This page explains what data we receive when you use the-selection.com or correspond with our team, what it is used for, who has access to it, how long we keep it and how to exercise your rights. It also details the cookies and storage used by the site.
The website the-selection.com is published by The Selection, a single-shareholder simplified joint-stock company (SASU) whose registered office is at 50 avenue des Champs-Élysées, 75008 Paris, France.
The Selection is the data controller for the personal data described on this page. Its President is Shady Benelmekki.
For any question about your data: contact@the-selection.com
This policy applies to the site, in all its languages, and to the exchanges you have with our team by email, WhatsApp or telephone about our services: villa and chalet rentals, concierge services, assistance with property purchases and The Selection Privée.
It concerns visitors to the site, travellers, newsletter subscribers and owners who offer us their homes.
It has been drawn up in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, European Regulation 2016/679) and the French Data Protection Act (Loi Informatique et Libertés) of 6 January 1978.
The site does not ask you to create an account and no payment is made on it: we never record your bank card details. We receive only the information you choose to send us, along with some technical information related to your visit.
Contact form: your name (optional), your email address or WhatsApp number, and your message.
Villa pre-booking: the chosen villa, your arrival and departure dates, the number of travellers, your name, your email address, your telephone number and, if you wish, a message. We also receive the price estimate shown on screen.
Concierge service request: a description of your request and your email address or WhatsApp number.
Online concierge: your answers (destination, dates, travellers, budget, wishes), the messages you write and, if you would like us to get back to you, your name and your email address or WhatsApp number.
Owners: your project (renting, selling or both), your name, your email address or WhatsApp number, the destination, the town or neighbourhood, the number of bedrooms and the description of your home, together with any links you add to it.
Newsletter: your email address, the language of the site and your country, deduced from your IP address.
Payment and security deposit: payment for a confirmed stay is made via the payment link that our team sends you (card, bank transfer or cryptocurrency). To keep track of your payment, we then receive the payer's name, the amount, the date, the payment method and the reference. Your card details, including the card pre-authorisation for the security deposit, are processed by the bank or payment service that issues the link.
A cryptocurrency payment is recorded on a public ledger (blockchain), from which it cannot be erased.
WhatsApp and email: your contact details and the content of your messages. WhatsApp messages prepared by the site (from your favourites, or if a form fails to send) contain the information you have entered; you review them before sending them.
Information attached to your requests: the language and currency displayed, the page from which you are writing, the source of your visit (search engine, social network, artificial intelligence assistant, campaign or referring site), the last pages viewed and, where applicable, the code of the referral link through which you arrived on the site. This information helps our team understand what you are looking for.
Technical information: your IP address, which is used to protect the forms against abuse and to deduce your country. This country is used to choose the language and currency displayed; it also appears in your requests and in your newsletter subscription.
Certain information is required to process your request: a means of replying to you (email or WhatsApp) and your message for a contact request; your name, email address and telephone number for a pre-booking. Without it, we are unable to follow up on your request. All other information is optional.
The “Estimate your property” tool on the Owners page performs its calculation directly on your device: nothing is sent to us until you fill in the form.
The villa presentation links that our team sends you contain neither your name nor any personal code.
We do not ask you for any sensitive data (health, religion, opinions…). If you choose to share such data with us, for example an allergy to be reported to the private chef, we use it only with your explicit consent, to arrange the service requested, and pass it on only to the service provider concerned. You may withdraw this consent at any time.
If you send us information about other people, such as the travellers accompanying you, please inform them beforehand.
Each use is based on one of the legal bases provided for by the GDPR:
Responding to your requests and advising you: contact, concierge services, online concierge, The Selection Privée, with an acknowledgement email that sets out your request and its reference. Basis: pre-contractual measures taken at your request and, for general questions, our legitimate interest in responding to you.
Processing your pre-booking: checking availability with the villa's owner or manager, confirming your stay, sending you the payment link and then preparing your stay. Basis: pre-contractual measures, then performance of the contract.
Tracking your payment and the security deposit: checking that your payment has been received and tracking the card pre-authorisation for the security deposit. Basis: performance of the contract.
Keeping track of our exchanges: keeping your requests and, where applicable, adding your email address to our list of client and prospect contacts, so that we can reply to you without asking you for everything again. Basis: our legitimate interest.
Sending you the newsletter: only if you have subscribed to it. Basis: your consent, which you may withdraw at any time using the unsubscribe link included in every email.
Measuring our audience with Google Analytics: finding out which pages and villas interest our visitors, and where they come from. Basis: your consent, given by clicking “Accept” on the cookie banner.
Running the site and counting visits: remembering your choices (language, currency, favourites, search dates) and counting visits anonymously, without cookies. Basis: our legitimate interest.
Understanding how you found us: the source of your visit, the pages viewed and, where applicable, the referral link, attached to your requests. Basis: our legitimate interest in responding to you better.
Protecting the site: limiting the number of submissions per IP address and filtering out automated submissions. Basis: our legitimate interest in ensuring the security of the site.
Reviewing homes put forward by their owners: assessing the property, arranging a viewing, then presenting it to our clients. Basis: pre-contractual measures, then performance of the agreement concluded with the owner.
Complying with our legal obligations: keeping our accounts and responding to requests from the authorities. Basis: legal obligation.
Defending our rights: in the event of a complaint or dispute. Basis: our legitimate interest.
No decision producing legal effects concerning you is taken in a fully automated manner: every booking is checked and confirmed by our team.
