Effective Date: 18 March 2026
This Privacy Policy explains how Ranked By Roch Ltd collects, uses, stores, and shares your personal data in connection with Rochdog and its services. Please read it carefully. By using Rochdog, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this policy.
The data controller for personal data collected through Rochdog is Ranked By Roch Ltd, Company Registration No. 16104091, registered in England & Wales. Our registered address is College House (2nd Floor), 17 King Edwards Road, Ruislip, London HA4 7AE, United Kingdom. You can reach us by email at info@rochdog.com or by telephone at +44 1992 364007.
Rochdog is a globally available service. This policy is drafted under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. Where we process the personal data of individuals located in the European Economic Area (EEA), we also comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR, Regulation 2016/679). References to "GDPR" in this policy apply to both the UK GDPR and EU GDPR as applicable. If we are required to appoint an EU representative under Article 27 of the EU GDPR, details will be published on this page.
When you create an account or register with Rochdog, we collect your name, email address, and password. Your password is stored in hashed form and is never held in plain text. We may also collect any additional profile information you choose to provide during or after registration.
Rochdog is a service built around dogs and their owners. You may provide information about your pet or pets, including name, breed, age, weight, dietary needs, and health notes. This information is used solely to deliver the service to you and is not shared with third parties for commercial purposes.
We automatically collect certain technical data when you use Rochdog, including your IP address, browser type and version, device type and operating system, pages visited, features used, session duration, referral source, and timestamps of access. This data is collected to operate, secure, and improve the service.
If you contact us directly, for example by email at info@rochdog.com, we collect the personal data contained in your message, including your name and email address, solely to respond to your enquiry.
If Rochdog involves paid features or subscriptions, payment data is handled by our third-party payment processor. We do not store full card details. We may retain transaction records including the amount, date, and reference for accounting and legal purposes.
Rochdog operates a hotel rating and certification service. As part of this service, we systematically collect, verify, and analyse publicly available information about hotels and accommodation providers worldwide. This includes pet policies, fees, restrictions, and terms published on hotel websites, booking platforms, and travel directories. It also includes facility descriptions, amenities, services, room types, publicly listed business contact details such as reception desks, reservations departments, and general business email addresses, pricing and fee structures as publicly advertised, media coverage, awards, and publicly stated claims about pet-friendliness, and any other information that a hotel has made publicly available to the general public.
This data is collected from open, publicly accessible sources. We access this information in the same manner as any member of the public, through published websites, public directories, and openly available booking platforms. No login credentials, paywalls, or private systems are bypassed or accessed without authorisation.
This activity does not require prior permission from any hotel or accommodation provider. Hotels publish this information for the express purpose of public consumption. We do not require, and do not seek, the consent or cooperation of any hotel to collect, analyse, score, rank, or publish assessments based on their publicly available information. This is consistent with the longstanding practice of rating agencies, consumer guides, journalists, and editorial review services.
Our dataset, scores, and rankings are our proprietary intellectual property. The selection, aggregation, verification, weighting, scoring methodology, and presentation of this data constitute original work product owned exclusively by Ranked By Roch Ltd. Our compiled dataset is protected under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Database Right provisions of the Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997. Unauthorised reproduction, extraction, or re-utilisation of a substantial part of our dataset is prohibited.
Our ratings and rankings are editorial opinion. Rochdog scores, ranks, grades, and certifications represent our independent editorial assessment based on objective criteria applied consistently. They are expressions of opinion, not statements of fact. Hotels have no right to demand alteration, removal, or suppression of their rating.
Where publicly available hotel information includes the names or direct contact details of identifiable individuals such as named staff members, that data is personal data under UK GDPR. We process such data under legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)), specifically the public interest in transparent rating and accountability of consumer-facing businesses. We limit collection of individual personal data to what is necessary for verification and contact purposes. Any identifiable individual whose personal data we hold may exercise their rights under Section 10 of this policy.
We use proprietary automated systems, including AI-powered verification agents, to collect and cross-reference publicly available hotel data at intervals. These systems assess businesses and their publicly stated policies. They do not make decisions about natural persons, do not profile individuals, and do not produce legal or similarly significant effects on any natural person. Any outputs including scores, grades, and rankings relate exclusively to commercial accommodation providers as business entities.
We rely on the following lawful bases under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018:
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have conducted a legitimate interests assessment. Our interests are both commercial, in that we operate an independent rating service, and in the public interest, in that we provide consumer transparency in a market where "pet-friendly" claims are frequently unverified. The data we process for these purposes relates predominantly to businesses, not individuals. Where incidental personal data is involved, the impact on individuals is minimal, the data is already publicly available, and there is a reasonable expectation that publicly listed business information may be collected and published by editorial and rating services. We are satisfied that these interests do not override the fundamental rights and freedoms of data subjects.
