2026.