Terms and privacy

Terms of use

About these terms

• These terms are an agreement between you and Captivate. They apply when you register for or use the platform. If you use it for an organisation, you confirm that you may accept these terms for it, and they apply to the organisation too.
• The platform is for business use by people aged 18 or over.
• Where a written agreement with Captivate covers your use, such as a consulting contract or a plan arranged by invoice, that agreement applies where it differs from these terms.

What the platform is

• An independent database and comparison service for robots and AI equipment used in hotels, restaurants and other hospitality venues. It shows what each product does, who makes it, its specifications and capability figures, prices where they are published, and the distributors and service partners in each country.
• Captivate is not the maker, seller, distributor or installer of any product listed. We do not sell robots, and we are not a party to any purchase, lease or service contract you make.

Accuracy of the information

• Facts come from sources we opened: the maker’s own pages and datasheets first, then authorised distributors, then reputable trade press. Each source is stored with its link and the date it was last checked, and each record shows its sources or says when it has none.
• Manufacturer claims are shown as claims. Each price carries a label that shows what is proven (published by the maker, by an authorised reseller or by another reseller, from a public tender, or an estimate). Prices are shown in the currency you choose (at first, the currency of your browser’s country, otherwise US dollars): a price published in another currency is converted at a dated exchange rate, marked ≈ as approximate, and the seller’s own published price is shown with it. The published figure is the seller’s price.
• Products, prices, specifications and distributor arrangements change, and sources can be wrong. We correct errors when we find them or are told about them, but we do not promise that every figure is complete, current or correct. Always confirm the price, specification, availability, delivery, support and warranty with the seller in writing before you buy.
• Calculations on the platform, such as working hours per day, staff hours covered, cost of ownership, payback and business cases, are worked out from the figures and assumptions shown with them. They are a guide for planning, not a promise of results, and they are not financial, legal, tax or engineering advice. Results in your own building depend on its layout, operations and team.
• Product descriptions drafted with AI help are checked by our team against their sources before they are published.
• Please tell us about any error through the Messages page or at mb@captivateconsultants.ae.

Quote requests

• Sending a quote request is free. You pick up to three sellers for a robot, such as the maker and two of the distributors we have on record. We pass your request and the contact details in it to the sellers you picked, so they can reply to you. Captivate sees every request.
• A seller with a seller account and enough credit receives your request at once. For any other seller, we pass it on or contact you about it, and we may check that a request is complete first.
• Any quotation, order or contract is between you and that seller, on their terms. We are not responsible for their products, prices, delivery, installation, support or conduct.
• Only send requests you intend, and do not include other people’s details without their permission.

Your account

• Give accurate details and keep them up to date.
• Each account is for one person. Do not share your sign in details, and tell us at once if you think someone else has used them.
• You are responsible for what is done through your account.

Fair use

You may use the platform and its content for your own business decisions and those of your organisation, including sharing comparisons or reports with your owners, colleagues and advisers on a project. You must not:

• copy, download, scrape or extract the database or a substantial part of it, by hand or with software, or use it to build a competing database or service;
• resell or publish the content, or pass it to third parties for any other purpose;
• get around access limits, security or rate limits, or try to reach parts of the platform not open to you;
• use the platform for anything unlawful, misleading or harmful, or to send unwanted messages.

Ownership of content

• The database, its structure, text, scores, calculations and software, and the product photos as prepared by us, belong to Captivate or are licensed to us.
• Product names, trade marks, logos and product photos belong to their owners. They are shown to identify products, with credit to the source. Showing them does not mean that the owner endorses the platform.
• If you own content shown on the platform and want it corrected or removed, contact us.

Suspension and closure

• We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, or where the law requires it. We will tell you why unless the law prevents it.
• You can close your account at any time, as explained under “Your rights” in the privacy notice.
• We may change, add or withdraw features. If we close the platform, we will give subscribers at least 30 days’ notice and refund fees paid for any period after it closes.

