Privacy Policy

Batam.com is a small editorial travel site. We collect as little data about you as possible — no accounts, no newsletter, no analytics. This policy explains what that means in practice and what choices you have.

Data controller

The data controller for this website is the operator of Batam.com. For any privacy-related question, write to hello@batam.com.

Cookies and similar storage

We set one essential first-party cookie (NEXT_LOCALE, ~1 year) so the site remembers your language choice between visits. Your cookie-consent decision itself is stored in your browser's localStorage so we never need a tracking cookie to manage tracking-cookie consent. Everything else — third-party embeds like Google Maps — only loads after you accept via the cookie banner. You can change that decision any time using the Cookie settings link in the footer.

Performance and affiliate tracking

We do not use general-purpose analytics — no Google Analytics, Plausible, PostHog, heatmap or pixel tool runs on this site. The single tracker we do load, after your explicit consent, is Travelpayouts Drive (served from emrldco.com). Drive rewrites our outbound affiliate links so bookings on partner sites are credited to us, and reports anonymised click and conversion events to Travelpayouts. It sets first-party storage on its own origin and does not build a cross-site visitor profile. Decline cookies in the banner to disable it; it never loads otherwise.

Third-party embeds and trackers

Two third-party loads run on this site after you accept cookies: Google Maps Embed (used on transport detail pages to show ferry routes; Google's privacy policy applies) and the Travelpayouts Drive script described above. Both stay blocked behind placeholders or simply do not load until you accept. No other third-party scripts (no YouTube, no social widgets, no chat tools) are present.

Affiliate links

Some links to booking partners (Agoda, Booking.com, Klook, GetYourGuide, 12Go) are affiliate links. When you click one, you leave our site and arrive at the partner. That partner may set their own cookies — their privacy policy applies from that point onwards. The partner shares anonymised commission data with us afterwards; no personal booking details are passed back to Batam.com.

Hosting and server logs

The site is hosted in the EU region of Vercel. Vercel writes short-lived access logs (IP address, user-agent, request path, response code) that we use only for security and uptime debugging — never for analytics. Database (Neon) and media storage (Cloudflare R2) sit in the same region.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict and port any personal data we hold about you, and to object to processing. Since we hold essentially no personal data about visitors, most of these rights have no concrete data to act on — but if you contact us at hello@batam.com we will respond within 30 days.

Contact

For all privacy-related enquiries, email hello@batam.com. We aim to respond within five business days.