Privacy Policy

StayMate provides an AI guest-concierge service for short-term rental hosts. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, how it is used, shared, stored, and retained, and the rights you have over it. We handle personal information in accordance with Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), the Personal Information Protection Acts (PIPA) of Alberta and British Columbia, and Québec’s Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector (as modernized by Law 25), according to where you live.

Privacy Officer

StayMate has designated a Privacy Officer responsible for compliance with applicable privacy law. You can reach our Privacy Officer for any question, access or correction request, or complaint at privacy@staymate.ca.

Information we collect

• Host account details — the name, email address, and optional phone number you provide when you create an account.
• Property details — the property information you enter (address, check-in instructions, Wi-Fi, house rules, amenities, and other facts your concierge answers from).
• Guest chat messages — the questions guests send to your concierge and the answers it returns, so the conversation works and you can review escalations.
• Approximate location — when a guest asks for nearby suggestions, the concierge may use approximate location derived from the device’s network (IP address) or, only with permission, device GPS, to find nearby places at that moment. It is not used to track guests.
• Usage and security information — counts such as the number of guest messages handled, plus sign-in and session data used to run the service, enforce plan limits, keep accounts secure, and improve reliability.

Why we collect it

We use this information to operate the concierge, answer guest questions from the facts you provide, notify you when a question falls outside your manual, manage billing and plan limits, secure the service, and provide support. We do not sell your personal information.

Consent

We collect, use, and share your personal information with your consent and for the purposes described in this policy. Where appropriate, consent may be implied by your use of the service; for any sensitive use we seek your express consent. You may withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions, by contacting our Privacy Officer — though withdrawing consent may prevent us from providing the service.

Third-party AI processing

To generate answers, guest chat messages and the relevant property facts may be sent to a third-party AI provider (Google Gemini) for processing. Only the content needed to produce a response is shared, and it is used to return an answer to the guest. This processing may take place on servers outside Québec and Canada, including in the United States. Your information is also subject to that provider’s terms and privacy practices.

Service providers we rely on

We use a small number of carefully selected service providers (sub-processors) to operate StayMate. Each receives only the information it needs to perform its function and is required to protect it. Our current providers are:

• Google (Gemini) — AI processing that generates the concierge’s answers (United States).
• Vercel — hosting and delivery of the StayMate application (United States).
• Upstash — secure storage of operational data such as chat messages, usage counts, and sessions (United States).
• Resend — sending notification emails to hosts when a guest question is escalated (United States).
• Sentry — error and performance monitoring to keep the service reliable; error reports are configured to exclude personal information (United States).
• Cloudflare (R2) — encrypted, off-site backups of operational data for disaster recovery. Backups are encrypted by StayMate before they leave our systems, so Cloudflare stores only unreadable ciphertext and never holds the decryption key (stored outside Canada; an EU-resident option may be used).

If you enable optional features, additional providers may be engaged: Stripe for payment processing on paid plans and, where a host enables optional guest add-on payments, for processing a guest’s payment for that add-on; and Twilio for SMS notifications to hosts. As described below, these providers may store or process personal information outside your province and outside Canada, including in the United States.

Storage and cross-border transfers

Some of our service providers — including our AI provider — may store or process personal information outside your province and outside Canada, including in the United States. Before entrusting personal information to a provider outside Canada, we take reasonable steps to confirm it will receive adequate protection, and for Québec residents we conduct the privacy impact assessment required by Law 25. Information held outside Canada may be subject to the laws of the jurisdiction where it is stored.

Automated processing

Our concierge uses automated processing (AI) to generate answers to guest questions from the property information the host provides. It produces informational answers and does not make decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you. A host can review escalated questions, and you can reach a person through your host or our Privacy Officer.

Data retention

We keep your account and property information for as long as your account is active. Guest chat messages and usage counts are retained only as long as needed to operate the service and meet legal or accounting obligations, after which they are destroyed or anonymized. When you delete your account, the associated data is removed.

Confidentiality incidents

If a confidentiality incident (a breach involving a real risk of significant harm) occurs, we will take reasonable steps to reduce the risk, notify the affected individuals and the relevant privacy regulator — your provincial regulator (such as the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec or the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta or British Columbia) and/or the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada — as required by law, and keep a register of such incidents.

Guest information (concierge-link delivery)

This section needs its own review by legal counsel before this feature is enabled — see the note below.

If a host enables the optional feature that emails a guest their property’s AI-concierge link, StayMate collects a small amount of personal information about that guest from the host, not from the guest directly: the guest’s email address, and optionally the guest’s name and check-in date. The host enters these directly, or StayMate parses them from a booking confirmation the host forwards or pastes in. This is the only feature where StayMate stores personal information about someone who is not the host.

We use this concierge-delivery record solely to deliver the concierge link to that guest by email and, if the host enables it, one follow-up reminder if the first email goes unopened. This record itself is never sold, is never combined with other guest profiles, and is never repurposed for marketing — including StayMate’s own.

Separately, StayMate may offer a guest the option to opt in to communications from StayMate itself — for example about other properties, offers, or a follow-up on a purchase made through an affiliate link. That is an optional, host-independent program with its own separate, explicit consent: it is controlled independently of the concierge feature and of launch, stays off unless and until we enable it after a dedicated assessment, and it does not draw on the concierge-delivery record described above. A guest can decline it, and can withdraw at any time, without affecting their concierge link. This program is not enabled today.

The host, not StayMate, is responsible for having the guest’s consent or another lawful basis before sending — StayMate acts on the host’s instruction and requires the host to attest to that basis before each send. Where a host instead configures automatic forwarding of booking confirmations, the host’s one-time act of setting up that forwarding is treated as their attestation for the messages it triggers. Hosts must inform guests as required by applicable law (see the Terms of Service, “Your guests”) and are responsible for that notice.

This record would be kept only as long as needed to deliver the link and confirm it was opened — a short, limited period — then deleted automatically, whether or not the guest opened it; StayMate does not keep it indefinitely. It would also be deleted immediately if the host removes the property or deletes their account. The feature is disabled by default and stores or sends nothing unless and until a host turns it on.

A guest — or a host acting on a guest’s behalf — can ask us to delete a guest-delivery record early, or ask what we hold, by contacting our Privacy Officer at privacy@staymate.ca. These requests are handled consistently with the access and deletion rights described under “Your rights” below.

The concierge-link email is sent through the same email provider (Resend) described above under “Service providers we rely on,” and is subject to the same cross-border handling described under “Storage and cross-border transfers.”

Cookies

We use a small number of essential cookies — for example, to remember your language preference and to keep you signed in. We do not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies.

Your rights

Subject to applicable law, you may: access the personal information we hold about you; have it corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete; withdraw your consent; request its deletion; and request that the computerized personal information you have provided be released to you in a structured, commonly used technological format (data portability). You can delete your account and its associated data directly in the app from your account settings. To exercise these rights, contact our Privacy Officer at privacy@staymate.ca. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may file a complaint with your provincial privacy regulator — for example, the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec, or the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta or British Columbia — or with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We will post the updated version here and revise the “last updated” date shown above.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your information can be sent to StayMate at privacy@staymate.ca.