Liability

• The platform is provided as it is and as available. We do not promise that it will be free of errors or always available.
• We are not liable for decisions made from the information or calculations on the platform; for the products, prices or acts of makers, distributors and other third parties; for loss of profit, revenue, business, data or goodwill; or for any indirect or consequential loss.
• Our total liability to you in any 12 months is limited to the fees you paid us for the platform in those 12 months, or USD 100 if that is more.
• Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for fraud.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top of this page shows when the text last changed. If a change materially affects you, we will tell you by email or when you next sign in, at least 14 days before it applies where we can. If you keep using the platform after that, the updated terms apply.

Law and courts

These terms, and any dispute about them or the platform, are governed by the laws of the United Arab Emirates as applied in the Emirate of Ajman. The courts of Ajman have exclusive jurisdiction.

How listings are ranked and paid for

Listing is free

Every maker and product that meets our standard for a complete record is listed, whether or not it pays us. We research and add products ourselves, and makers can send us their details.

How we earn money

• Buyers do not pay to compare or to send quote requests.
• Makers and distributors pay us a fee for each quote request they receive (see Terms for makers and distributors), and may pay for a partner plan or a sponsored place. Where a written agreement with a seller provides for it, we may also receive a commission on a sale.
• No one can pay us to change the facts we show about a product.

Normal order of results

By default, results for members are listed in alphabetical order of product name, and you can sort them in other ways. In the public robot guide, products are listed with the most complete records first; completeness depends only on the facts on record. Payment has no effect on either order. If we change how the default order is set, we will explain the new order here first.

Sponsored places

A maker, distributor or other supplier may pay for a sponsored place: a featured robot above the results in its category, beside similar robots or in the public guide, an advert on our pages, a listing for a service such as insurance, finance or installation in Services for robot buyers, or a story in one of our emails. Sponsored places are always labelled “Sponsored”, are shown apart from the normal results, and a featured robot carries the same checked facts as every other listing. We show at most two sponsored robots or adverts at a time, and none on the robot pages of current partners. Service listings sit in their own labelled section, apart from the robot comparison. A sponsor cannot change the facts shown, remove other products or receive your details, unless you send them a quote request or have agreed to partner sharing. We count how often each sponsored place is shown and clicked, as totals that never name you, and share those totals with the sponsor.

Feasibility studies and consulting

When Captivate recommends robots in a feasibility study or other consulting work, the recommendation is based on fit, evidence, cost and local support, never on whether a maker or distributor pays us. Any fee arrangement with a recommended maker or distributor is stated in the study. Captivate also sells advice to buyers, such as business cases and group rollout plans from USD 12,000, and tells a hotel group in writing about any fee a seller pays us in connection with its project.

Terms for makers, distributors and advertisers

These terms apply to a maker or distributor that opens a seller account. They are in addition to the terms of use above. Prices are on the Pricing page.

