Ask Dubrovnik — Terms of Service

Version: 1.0 Effective Date: [DATE] Previous versions: none — see archive

Related document: Privacy Policy — read together with these Terms.

1. Who We Are

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of Ask Dubrovnik (the "Service"), a verified city information assistant available at askdubrovnik.com and through WhatsApp.

The Service is operated by:

Argosy Technologies d.o.o. Full registered name: Argosy Technologies društvo s ograničenom odgovornošću za informacijske tehnologije i rješenja temeljena na sustavima umjetne inteligencije Registered seat: Brune Bušića 30, 20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia Contact: hello@askdubrovnik.com

In these Terms, "we", "us" and "our" mean Argosy Technologies d.o.o. "You" and "your" mean you, the user.

2. Definitions

Verified Knowledge Database — the structured database of operational and editorial information about Dubrovnik maintained by us, in which each entry is manually checked against a source and carries a record of when it was last verified.

Operational facts — concrete, checkable information such as addresses, locations, prices, contact details, routes and physical descriptions.

Conversation — an exchange with the Service. A conversation is active while less than 24 hours have passed since your last message; after that it is closed. A message we send does not restart that period.

Hospitality User — a person who consults the Service in the course of accommodation, transport, guiding or similar hospitality work in order to help a guest or customer.

Consumer — a natural person using the Service for purposes outside their trade, business, craft or profession. Anyone else is a Business User: a legal person, or a natural person acting for purposes within their trade, business, craft or profession, including a Hospitality User and a Preferred Partner. Which category you fall into is determined by the purpose for which you use the Service, not by what you do with it — breaching these Terms does not turn a Consumer into a Business User.

Preferred Partner — a venue or operator holding a paid subscription with us, identified as such in the Service under Section 12.

3. Acceptance

Web chat. These Terms are identified to you before the chat opens. You accept them by sending your first message.

WhatsApp. However you reach us — by scanning one of our QR codes, by following one of our links, or by writing to our number directly — your first message is what opens the conversation, so nothing can be shown to you inside WhatsApp before it. Our printed and displayed materials therefore state that the Service is an automated assistant operated by Argosy Technologies d.o.o., and where these Terms can be read.

Our first reply then tells you the same thing: that you are speaking to an automated system, what it covers, and where to read these Terms and the Privacy Policy. You accept these Terms by continuing the conversation after that reply.

If you do not wish to accept them, stop there. We will not process your message for any purpose other than sending that reply, we will not write to you again, and your message is deleted on the schedule in Section 5 of the Privacy Policy.

The website itself. Reading askdubrovnik.com does not make you a party to these Terms. Your use of the website is governed by the Privacy Policy and the cookie notice shown on the site. Our rights in the content of the website are protected by law independently of these Terms, whether or not you are a party to them.

4. What the Service Is

Ask Dubrovnik answers questions from visitors to Dubrovnik about places, transport, practical logistics, and the history and culture of the city.

Free of charge. No payment, app installation, account or registration is required.
Channels. WhatsApp and the web chat at askdubrovnik.com.
Languages. The Service responds in several languages. The working language of the underlying data is English.
Coverage. Dubrovnik and its immediate surroundings. Coverage may be extended.

The Service is an information tool. It is not a booking platform, a travel agency, a tour operator, or an emergency service.

What we do not do in any transaction. Where the Service points you to a venue, operator or booking platform — including through a link marked Partner (Section 12) — we do not: conclude a contract with you or on your behalf; act as agent, representative or broker for you or for the third party; take, hold, forward or refund payment; issue, confirm or hold a reservation; or guarantee that the third party will perform. The contract is concluded directly between you and that third party, on its terms, and any commission we receive is paid by the third party for the referral and does not make us a party to it.

5. You Are Interacting with an Automated System

The Service is an artificial intelligence system. Every reply you receive is machine-generated. You are not communicating with a human guide, a human operator, or a human agent of any venue.

This is disclosed to you in our first reply in every conversation, and repeated here, in accordance with Article 50 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (the AI Act).

Reaching a person. No human is monitoring the conversation as it happens. If you need to reach a person at Argosy Technologies — because the Service cannot help you, because something it told you was wrong, or for any other reason — write to hello@askdubrovnik.com, or send the message HUMAN in the chat and we will reply by the same channel as soon as we can, and in any event within the period in Section 15. This is not an emergency route; see Section 10.

