THE INDUSTRY FILES

Travel

One booking becomes several files: the seller, the carrier, the global booking system behind them, and the border authorities of every country on your route. The file outlasts the trip by years, mostly on the companies' own judgement of “as long as necessary”.

TRACKING PRIORITY RECOMMENDED

Passport plus movements. Worth keeping on the list.

IF IT LEAKS HIGH
EXPECT IT KEPT FOR YEARS

Booking and border records are kept for years under travel and immigration rules.

IDENTITY DEMANDED ID DOCUMENTS

Travel requires passport or ID; hotels and borders often add a face check.

Industry profile reviewed 23 August 2026. Also machine-readable via the free API.

IF IT LEAKS

A travel file says where you were, when, and who you were with, with the passport or ID number attached. It is enough to place you somewhere you would rather not be placed, long after the trip.

What repeats in the policies

WHO ELSE IS TOLD

The state is on the list, whichever way you travel

Cross a border and the carrier collects your passport and hands it to the border authorities of every country on your route, framed as their legal demand rather than its own choice. Sleep somewhere and lodging law takes over: the hotel keeps a register naming you and opens it to the police. This is the rare part of a trip where the law itself sets the clock, and the border file runs longest, five years with UK and EU authorities and up to fifteen where it reaches the US.

WHERE IT GOES

One trip becomes several files

A single booking rarely stays with one company. The seller passes your details to the airline or rail operator, to the global booking system behind them, and to any hotel, transfer or extra you added. Each becomes the record's own keeper under its own policy, so a request to the company you booked with does not reach the rest of the trip.

WHAT STAYS

The file outlasts the trip by years

How long the file is kept is usually their own judgement, not a number: many policies say only that they hold it "as long as necessary." Where a number does appear, it is tied to the years a legal claim could be brought, not to your journey: several say they keep the travel record for six and a half, or even ten, years after you last travelled. Closing the account does not shorten that.

What a company here typically holds

Worked out from the industry, not from any one company. What you actually handed over is yours to record.

Contact InfoIdentity DocumentsBrowsing & ActivityPurchasesFinancial Account Profile maybeLocation maybePhotos & Biometrics maybeHealth maybe

What this can reveal about you

Built only from what this kind of service actually collects. A dimension that the data does not support is not listed.

Where you go HIGHLY LIKELY

Bookings map exactly where you go and when.

Health POSSIBLE

Special assistance and visa medicals sit in the file.

What lawfully stays after you leave

Two kinds of hold. LAW SETS IT: a statute makes them keep it. THEY SET IT: a ground the company grants itself.

policing / immigration records YEARS, SOMETIMES DECADES LAW SETS IT

Policing and immigration records carry very long statutory retention.

guest register records ABOUT 1 TO 3 YEARS LAW SETS IT

Lodging laws make hotels keep a guest register and open it to the police.

identity and age-check records AS LONG AS THEY CHOOSE THEY SET IT

To prove they checked your age or identity and to block known fraud, sometimes held by a separate verification company.

tax and accounting records ABOUT 6 YEARS LAW SETS IT

Tax and company law makes them keep billing and payment records.

records tied to a live or potential dispute THE LIMITATION PERIOD OF THE CLAIM THEY SET IT

They can keep records to defend a live or possible legal claim.

Who wants this data

More than two hundred airlines settle their tickets through a single clearing house that major carriers own. It packaged over a billion travel records, names, full itineraries and payment details, and sold them to border and immigration agencies, under a contract that barred those agencies from naming it as the source. More than half the world's flights pass through that settlement, so an itinerary can reach the market with no direct dealing on your part.

SOLD OR SHARED LIKELY

Travel patterns are valuable to advertisers and partners.

AI TRAINING MODERATE

Booking and border data feeds risk and facial systems.

Even anonymised, this can still be you

Anonymised is their word. Passport data identifies you outright, and itineraries are mobility traces, where four time-and-place points single out 95% of people (de Montjoye et al., 2013).

Name, date of birth, postcode TYPICAL

Fifteen demographic attributes re-identify 99.98% of Americans in a released dataset (Rocher, Hendrickx and de Montjoye, Nature Communications, 2019); date of birth, postcode, and sex alone did it for most people in the first study of the problem (Sweeney, 2000).

