Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Guest House Accommodation of South Africa CC
Registration number: 2006/203297/23
Trading as: Guesthouse Association of South Africa (GHASA)
Address: 9 Zastron Road, Cape Town, 7441, Western Cape, South Africa

Information Officer: David Nurick
General contact and privacy queries: info@ghasa.org.za
WhatsApp: +27 73 942 6137

2. What information we collect

2.1 Information you provide directly

• Contact details — name, email address, telephone and WhatsApp number, and province
• Property details — guest house name, town or city, number of rooms let, approximate nightly rate, star grading, and TGCSA grading status
• Listing information — links to your listings on booking platforms, your Google Business profile or your own website
• Operational details — the booking or property-management system and channel manager you use
• Free-text responses — anything you tell us about what is holding your bookings back

2.2 Information collected automatically

• Technical information — IP address, browser type, device type and operating system
• Usage information — pages visited, time on site, and referring URL
• Tracking identifiers — UTM parameters, Google Click ID (GCLID), Facebook Click ID (FBCLID), and cookies used for analytics and advertising attribution

2.3 Information from publicly available sources

Where you supply a listing URL, we may review the publicly visible content of that listing — photographs, description, amenities, guest reviews and displayed rates — in order to prepare your assessment or audit. We access only what any member of the public can see.

2.4 WhatsApp messages you send us

When you message our WhatsApp number, we store the conversation so that we can answer you properly and pick up where we left off next time. That includes:

• Message content — the text of what you send us and what we send you
• Voice notes — the audio file, and a written transcript of it. We use a third-party transcription service (OpenAI) to turn speech into text, because we cannot listen to voice notes any other way
• Photographs, documents and other files you choose to send us
• Delivery information — your WhatsApp number, and whether a message was delivered and read

Replies on WhatsApp are produced by an automated assistant working from your record. A member of our team can take over at any point, and will if you ask for a person.

We review our own WhatsApp conversations to check the assistant is answering accurately and to improve how it works. This is our own review of our own conversations; we do not sell them, and we do not share them for anyone else’s marketing. If you would rather your conversation was excluded from that review, email info@ghasa.org.za and we will exclude it.

Never send card numbers, PINs or one-time passcodes on WhatsApp. We will never ask for them there. If you send them by accident, tell us and we will delete the message.

3. How we use your information

• Delivering the Booking Opportunity Assessment and any audit or programme you purchase
• Sending you your assessment results and related follow-up
• Communicating with you by email and WhatsApp about your membership, the community, workshops and training
• Operating the member referral network, where you have chosen to take part
• Negotiating and administering supplier discounts on behalf of members
• Processing payments and issuing invoices
• Complying with legal, regulatory, tax and accounting obligations under South African law
• Improving our services, website and marketing, using aggregated and non-identifying data wherever possible

4. Legal basis for processing

We process your personal information under one or more of the lawful bases set out in POPIA:

• Consent — where you have explicitly agreed, for example by ticking a consent box on one of our forms
• Contract — where processing is necessary to conclude or perform a contract with you
• Legal obligation — where processing is required by South African law
• Legitimate interest — where processing is necessary for our legitimate business interests and does not override your rights

5. Who we share your information with

GHASA does not sell your personal information. We share it only in the circumstances below.

5.1 The member referral network

A central purpose of GHASA is enabling members to refer guests to one another. Where you have joined the network and consented, we may make your guest house name, town, province and contact details visible to other members so that they can refer guests to you, and you to them.

You may withdraw from the referral network at any time without leaving GHASA.

5.2 Supplier partners

Where you have consented, we may share your business contact details with vetted hospitality suppliers so that they can extend member pricing to you.

5.3 Service providers

We use third-party software to run our business. Each processes personal information on our behalf:

• Zoho Corporation — CRM, email, surveys, analytics, project management and website hosting
• Google — Tag Manager, Analytics and advertising
• Meta Platforms — advertising and the Meta Pixel
• Cloudflare — form processing and bot protection (Turnstile)
• WhatsApp Business — messaging, where you have opted in
• PriceLabs — listing analysis, where you have purchased an audit

5.4 Artificial intelligence and automated processing

We use AI-assisted tools to score assessments, analyse listings and help draft responses to your enquiries. These tools support our team; they do not make final decisions about your membership or pricing, and a person reviews any material recommendation before it reaches you.

Your assessment result is generated from the answers you supply. It is directional and not diagnostic, and it is not an official grading of any kind.

5.5 Legal disclosures

We may disclose personal information where required by law, court order, or a lawful request from a regulator or law-enforcement authority.

6. Cookies and tracking

Our website uses cookies and similar technologies for analytics, advertising attribution and site improvement, deployed through Google Tag Manager. These include Google Analytics, Zoho PageSense and the Meta Pixel.

You can refuse or delete cookies through your browser settings. Doing so may affect how parts of the site work.

7. Consent to electronic communications

Where you have opted in, we may contact you by email and WhatsApp with your results, community updates, workshop invitations and information about our services.

You may unsubscribe at any time using the link in any email, by replying STOP to a WhatsApp message, or by emailing info@ghasa.org.za.

8. How long we keep your information

• Assessment responses — five years, so that we can measure how the industry changes over time
• Member records — for the duration of membership and five years thereafter
• Financial records — five years, as required by South African tax law
• Marketing contacts — until you unsubscribe, and then only what is needed to honour that request
• WhatsApp conversations — kept while you are in contact with us, and until you ask us to delete them
• Voice notes, photographs and files sent on WhatsApp — kept with the conversation they belong to, and deleted when the conversation is deleted

9. Security

We apply reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal information, including encrypted transmission, access controls, and restricting access to those who need it. No system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

10. Your rights under POPIA

You have the right to:

• Ask what personal information we hold about you
• Request correction or deletion of inaccurate or irrelevant information
• Object to processing based on legitimate interest
• Withdraw consent at any time, without affecting processing already carried out
• Withdraw from the referral network while remaining a member
• Complain to the Information Regulator

To exercise any of these, email info@ghasa.org.za. We respond within 30 days.

10.1 How to ask us to delete your information

You can ask us to delete the personal information we hold about you at any time. There is no form to fill in.

• By email — send “Delete my information” to info@ghasa.org.za from the address you gave us, or tell us which address and WhatsApp number to look up
• On WhatsApp — message +27 73 942 6137 and ask us to delete your information

Tell us whether you want everything deleted, or only part of it — for example your WhatsApp conversation but not your membership record.

We respond within 30 days. We will confirm in writing what was deleted.

What we may have to keep. South African tax law requires us to keep financial records for five years, so if you have paid us for anything we must keep the invoice and payment record even after deleting the rest. We will tell you if this applies to you.

To stop WhatsApp messages without deleting anything, reply STOP to any message from us.

Information Regulator (South Africa)
inforegulator.org.za
complaints.IR@justice.gov.za

11. Cross-border transfers

Some of our service providers process data outside South Africa — Zoho, Google, Meta and Cloudflare all operate international infrastructure. Where information is transferred abroad, we rely on the recipient being subject to laws or binding agreements that provide an adequate level of protection, as required by section 72 of POPIA.

12. Children

Our services are intended for business owners and operators. We do not knowingly collect the personal information of children under 18. If you believe we have, contact us and we will delete it.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The effective date at the top of the page shows when it was last revised. Material changes will be communicated to members directly.

14. Contact us