Privacy policy
This policy covers the Umrah Companions website, the planning chat, our WhatsApp service and the documents we issue. It is written to be read, not to be survived. If anything here is unclear, ask us before you give us anything.
Who we are
Umrah Companions is a registered trading name of Tia Co., Canada, operating an Umrah travel business from Pakistan. Our registered details are: registration number [COMPANY REGISTRATION NUMBER], registered office [REGISTERED POSTAL ADDRESS], travel licence [TRAVEL LICENCE NUMBER]. For anything about your data, write to support@umrahcompanions.com or to [DATA PROTECTION CONTACT], who handles these requests.
What we collect, and why
What you tell us while planning
The city you fly from, how many are travelling, your dates, your nights, your budget if you name one, and any needs you tell us about - a wheelchair, a cot, a family room, an airline you would rather not fly. We hold this so a package can be built for the people actually travelling, and so you do not have to repeat yourself in a later conversation.
Your account and contact details
Name, email address and phone number, so we can send your package, your invoice and your travel pack, and so you can sign in to see your own bookings.
Traveller documents
Passports and the identity papers a visa application needs. These are uploaded into our system, held for the visa application and the booking, and belong to you. Our staff and consultants are required to put them into the system rather than keep copies of their own.
Payments
What you paid, when, in which currency, and the proof of transfer you upload. We do not store your full card number. Card payments are handled on the payment provider's own page, not on ours.
Messages
Website chat and WhatsApp conversations with us are stored as the record of what was agreed, along with the packages and quotes produced in them.
Approximate network location
Our server may receive an approximate city, region, country and timezone from your public IP address. We use it only to suggest a likely departure city and the currency you probably read prices in, and nothing is acted on until you confirm it. We do not store a readable IP address: the server converts it into a one-way keyed fingerprint and stores that, with the coarse location and visit timestamps, for continuity and abuse prevention.
The AI companion
Ibrahim, our planning companion, is a large language model grounded in this house's own knowledge base and its own rate book. The words of your conversation are sent to the AI provider that runs the model so it can answer you. We do not send your readable IP address to it. Do not put passport numbers, card details or medical records into the chat: if a document is needed, we will ask you to upload it into the system instead.
Who processes data on our behalf
We use a small set of suppliers, each doing one job:
- Database, file storage and sign-in, hosted in Singapore
- Website hosting
- Email delivery, for your quotes, invoices, receipts and travel pack
- A WhatsApp business platform, where you contact us on WhatsApp
- Payment gateways, which take card payments on their own pages
- AI providers, which run the model behind the planning chat
- Mapping and search providers, used to place hotels and check prices
- Airlines, hotels, visa processors and transport suppliers, who need the traveller details in order to hold the booking
We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for anybody else's advertising.
Where your data is held
Our database and file storage sit in Singapore, and some of the suppliers above operate in other countries, so your data is transferred outside Pakistan in the ordinary course of running the service. Booking a journey to Saudi Arabia necessarily means sending traveller details to Saudi suppliers and to the Saudi visa system.
How long we keep it
Booking, payment and tax records are kept for [RECORD RETENTION PERIOD], as required of a travel business. Uploaded traveller documents are kept for [DOCUMENT RETENTION PERIOD] after the journey. Planning conversations are kept so we can honour what was agreed and so you are not asked the same questions twice. You can ask us to delete anything we are not required to keep.
Your choices
- Ask for a copy of what we hold about you.
- Ask us to correct anything that is wrong.
- Ask us to delete what we are not legally required to keep.
- Ask us to stop sending marketing messages. Messages about a booking you have made are not marketing and will continue while your journey is live.
Write to support@umrahcompanions.com and tell us which of these you want.
Security
Staff data is reachable only through our own guarded interfaces, never directly from a browser. Sign-in is handled by our authentication provider, and records are limited to their owner. Server-only keys are never included in the code your browser downloads. No system is perfect, so tell us at once if you believe your account has been used by someone else.
Children
Children travel on Umrah all the time, and we hold their details as part of a family booking made by an adult. We do not offer accounts to children, and a child's details reach us only through the adult who is travelling with them.
Storage in your browser
We use browser storage to keep you signed in and to hold your working trip plan so that a refresh does not lose it. We do not run third-party advertising trackers on this site.
Changes
When this policy changes we replace it here and change the date below. Continuing to use the service after that means the new version applies.
Last updated: [POLICY LAST UPDATED DATE].