Privacy Policy

STRatus Stays LLC (“STRatus Stays”, “we”, “us”) is a short-term rental management company based in Houston, Texas. We run this portal for the property owners we work with, the cleaners and tradespeople who do the work, and the guests who book directly with us.

Questions about this policy, or about the data we hold on you, go to info@stratus-stays.com.

This policy applies to four groups of people:

• Property owners whose homes STRatus Stays manages, and who sign in to the owner portal.
• Vendors and crew — cleaners, handymen and other trades who sign up to take work from us.
• Guests who book directly with STRatus Stays rather than through a channel. A guest who books through Airbnb or Vrbo is covered by that channel’s policy for the booking itself; what reaches us is covered here.
• Prospects — owners and tradespeople who contact us, or whose details we were given, before any account exists.

From owners: your name, email address and phone number; your property address and the details of the home; your booking and revenue history as the channels report it; the expenses and statements we produce; your bank details for payouts and your authorization to debit fees, both held at Stripe and never stored by us; your taxpayer identification number where you give us a W-9; and messages you send us through the portal.

From vendors and crew: your name, business name, email address, phone number, the city and ZIP you work in, the trades you do, your preferred language, your insurance answer and certificate where you upload one, the agreement you signed and when, your bank details at Stripe for payment, photographs you take of the work, your checklist answers, and your mobile number and SMS consent where you give it.

From direct-booking guests: your name, email address, phone number, the dates and property you booked, and your payment, which is handled by Stripe.

From prospects: whatever you told us or whoever referred you told us — usually a name, an email address, a phone number and the property concerned.

Automatically: a session cookie that keeps you signed in, and ordinary server logs — IP address, browser, the pages requested and when. We record the IP address at the moment somebody signs an agreement or authorizes a payment, because that is part of the record of their having done so.

We collect your mobile phone number and your SMS opt-in consent, with a timestamp, when you check the text-message consent box. We use this to send transactional messages about your jobs or your property. We do not sell or share your SMS opt-in data or personal information with third parties for marketing purposes. You can opt out at any time by replying STOP.

To run the service: scheduling cleans and maintenance, telling a cleaner where to be and what the home needs, producing owner statements, collecting our management fee, paying vendors, handling direct bookings, and answering you when you write to us.

We send transactional email about the things you asked us to do — a statement is ready, a job is booked, a payment went through. We do not send marketing email to owners or crew about anything other than our own service, and every email carries an unsubscribe link.

Service providers who process data on our behalf, and nobody else. Each is used for one job:

• Stripe — payments. Owner bank authorizations, fee collection, vendor payouts and guest card payments. Bank and card details go to Stripe and are never stored on our systems; we hold an identifier and the last four digits.
• Mailgun — sending email, and telling us whether it arrived.
• Twilio — text messages, where you have opted in.
• Hospitable — the channel manager that brings bookings, calendars and guest details in from Airbnb, Vrbo and the rest.
• Amazon Web Services — file storage. Photographs cleaners upload, receipts and statement workbooks are held in Amazon S3.
• Apify — reading a public listing page when an owner asks us to import their listing details.
• Google Maps — showing a cleaner where a job is. The crew screens display a small map of the property, which loads from Google when the page opens, and link to the full map for directions. Google receives the property address and the viewing device’s IP address in both cases.

We also disclose information where the law requires it, and to our professional advisers under a duty of confidence.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it with third parties for their own marketing. We do not share your SMS opt-in or your phone number with anybody for marketing purposes.

Account, booking, statement and payment records are kept for as long as you have an account with us and for seven years afterwards, because they are financial records and tax records. Photographs of jobs are kept for two years. Server logs are kept for ninety days. Where you ask us to delete something we are not required to keep, we delete it.

Connections are encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored hashed and are never readable by us. Bank and card details live at Stripe rather than here. Taxpayer identification numbers are encrypted and displayed only as their last four digits, including to our own staff. Access to the admin side of this portal is limited to STRatus Stays staff.

You can see and correct most of what we hold from inside the portal — your profile, your phone number, your property details. For anything else, or to ask for a copy or a deletion, write to info@stratus-stays.com and we will answer within thirty days.

Every email we send carries an unsubscribe link, which stops non-essential email immediately. Text messages stop when you reply STOP, or when you clear the text-message box in your settings. Transactional email about money and about work you have agreed to do will continue while you have an account, because it is how the service works.

This service is for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anybody under 18, and we delete it if we find we have.

If we change this policy we will change the date at the top and, where the change matters to you, tell you by email. Continuing to use the portal after a change means you accept it.

STRatus Stays LLC, Houston, Texas. info@stratus-stays.com. See also our Terms of Service and our cookie notice.