The “Concierge” button helps you find a villa in just a few questions. When you type freely, the answers are written by an artificial intelligence: Claude, developed by the company Anthropic.
To reply to you, we send Anthropic the latest messages in the conversation, today's date, the language and the page you are viewing, as well as the criteria you have already given (destination, dates, travellers, budget, wishes).
Any information written in the conversation, including a name, an email address or a telephone number, is therefore transmitted to Anthropic. Your IP address, the source of your visit and the pages you have viewed are not transmitted to it.
The concierge only suggests villas presented on the site and never confirms a booking: this is always handled by our team.
If you would like us to get back to you, the concierge sends our team, by email, a file containing your contact details, your criteria, the villas suggested, a summary written by the artificial intelligence, the end of the conversation, the source of your visit and the pages viewed.
When the artificial intelligence is not available, the concierge works with buttons, without AI: your answers are then sent to us only if you leave your contact details.
Please do not include any sensitive information in the conversation: health, bank details, identity documents…
Basis: pre-contractual measures taken at your request and our legitimate interest in offering you immediate initial advice.
Your data is read by the members of our team who need it to process your request.
For a pre-booking or a request concerning a specific property, we send the owner, manager or agency that manages the villa the information needed to check availability and prepare your stay. Where they conclude the rental contract with you themselves, they use this information under their own responsibility.
If you entrust us with a concierge service (chef, chauffeur, transport, wellness…), the service provider concerned receives only the information relevant to that service.
The bank or payment service that issues the payment link receives the information needed for the payment of your stay and for the security deposit.
Our technical service providers process certain data on our behalf and in accordance with our instructions:
When you write to us via WhatsApp, your messages are also processed by WhatsApp, in accordance with its own privacy policy.
Finally, we may disclose data to administrative or judicial authorities when required to do so by law.
Your data is never sold or rented out, and is never used for targeted advertising.
Some of our service providers are based in the United States, including Vercel, Cloudflare, Anthropic, Google and GitHub. The site functions that process your forms currently run on Vercel servers located in the United States.
These transfers are governed by the safeguards provided for by the GDPR: the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider participates in it, or the European Union's standard contractual clauses. You can obtain a copy of these safeguards by writing to us at contact@the-selection.com.
When the villa is located outside the European Union, for example in Saint-Barthélemy or Switzerland, the information relevant to your stay is transmitted to the owner or manager on site: this transfer is necessary to follow up on your request.
Switzerland is recognised by the European Union as providing an adequate level of data protection.
Each category of data has its own retention period, set according to the purpose for which it is used:
At the end of these periods, your data is deleted or transformed so that it can no longer be used to identify you. An ongoing dispute is an exception: the relevant information is then kept until the dispute is resolved.
We protect your data with appropriate technical and organisational measures:
We will never ask you for your bank card numbers by email or by message.
If you receive a suspicious message that appears to come from us, or if you discover a vulnerability on the site, write to us immediately at contact@the-selection.com: such reports are dealt with as a priority.
In the event of a data breach presenting a risk to you, we will inform the CNIL and, where required by law, the persons concerned.
You have the following rights over your data at any time:
Write to us at contact@the-selection.com, specifying your request and the email address or telephone number you have used with us.
To unsubscribe from the newsletter, use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email.
We will reply as soon as possible, and at the latest within one month. For a complex request, this period may be extended by two months; we will inform you if this is the case.
If there is reasonable doubt as to the identity of the person making a request, we may ask them for proof of identity: this ensures that your data is released only to you.
Exercising your rights is free of charge.
If you believe that your rights are not being respected, you may at any time lodge a complaint with the CNIL, the French data protection authority (cnil.fr), or with the data protection authority of your country of residence in the European Union.
Vercel Web Analytics: counts, without cookies, visits and certain actions (villa viewed, concierge opened, request sent with its estimated amount, favourite added…). To distinguish between visits, Vercel briefly uses your IP address and browser, without storing them permanently; we receive only aggregate statistics. This tool works whether or not you accept cookies.
Google Analytics: only if you have accepted it (see section 11); before you give your consent, nothing is sent to Google. If you accept, the actions taken on the current page just before your click are then transmitted.
Google Analytics tells us in particular which pages and villas are viewed, where visits come from, clicks to WhatsApp, email or telephone, use of the concierge and favourites, newsletter sign-ups and requests sent, together with the estimated amount of a pre-booking.
These measurements contain neither your name, nor your email address, nor your telephone number. The site asks Google not to use your visits for advertising or to personalise ads.
Emails: our emails may contain a pixel and tracking links, which tell us whether they have been opened and which links have been clicked. You can object to this at any time by writing to us, or block images from being displayed in your email client.
To display certain pages, your browser connects directly to external services. As with any Internet connection, they then receive your IP address and technical information about your browser:
We do not pass on to them any information from your forms. These connections are based on our legitimate interest in displaying the site correctly.
The links to Instagram, LinkedIn or WhatsApp are simple links: no plug-in from these networks is embedded in the pages. By following them, you leave the site and the privacy policy of the service concerned applies.
Our services are intended for adults: to make a booking, you must be of legal age, as provided for in the general booking terms.
A minor under the age of 15 may not subscribe to the newsletter or send us personal data without a parent's consent.
If you believe that a minor has sent us information, please write to us: we will delete it.
This policy evolves with the site: we update it when we add a service or a service provider, or when regulations change.
Each new version replaces the previous one as soon as it is published online; the date of the last update appears at the top of this page.
Our team is at your disposal for any questions about this policy or about your data.