We use your data to create and manage your account, deliver the Rochdog service and its features, process payments and maintain records, send transactional communications such as account confirmations and service updates, send marketing communications where you have opted in, improve and develop the service, detect, investigate, and prevent fraud, abuse, or security incidents, and comply with applicable legal obligations.
We will only send you marketing communications if you have opted in. You may withdraw your consent at any time by clicking "unsubscribe" in any marketing email or by contacting us at info@rochdog.com. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing that occurred before withdrawal.
We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal data to third parties. Data may be shared with certain categories of recipient where necessary to provide the service.
We use hosting and infrastructure providers, including cloud platforms, CDN providers, and database services, that process data on our behalf under appropriate data processing agreements. Payment processors handle transactions securely on our behalf. We use Plausible Analytics for website traffic analysis, a privacy-focused, cookieless analytics service that does not collect personal data, does not use cookies, and does not track individuals across sites. All analytics data is aggregated and no personal data is transmitted to Plausible. Plausible is hosted in the EU and is fully compliant with UK GDPR, PECR, and ePrivacy requirements without requiring cookie consent. Email delivery providers send transactional and marketing communications on our behalf. Professional advisers including legal, financial, and technical advisers may receive data under appropriate confidentiality obligations. We may also disclose data to law enforcement or regulatory authorities where required by law, court order, or to protect legal rights.
All third-party processors are required to handle your data securely and only for specified purposes.
Rochdog uses minimal cookies. We do not use analytics cookies or tracking cookies of any kind. Essential cookies are required for the service to function, covering session management and authentication. These are strictly necessary and cannot be disabled without affecting service functionality. Preference cookies are used to remember your settings and preferences, and are set only when you actively configure a preference.
We do not use a cookie consent banner because we do not set any cookies that require consent under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR). Our analytics provider, Plausible Analytics, is entirely cookieless and does not track individual users. You can manage or delete cookies at any time through your browser settings.
We review retention periods regularly and delete data that is no longer necessary.
Rochdog may use infrastructure or service providers located outside the United Kingdom. Where your personal data is transferred outside the UK, we ensure it receives equivalent protection through adequacy regulations recognised by the UK Government, or through UK International Data Transfer Agreements (IDTAs) or Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) as adopted under UK law. You may request details of the safeguards in place by contacting us at info@rochdog.com.
You have the right of access (Art. 15) to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you. You have the right to rectification (Art. 16) to request correction of inaccurate or incomplete data. You have the right to erasure (Art. 17) to request deletion of your data where it is no longer necessary, where you withdraw consent, or where processing is unlawful, though some data may be retained where we have a legal obligation to do so. You have the right to restriction of processing (Art. 18) to request that we limit how we use your data in certain circumstances. You have the right to data portability (Art. 20) to receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format where processing is based on consent or contract and carried out by automated means. You have the right to object (Art. 21) to processing based on legitimate interests or for direct marketing purposes; for direct marketing, we will always comply immediately, and for other purposes, we will cease unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds. We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing that produce legal or similarly significant effects (Art. 22).
To exercise any right, contact us at info@rochdog.com. We will respond within one calendar month. In complex cases or where we receive a high volume of requests, we may extend this by a further two months and will inform you accordingly.
We are required to confirm your identity before processing any data subject access request. We may ask you to provide government-issued identification or other reasonable evidence, and we will not release personal data to any person whose identity we cannot verify. Where a request is manifestly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive, we reserve the right to charge a reasonable administrative fee or to refuse the request entirely. We will inform you of our reasons and of your right to complain to the ICO.
If you are not satisfied with how we handle your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF, by telephone at 0303 123 1113, or online at ico.org.uk. We would appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns before you approach the ICO, so please contact us first at info@rochdog.com.
We implement appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect your personal data against unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration, or loss. These include encrypted data transmission via HTTPS, hashed password storage, access controls, and regular security reviews. However, no method of electronic storage or transmission is entirely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
Rochdog is not directed at individuals under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from minors. If you believe a person under 18 has provided data to us, please contact us at info@rochdog.com and we will take prompt steps to delete that information.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by an updated effective date at the top of this page. We will take reasonable steps to notify you of significant changes, for example by email or an in-service notice. Continued use of Rochdog after any change constitutes acknowledgement of the updated policy. We recommend reviewing this page periodically.
For any questions, requests, or concerns relating to this Privacy Policy or our handling of your personal data, contact Ranked By Roch Ltd at College House (2nd Floor), 17 King Edwards Road, Ruislip, London HA4 7AE, United Kingdom, by email at info@rochdog.com, or by telephone at +44 1992 364007.
*Rochdog™ is a trademark of Ranked By Roch Ltd. All rights reserved.*