• Seller accounts. We link the logins of people who work for your company to its seller account. The person who accepts these terms must be allowed to act for the company, and accepts them for it.
• Listing stays free. Your products are listed whether or not you buy anything. Buying never changes the facts we show or the order of results.
• What you pay for. Each quote request sent to you costs 1% of the order’s estimated value, and never less than USD 100. The estimate is the number of robots the buyer says they want times the robot’s recorded purchase price in US dollars, or the middle recorded price for that type of robot when none is recorded. All prices exclude VAT: a seller based in the United Arab Emirates pays 5% UAE VAT on top and receives a tax invoice showing both TRNs; a seller based anywhere else pays no UAE VAT, as an export of services. A request for 21 robots or more is checked by Captivate before you see it; you then see a summary without the buyer’s details and decide whether to accept it, and you pay only if you accept it. A quote request is a request that a registered buyer chose to send to you from one of your robot pages, with their consent to share their details with you. You receive the buyer’s name, work email, phone if given, company, job title, venue type, country and city, number of venues and robots, timeline and message. Accounts of makers and distributors cannot send quote requests.
• Prepaid credit. You pay for requests from prepaid credit, topped up by card in amounts of USD 250, USD 1,000, USD 2,500, USD 5,000. The price of a request is paid from your credit when it is sent to you, and the buyer’s details are released to you at that moment. Every seller account’s first quote request is free, and the next two are half price, with at most USD 100 taken off any one request; after that requests are at full price. Unused credit stays on your account while it is open. We email you when your credit falls below USD 300, and again when it is too low for the next request. It is not paid back in cash, unless the law requires it or we close the platform.
• When your credit is too low. Once your free first request is used and your credit cannot pay for your next request, buyers cannot pick you in the quote form until you top up. Your robots stay listed and their facts do not change. A request already on its way to you is held for 48 hours and we email you; if you top up in that time it is sent to you, and after that Captivate may pass it to another seller the buyer picked or contact the buyer about it.
• Repeat and wrong requests. You are never charged twice for the same buyer within 30 days: a further request from that buyer, about any robot, reaches you free, and the same buyer cannot ask you about the same robot twice in that time. If a buyer’s email bounces, the buyer tells you they did not send the request, or the request is not from a genuine buyer (for example a competitor, a supplier or a student), report it on your seller page within 14 days of receiving it, with the proof. We check it, usually within 5 working days, return the amount to your credit if the report is right, and email you the result. If the buyer wants fewer robots than the request said, report it in the same way with the real number and we return the difference between the price you paid and the price for that number.
• Using buyers’ details. Use a buyer’s details only to answer their request and follow it up, under the data protection laws that apply to you. Do not sell or pass them on, and do not add buyers to marketing lists without their consent. We may close a seller account that misuses buyers’ details.
• Statements and figures. After each month we check your account and show a statement of your credit on your seller page: what you added, what requests used, what we returned and what is left. A statement is a record of your credit, not a tax invoice. Your seller page also shows monthly totals of how often buyers saw your robots in results, opened their pages, compared them, opened the quote form and sent you requests. These are totals that never name a buyer: each person counts once a day for each figure, and our team, seller accounts and search engine robots are not counted.
• Sponsored places. Featured robots, adverts and service listings are bought on your account page for a day, a week, a month or longer, at the prices shown there, and are paid up front from your credit. We check each one before it shows; if we cannot approve it, the credit is returned to you. You are responsible for what your listing says and where it links: it must be accurate and lawful and must not name or compare other companies. We may remove a listing that breaks these rules. A sponsored place never changes the facts we show or the order of the normal results. These terms also apply to suppliers that sell no robots and advertise with us, such as insurers and finance companies, except the parts about quote requests and the partner plan.
• Partner plan. USD 6,000 a year for a maker and USD 2,500 a year for a distributor, paid by card. It renews each year until you cancel it from your seller page, and a cancelled plan runs to the end of the paid year with no refund for part of a year. While the plan runs, every quote request costs a partner 20% less. Where the introductory offer takes more off a request, the offer applies instead; the two are never added together. Partners are named on our partners page, makers carry a Partner label on their robot pages, and partners see on their seller page the contact details of members who agreed to partner sharing, under the same rules as quote requests. Partners also see each robot’s monthly figures on their seller page, with a spreadsheet to download. The first 15 makers to take the partner plan are Founding partners: they carry a Founding partner label for as long as they are partners (it returns if they rejoin) and are named in the announcement when the site opens on tastethefuture.ai, or in the next member email if they join after that. If a renewal payment fails, the partner plan pauses until it is paid. A partner plan never changes the facts we show or the order of results.
• Prices and tax. Prices are in US dollars and exclude VAT. Captivate is registered for VAT in the United Arab Emirates and adds VAT where the law requires it. We will tell you at least 30 days before a price changes. A change never reduces credit you have already bought.
• Sales. Captivate is not a party to any sale between you and a buyer and does not promise that a request leads to a sale.

