Cookie Policy

Here is the short version, because most people only want the short version. waldnexo stores a tiny amount of information in your browser: the choice you make on our consent banner, the fact that you confirmed you are over eighteen, an anonymous count that tells us how busy the site is, and — only if you follow a booking link — a short-lived note that the visit started with us. We do not build a profile of you, we do not sell anything stored on your device, and you can clear all of it in seconds. Everything below simply explains those few items in more detail.

The categories of cookie we actually use

Rather than list a wall of cryptic file names, it is more honest to group what we store by the job it does. There are three jobs, and that is the whole list. We have grouped them below from the ones you cannot really avoid to the ones that are entirely optional.

Strictly necessary cookies

These are the few that have to exist for the site to behave correctly, so they are set without asking and cannot be switched off from our side. The most important one is wn_cookies, which simply records the choice you made on the consent banner — whether you accepted the optional categories or declined them. Without it, the banner would have no memory and would reappear on every single page you opened, which would be miserable. A second essential item remembers that you confirmed you are at least eighteen years old on the age gate, so you are not asked again on every visit during the same session. Neither of these tells us who you are; they only let the site remember decisions you have already made.

Analytics and performance cookies

This second group helps us understand how the review index is used, but only at the level of the crowd, never the individual. They let us see roughly how many people read a given resort review, which pages are popular enough to deserve more attention, where readers tend to lose patience and leave, and whether a page loads quickly on a phone in a spa town with patchy signal. The numbers arrive aggregated, so we learn that a hundred people opened a page without learning a single thing about which hundred people they were. We use this purely to make the writing and the layout better. These cookies are optional, and if you decline them on the banner they are never set.

Affiliate and referral cookies

This is the category that actually pays for the site, so it deserves a clear explanation. When you tap a “Check Availability” button on one of our reviews, a short-lived cookie records that your journey to the operator began on waldnexo. If you go on to book within the window that cookie stays valid, the resort credits the referral to us and pays a small fee out of its own marketing budget. The cookie holds no payment details and no personal booking information — it is effectively a note that says “this reader arrived via waldnexo.” You can read the full account of how that arrangement works, and why a commission never moves a review score, on our affiliate disclosure page.

A quick, plain explanation of what a cookie even is

Since we promised not to open with a textbook, here is the version we would actually say out loud. A cookie is a very small text file that a website asks your browser to keep, so that the next page, or the next visit, can recognise a decision you already made — like “yes, I accepted the banner” or “yes, I am old enough.” It is not a program, it cannot run on its own, and it cannot read the rest of your computer. Alongside cookies, modern browsers offer similar storage areas with technical names like local storage; where we lean on those instead of a classic cookie, we treat them under exactly the same rules described on this page.

Cookies that other companies set, not us

Some of the items stored while you use waldnexo do not come from us at all, and we want to be straight about that. There are three sources worth naming:

• Our analytics provider may set its own cookie to count visits in the aggregate way described above. It works on our behalf, under our instructions, and only when you have accepted the analytics category.
• The affiliate networks that sit between us and some operators may set a cookie to confirm a referral and prevent it being double-counted. This only happens at the moment you choose to follow a booking link.
• The operator websites you click through to are entirely their own businesses. Once you land on a resort's official reservation page, that property sets whatever cookies it sets, governed by its own policy and not by ours. We have no control over them and cannot read them.

For the bigger picture of who handles your information and how, please see our privacy policy, which sits alongside this page.

How long any of this sticks around

Cookies come in two lifespans, and it helps to know which is which. A session cookie lives only until you close your browser tab, then vanishes on its own — the age-confirmation memory works this way, so a shared or public machine does not carry your choice into the next person's visit. A persistent cookie stays for a set period so the site can remember you across days. Here is a rough guide to the ones we use:

1. The consent choice, wn_cookies, is persistent and typically lasts up to a year, so we are not nagging you on every visit.
2. The age-confirmation memory is a session item and clears when you close the browser.
3. Analytics cookies are persistent but short, usually measured in days to a small number of months.
4. The affiliate referral cookie is deliberately short-lived — it covers a normal booking window and then expires, which is exactly why an unhurried reader who books much later often earns us nothing at all.

How to control, clear or refuse them

You are in charge of all of this, and there is more than one lever. The simplest is our own consent banner: the first time you arrive you choose whether to allow the optional categories, and you can change your mind later by clearing the wn_cookies choice, which makes the banner return so you can decide again. Beyond our banner, every modern browser lets you take a firmer hand. You can block cookies altogether, allow only the site you are on while refusing third parties, browse in a private window that forgets everything when you close it, or delete what is already stored from the privacy or history settings. The exact menu wording differs between Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge, but the option is always there under privacy.

One honest caveat: if you block the strictly necessary cookies, parts of waldnexo simply stop working smoothly. The consent banner will pop up on every page because it can no longer remember your answer, and the age gate may ask you to confirm your age repeatedly within the same visit. Nothing breaks dangerously — it just becomes a more tiresome site to read. Blocking the optional categories, by contrast, costs you nothing in usability.

Do Not Track and global privacy signals

Some browsers can send a Do Not Track header or a broader global privacy signal that asks sites not to collect optional data. There is, frankly, no single agreed standard for how a site must answer these, and many ignore them entirely. We would rather keep this honest: the meaningful control on waldnexo is the consent banner, and if you decline the analytics and optional categories there, we do not set them — signal or no signal. We are watching how these standards settle and will tighten our handling as they mature.

What blocking the affiliate cookie really costs you

This is the part readers worry about needlessly, so let us put it plainly: refusing or clearing the affiliate cookie costs you absolutely nothing. The nightly rate you are offered is identical either way, and a resort never charges more because a referral was tracked. The only thing that changes is that we may not get credited for sending you, which means a little less income for the desk and not a cent of difference to your bill. If you would rather book a property with no tracking at all, that is always a legitimate choice and we will think no less of you for it.

When this policy changes

If we add a new tool, retire an old one, or change how long something is kept, we update this page and move the date at the top to match. We do not send out announcements for routine wording fixes, so the date is the reliable signal that something here has shifted — it is worth a glance if you are returning after a while. Anything that materially changes what we store, or asks for fresh consent, will be reflected on the banner itself, not buried in this text.

Questions about any of this are genuinely welcome. If something is unclear, or you think we have stored more than we should, write to the editorial office through the contact page and a person will answer. waldnexo is an independent, English-language review index of the world's luxury hotel-and-casino resorts; it is strictly for adults of eighteen and over, and it takes neither bookings nor payments from readers.

This cookie policy forms part of our terms of use and should be read together with our privacy policy. We revise it whenever our use of cookies changes, and the date above always reflects the latest revision.