Location traces SOMETIMES

Four time-and-place points single out 95% of people in mobility data (de Montjoye et al., Scientific Reports, 2013).

Payment patterns TYPICAL

Four card transactions identify 90% of people in payment data (de Montjoye et al., Science, 2015).

Face and voice SOMETIMES

A face, voice, or fingerprint template identifies a person directly; there is nothing left to anonymise, and it cannot be reissued like a password.

Browsing fingerprint TYPICAL

Browser and device fingerprints were unique for 84% of visitors in the first large study (Eckersley, 2010), and sparse histories of what people viewed re-identified them against public reviews (Narayanan and Shmatikov, 2008).

THE STUDIES Estimating the success of re-identifications in incomplete datasets using generative models (Nature Communications 10, 3069, 2019)·Simple Demographics Often Identify People Uniquely (Carnegie Mellon University, Data Privacy Working Paper 3, 2000)·Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility (Scientific Reports 3, 1376, 2013)·Unique in the shopping mall: On the reidentifiability of credit card metadata (Science 347 (6221), 2015)·How Unique Is Your Web Browser? (Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2010), 2010)·Robust De-anonymization of Large Sparse Datasets (IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2008)

The wording that does the work

Clauses that recur across this industry, and what each one actually permits.

“to provide and improve our services”

The catch-all purpose. Analytics, profiling, personalisation, and increasingly AI training can all ride under it. When they want to do something new with your data, this sentence usually already covers it.

THE MOVE An objection draws the line: use your data to run the service, not to improve, target, or train on it.

“we do not sell your personal information”

Often technically true, and still misleading. It usually means no cash changes hands. Data can still flow to ad networks, analytics firms, and partners: on their definition, sharing is not selling.

THE MOVE Flip the do-not-sell switch where one exists. The written objection on top of it goes on your record.

“service providers, partners, and affiliates”

How data leaves the building with no name attached. Recipients are listed by what they do, never who they are. You cannot send a request to a company you cannot name, which is the point.

THE MOVE An access request can ask for the recipients by name, not just the categories. UK and EU law put that choice with you. The reply, or the silence, goes on your record.

“aggregated or de-identified information”

Stripping the name does not strip the pattern, and the pattern often still points at you. Policies grant themselves free, indefinite use of this data because in their telling it is no longer about you.

THE MOVE If a deletion comes back as 'anonymised', keep the reply. It is their claim, not a fact you can check.

“retained as long as necessary, or as required by law”

They can keep it for: legal duties, tax rules, fraud prevention, possible lawsuits, their own business reasons. None of them carries a firm end date. Deletion becomes a negotiation, not an event.

THE MOVE Which reasons apply to you, and how long each runs, is a request of its own. Their reply goes on your record.

“you grant us a licence to use your content”

A contract term, not a data setting, so a privacy request cannot undo it. The careful version ends with your account. The broad version can be passed on, never expires, and survives deletion.

THE MOVE Whether the licence ends with the account is written in their terms, not yours. Closing the account goes on your record.

“Advance Passenger Information, shared with border authorities to meet the immigration requirements of the countries we fly to”

Collecting your passport or ID document, its number, nationality and dates, and passing it to the border authorities of every country on your route. The hand-over is framed as those countries' legal demand rather than the carrier's choice, so it is not something you opt out of.

THE MOVE No request to the carrier pulls the passport data back from the border authorities that hold it. The record marks that the hand-over happened.

“they will be the data controller and their privacy notice will apply”

Passing your booking to another company, the operator, the booking system, a hotel or a transfer firm, which then becomes the record's own keeper under its own policy. The company you booked through steps out of responsibility for that copy.

THE MOVE A request to the company you booked with reaches only its own copy; the operator, the booking system and the extras each hold a separate file. What each returns goes on your record.

“we create a customer profile for you, used to group similar customers together into customer segments”

Building a lasting file from your travel history, searches, purchases and details about you, kept apart from any single booking and used to target offers. A few policies go further and say this profile helps set the rates you are shown.

THE MOVE A request surfaces the profile held beside your bookings and what feeds it. Their reply goes on your record.

Their own policy is the one that binds them. Pin it down with a request, and keep the reply. Start your record →