Subscriptions, renewals and cancellation

• Plans. Registration is free. Paid plans, when offered, add premium tools. What each plan includes and its price are shown on the Pricing page, and the amount you pay is shown at checkout before you confirm.
• Payment. Payments are taken by card through Stripe. Stripe handles your card details, and we never see or store your full card number. Plans arranged by invoice follow the written agreement for them.
• Renewal. Plans renew automatically at the end of each monthly or yearly period, and your card is charged for the next period, until you cancel.
• Cancelling. You can cancel at any time under Manage billing on your account page, or, for a partner plan, under Manage partner plan on your seller page. Your plan stays active until the end of the period you have paid for and then ends, with no further charge. We do not refund part periods, unless the law requires it or we close the platform.
• Failed payments. If a payment does not go through, paid features are paused until it succeeds. Stripe may try the payment again. If it stays unpaid, the plan ends and your account returns to free membership.
• Price changes. We will tell you at least 30 days before a new price applies to your plan. It applies from your next renewal, and you can cancel before then.
• Team plans. The person who buys a team plan manages its seats and invites colleagues. People beyond the number of seats, and colleagues who are removed, keep free membership.
• When a plan ends. Your account returns to free membership and stays open until you close it.

Study tours

• Captivate arranges robotics study tours to factories and showrooms. At present every booking made on the website is a request, and no payment is taken online.
• Before you pay anything, we send you the booking conditions for that tour: the price, what is included, payment dates, cancellation and refund rules, insurance, and visa and travel document requirements. A booking is confirmed only when you have accepted them in writing and we have confirmed it.
• Visits and timings depend on the hosts and may change.
• Please do not send passport or visa details through the website. We arrange documents separately.

Privacy notice

Who is responsible

Captivate Hospitality Consultants F.Z.E. is the controller of the personal data collected through the platform. You can contact us about privacy at mb@captivateconsultants.ae.

What we collect

• Registration: name, work email, company, job title if you give it, country, type of business, the number of hotels or venues you own or run, your acceptance of these terms (with the date and version), and your email and partner sharing choices.
• Password: stored only in a scrambled one way form that cannot be turned back into your password.
• Account activity: when you sign in and out, failed sign in attempts, the pages you open in the platform (address and title), downloads, and changes to your choices. We do not store your IP address or browser in these records. Your IP address is used briefly, in memory only, to block repeated attempts. We count how often robots are shown in results, opened, compared, clicked through to the maker’s website and asked about, and how often sponsored places are shown and clicked, and show makers, distributors and sponsors these counts as daily totals. The totals never include who you are: your account is used, in memory only, to count you once a day.
• Visits to the public website: we count how often robots are shown, opened and compared, and how often sponsored places are shown and clicked, as daily totals. To count each visitor once a day, your IP address and browser type are turned into a code that is kept in memory for that day only and never stored. We set no cookie for this.
• Payments: your plan, its status and renewal date, quote credit bought and used, amounts, invoice numbers and Stripe customer and subscription references. Card details are handled by Stripe and never reach us.
• Messages you send us through the Messages page.
• Quote requests: the request, the sellers you picked, your consent and the contact and project details you include.
• Study tour requests: name, email, phone, organisation, the number of travellers and, if you give them, their names and emails, preferred dates, countries and interests. If you travel with us, we may also record dietary needs and room sharing with your agreement. We never ask for passport numbers through the website.
• Enquiries from the Pricing page: sent to us by email and not stored on the platform.
• Platform assistant and search box: the text you type is sent to our AI provider to produce an answer. These chats are not saved. Please do not type personal details into them.
• People at robot makers and distributors: business contact details from the company’s own published sources or given to us directly, and our notes of contacts with them.

