Rules: ranking, advertising and privacy

How we rank results

1. The list is ordered by drive time by car alone, from the place you enter (or your location) to the spa. This applies to the whole list below the ad block. Filters (country, swimwear or naturism, maximum hours of driving) only narrow the results and never change the order. You can switch the order to longest drive first or to alphabetical.
2. Paid placements. Spa operators can buy a one-year advertisement. Such a spa appears in a separate “Ads” block above the results, even if it is further away than other spas, but only to visitors whose place is within the range the advertiser bought (for example up to two, four or eight hours of driving, or no limit). So payment decides what is shown above the list. It does not change the order of the other spas.
3. Order inside the ad block rotates: every time the page loads the partners are shuffled and at most three are shown. The block respects the country and swimwear filters you choose, but not the “maximum hours” slider, because it is advertising with a paid range. Until you enter a place, only a partner that bought an unlimited range is shown.
4. Labelling. Every paid spa carries the label “Partner · ad” in the ad block, on its card in the list and on its profile. A paid spa also keeps its natural place in the list, by drive time.
5. What does not influence the order: ratings, popularity, number of photos, size of the profile or booking commissions. A paid profile has more information, but this is not counted in the list order.
6. Editorial notes on pros and cons are written by us. Partners do not approve them and payment does not change them.
7. Drive times are estimates (passenger car, no live traffic). If the routing server does not answer, we use an estimate based on straight-line distance and put a tilde “~” before the time.

Advertising terms (for businesses)

These are the terms an advertiser receives before an agreement is made. The service is for businesses only (the “advertiser”).

1. Operator is named below under Operator.
2. Subject. For one year, display of (a) a partner profile, an extended spa page with description, gallery, price list and booking link, and (b) a highlighted placement in the “Ads” block above the results, shown to visitors whose place lies within the range stated in the order.
3. Term. 12 months from the start date in the confirmation, with no automatic renewal. We will contact you at least 30 days before expiry about continuing. Afterwards the profile goes back to its basic form.
4. Price and invoice. The price is agreed in person or by email and confirmed in the order. We invoice the full period with a 14-day due date. The placement starts on payment or on the agreed date. Prices exclude VAT unless stated. Not using the service for reasons on the advertiser’s side gives no right to a refund.
5. Labelling. All paid placements and profiles are marked “Partner · ad” and link to the ranking rules above. The label cannot be removed. Payment changes only what appears in the “Ads” block and does not affect the order of the other spas.
6. No guarantee. We do not guarantee views, clicks, bookings, revenue or a specific position in the ad block. The site uses no analytics and therefore provides no statistics of views or clicks.
7. Content. The advertiser supplies the details and photos and is responsible for their accuracy, completeness and currency (especially prices, facilities and health claims) and for not infringing third-party rights. Photos are licensed as described below.
8. Editorial right. We may refuse, edit, pause or remove content or placement that is misleading, unlawful, unverifiable, infringing or contrary to the site rules. If this happens after payment without the advertiser’s fault, we refund the unused part pro rata.
9. Suspension and termination. We may suspend or end the placement for serious breach, false information or non-payment. We announce changes to these terms by email at least 15 days ahead, and until then the advertiser may end the agreement.
10. Rights. Copyright in photos and texts stays with the advertiser and we get only the licence below. We do not sell the content or pass it to third parties, and it may appear in the English version of the site and in link previews.
11. Contact persons’ personal data: see Privacy below.
12. Complaints go to the email address under Operator and we reply within 14 days.
13. Law. Czech law applies and disputes go to the court competent for the operator’s seat. Liability is limited to the price of the advertisement, except for intent and gross negligence.

Photos

We use photos sent through the form and in partner profiles on the basis of the declaration the operator confirms when sending: that they are authorised to act for the operator of the spa, that they hold all rights to the photos (they are the author or the author has permitted their use) and that no identifiable people appear in them, or they have their consent. The operator grants us a free, non-exclusive licence to display the photos on spa.markets (all language versions and link previews), including technical edits (resizing, cropping, compression) and sublicensing to hosting providers, for as long as the spa is shown and 30 days afterwards.

The licence can be withdrawn at any time by email and we remove the photos within 14 days. For a paid profile that means it is shown without the operator’s photos, with no refund. We do not sell the photos or use them for other purposes, and the copyright stays with the operator. The sources and terms of older photos are in the list of sources in the footer of the home page.

Privacy

Visitors

The site uses no cookies and no analytics. Your browser remembers the light or dark theme, the place you entered last (not your GPS position) and route times for 14 days so you do not have to look them up again. For offline use it also keeps the pages and photos you have opened. The place you enter is stored only in your browser, but to find coordinates and routes we send it to other services. A public routing server receives the coordinates, Open-Meteo the city name you search for, and OpenStreetMap Nominatim an address you search for. When you open the map, a library is loaded from unpkg and tiles from OpenFreeMap. Each of these services sees your IP address. We use no cookies and no analytics. Only your own browser remembers your last place and computed routes, and it never stores GPS positions.

Operators who write to us

• Controller: the operator of spa.markets (identified in the rules).
• What we store: name, email, phone, details of the spa, message and photos from the form. We also store the browser type and the time of sending. From the IP address we keep only a one-way hash that protects the form from abuse and delete it after two days.
• Why and on what basis: to reply, to list or correct the spa and, where relevant, to agree advertising. The basis is taking steps at your request before an agreement and our legitimate interest in handling the request and keeping records. We do not ask for consent to the processing.
• Who receives it: only our hosting and storage provider Cloudflare. We pass it to nobody else and we do not sell it.
• How long: a request without an agreement 12 months from the last contact, photos of a rejected request within 30 days, an advertising agreement for its term plus 3 years, accounting documents for the period required by law.
• Your rights: access, rectification, erasure, restriction and objection. You can complain to the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection. The details in the form are necessary to handle the request. Write to the address under Operator.

Operator