Privacy, for us, is a question of restraint as much as compliance. We collect what is necessary to deliver a private ski school properly, we keep it in a small number of secure tools, and we share it with no one outside our team. The pages that follow set down the framework in detail.
Section 1The data controller.
The entity responsible for the processing of your personal data — the data controller, in the language of the GDPR — is Snowtailors, the private ski school operating in Val Thorens and across the 3 Valleys. Any question about this policy, any access request, any complaint, can be directed to snowtailors@gmail.com or by post to our head office, the address of which is published on our legal mentions page. The founder, Antoine Sangouard, oversees data protection personally; we do not employ an external Data Protection Officer.
Section 2What we collect.
From the booking form, by email or by WhatsApp, we collect the following: your full name; your email address; your phone number; the name of the hotel, chalet or address where you will be staying; the names and ages of every member of your group; the languages each skier prefers to be taught in; the broad ski level of each skier (beginner, intermediate, advanced or expert); and any specific request you choose to share — a particular instructor, a desired meeting point, a dietary note for a mountain lunch.
We do not collect financial information directly. Card details, where you choose to pay by Stripe Payment Link, are entered on Stripe's own page and never traverse our systems. We do not collect tracking identifiers, fingerprints or behavioural profiles. We do not buy data from third parties.
Section 3Why we collect it.
We collect the data above for three distinct purposes. The first is the obvious one — to organise the ski lessons, assign the right instructor, prepare the right meeting point, and send you a clear quote. The second is to remember you, season after season; the discreet pleasure of being skied by an instructor who already knows the family is, in our view, what distinguishes a private ski school from a booking platform. We refer to that internally as the guest dossier.
The third is editorial. If, and only if, you have given explicit consent during the booking conversation, we add your email address to the list of guests who receive our seasonal letter, the Powder Notes. That list is held separately from booking data, can be unsubscribed in one click, and is never shared.
Section 4The legal basis.
Each of the three purposes above rests on a distinct legal basis under article 6 of the GDPR. The organisation of the lessons themselves rests on the performance of the booking contract — without these details we cannot deliver the service. The guest dossier rests on our legitimate interest in running a continuous, relationship-based ski school, an interest balanced against your right to ask for the dossier to be deleted at any time. The newsletter rests on your explicit, freely given consent, recorded with a date stamp, and revocable at any moment.
Section 5Who has access.
Within Snowtailors, access to your file is restricted to the instructors involved in your stay and to Antoine Sangouard, who oversees the booking system. No commercial partner — no hotel, chalet, transfer company, lift operator or restaurant — is given a copy of your booking record. Where such a partner needs to know that a guest will arrive, only the strict minimum (a name, a meeting time) is shared, by phone or email, on the day.
The cleaning of equipment, the kit hire, the helicopter coordination — all the concierge services around the lesson — are handled by us as the single point of contact. Suppliers receive a request, never a dossier.
Section 6International transfers.
Snowtailors uses a small number of cloud-based tools to run its business. Email is hosted by Google (Workspace, EEA region); cloud storage of working documents by the same provider; payments by Stripe (EU legal entity, Stripe Payments Europe Ltd., Dublin); the website by a European hosting provider listed on our legal mentions page. Data is held within the European Economic Area whenever the supplier offers it, and where a transfer to a third country is involved (rarely), it is governed by the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
Section 7How long we keep it.
Booking records — invoices, contracts, payment confirmations — are kept for five (5) calendar years from the end of the season concerned, in line with the French Code de Commerce and the standard tax-audit retention period. Beyond that period, we keep an anonymised summary of the season for our own analytics (number of lessons, geographies, levels) but the personal identifiers are deleted.
The guest dossier — the part that lets us pick up where we left off next winter — is kept for as long as you remain a returning client. If you ask us to delete it, in writing, by email or in person, we do so within thirty (30) days. We confirm the deletion in writing.
Section 8Your rights.
Under the GDPR you hold, with respect to your personal data, the following rights:
- Access — to receive a copy of the data we hold about you.
- Rectification — to correct any record that has become inaccurate.
- Erasure — the so-called right to be forgotten, subject to the tax-audit retention period above.
- Portability — to receive your data in a machine-readable format and have it sent to another controller.
- Objection — to object to any processing based on our legitimate interest, including the guest dossier.
- Restriction — to ask that processing be paused while a question or complaint is being examined.
Section 9How to exercise them.
Any of these rights can be exercised by writing to snowtailors@gmail.com with a brief description of the request. We answer within thirty (30) days, in the language of your choice (English, French, Russian or Spanish). For an access or portability request, we will ask you to confirm your identity by replying from the email address used for the booking; this is to prevent third parties from impersonating you.
Section 10Cookies & analytics.
This website uses a minimal set of functional cookies and a single privacy-respecting analytics tool. The full breakdown is published on our cookies page.
Section 11Complaints & the regulator.
Should you remain unsatisfied with the way we handle a request, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), the French data protection regulator, at 3 place de Fontenoy, 75007 Paris, or online at cnil.fr. We would be grateful for the opportunity to address the matter ourselves first, but the right is yours to exercise as you see fit.
Section 12Updates to this policy.
This policy is dated May 2026 and replaces all earlier versions. Any material change — to the suppliers involved, to retention periods or to the legal basis of processing — will be notified by email to every guest with an active booking, and reflected here at least thirty (30) days before it takes effect. The present version is binding from the date of publication.
Snowtailors — Val Thorens · May 2026