How we use it, and why we may

• To create and run your account, give you the features of your plan and pass on your quote requests, because we need to in order to provide the service you asked for.
• To take payments and keep accounting records, to provide the service and to meet our legal, tax and accounting duties.
• To keep the platform secure, prevent misuse, fix errors and see which features are used, in our legitimate interest in running a safe and reliable service.
• To email you about the platform, new robots, study tours and Captivate services, and to understand which kinds of businesses use the platform, in our legitimate interest in promoting our business. You can object at any time by unsubscribing.
• To share your contact details with paying partners, only with your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
• To plan a study tour you ask about, at your request before any booking.
• To research and contact makers and distributors, in our legitimate interest in keeping the database complete.

We do not make decisions about you with legal or similarly significant effects by automated means alone.

Who receives it

• The maker or distributor you send a quote request to.
• The paying partners listed on our partners page, if you have agreed to partner sharing. They receive your name, work email, company, job title and country, and must use them only to contact you about their products. When you withdraw your agreement, we stop sharing your details and ask partners that already received them to delete them.
• Service providers that run the platform for us, under contracts that require them to protect the data and use it only for us:
  • IONOS, with servers in Germany (European Union): hosting of the platform, its database, files and backups;
  • Stripe: payments;
  • Resend: delivery of emails from the platform;
  • Anthropic: the AI service behind the platform assistant and the search box;
  • Microsoft: our business email, where notices from the platform and your emails to us arrive;
  • Adobe Fonts: the typeface of the public website pages, which your browser loads from Adobe, so Adobe receives your IP address.
• Authorities, courts and our professional advisers, where the law requires it or to protect our rights.

We do not sell personal data. Our emails may include sponsored content, but sponsors never receive our list of recipients.

Transfers outside the United Arab Emirates

Our servers are in Germany. Stripe, Resend, Anthropic, Microsoft and Adobe process data in other countries, including the United States. We use providers whose contracts include data protection terms for these transfers.

How long we keep it

• Your account: while it is open. When you close it, we delete your account and your support messages, and remove your name and email from activity records, within 30 days.
• Sign in and page view records: 24 months, then deleted automatically.
• Payment and invoice records: as long as tax and accounting law requires.
• Study tour requests and bookings: as long as needed to plan the tour, and then as long as legal, tax and accounting rules require.
• Backups: deleted data can remain in our daily backups for up to 14 days, and in a small number of backups taken before major data changes, which are kept securely and deleted when no longer needed.

Security

Passwords are stored in scrambled one way form, connections to the platform are encrypted, repeated sign in attempts are blocked, and access to personal data inside Captivate is limited by role. No system is completely secure. If a breach affects your data, we will tell you, and the authorities, where the law requires it.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, including under the UAE Personal Data Protection Law and the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation, you can ask us to show you the personal data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to its use, and send you a copy in a common format. You can withdraw your consent at any time.

• Switch our emails and partner sharing on or off at any time on your account page.
• To close your account or use any other right, send us a message from the Messages page or email mb@captivateconsultants.ae. We reply within one month.
• You can also complain to the data protection authority where you live or work.

Children

The platform is not for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect their data.

Changes to this notice

We update this notice when the way we use personal data changes. The date at the top of the page shows when the text last changed, and we tell registered users about material changes by email.

Cookies

We use only the cookies the platform needs to work. Because of this we do not ask for cookie consent and do not show a cookie banner. We use no analytics, advertising or tracking cookies.

• On a secure connection, the browser adds a Secure or Host prefix to these names.
• Some lists keep your scroll position in your browser’s session storage while the tab is open.
• The currency you choose for prices is kept in your browser’s local storage until you change it.
• When you pay, Stripe’s own pages set their own cookies under Stripe’s policy.
• The public website pages load their typeface from Adobe Fonts, which sets no cookies but receives your IP address.
• Some product photos still load from the maker’s website, which then receives your IP address as with any visit. Photos that have been brought to our image standard load from our own servers.

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