Scope. The Service is confined to information about Dubrovnik and its surroundings. It is not a general-purpose assistant, and it will decline questions outside that scope.

Limited human review of conversation content takes place for the purposes described in Section 4 of the Privacy Policy.

6. Eligibility

By using the Service you confirm that you have the legal capacity to accept these Terms and that you meet the applicable minimum age:

WhatsApp channel — the minimum age set by WhatsApp, currently 16 years in the European Union and the European Economic Area, and 13 years (or the minimum age in your country) elsewhere.
Web chat — 16 years.

The Service is not directed at children and is not designed for them. We do not verify age. We have no means of confirming the age of a user and do not attempt to do so; we rely on the confirmation you give by using the Service, and on WhatsApp's own controls on its channel.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child below the applicable age has used the Service, contact privacy@askdubrovnik.com and we will delete the associated data.

7. Permitted Use

The Service is provided for your own personal use as a visitor to or resident of Dubrovnik, in the ordinary way a person asks questions and reads answers.

7.1 Hospitality use — permitted

If you are a Hospitality User, you may consult the Service to help your guest or customer, and you may show your guest the answer. When you do so:

ask the question in general terms, and do not enter your guest's personal data — name, contact details, document or booking numbers, or anything about their health, family situation or finances;
do not present our answers as your own advice or as a service you provide, and do not charge anyone for access to them; you remain free to give your own advice, provided you do not attribute it to us;
tell your guest that the answer came from Ask Dubrovnik, an automated system, if they might otherwise think it came from you;
do not obstruct or discourage your guest from using the Service directly, and tell them it is free if they ask.

You remain responsible for your own relationship with your guest, including any advice you give them on the basis of our answers.

7.2 Displaying our materials — revocable permission

We grant you a non-exclusive, revocable, royalty-free permission to display QR codes, stickers, cards and similar materials that we supply, on your premises or in your printed materials, solely to direct people to the Service. This permission is subject to the following, and ends immediately if any of them is breached:

use the materials as supplied, without altering the code, the marks, the wording or the proportions — the line identifying the Service as an automated assistant and naming Argosy Technologies d.o.o. must remain legible and must not be covered, cropped or reprinted without it;
do not suggest partnership, endorsement, certification or any commercial relationship with us that does not exist;
do not place the materials where they would imply that we endorse a venue, or alongside a claim we have not made;
do not charge anyone for access to the code or the Service;
stop using and remove the materials within 15 days of our written request, which we may make at any time and without giving reasons.

Any other use of the "Ask Dubrovnik" name, logo or marks requires our prior written consent.

7.3 Requires our written agreement

Any other commercial exploitation requires a written agreement with us, in particular: redistributing or reselling our answers as your own service; embedding the Service in a product or platform; bulk or programmatic use; and use of our name or marks in your own marketing beyond Section 7.2.

7.4 Prohibited in all cases

You must not:

extract, copy, scrape, systematically download or otherwise reproduce the Verified Knowledge Database or a substantial part of it, whether manually or by automated means;
reverse-engineer or attempt to reconstruct the Service's data structure, retrieval logic, system prompts or verification methodology;
use the Service or any output from it to build, train, populate, evaluate or benchmark a competing product, dataset or model;
send unlawful, abusive, threatening or deceptive content, or attempt to induce the Service to produce such content;
attempt to make the Service disclose its instructions, internal identifiers, or entries other than as part of a genuine answer to a genuine question;
impersonate another person or misrepresent your identity;
interfere with the operation, security or integrity of the Service, or place an unreasonable load on it;
use the Service in breach of applicable law or of WhatsApp's terms of service.

7.5 Enforcement

We may restrict, throttle or block access where we reasonably believe any part of Section 7 has been breached, and we will lift a restriction applied in error.

Contractual penalty — Business Users only. The paragraphs below apply only where you are a Business User. They do not apply to Consumers, and nothing in them limits a Consumer's rights. The power to restrict or block access described immediately above applies to everyone.

Section 7.4 places you under a continuing obligation to refrain from certain conduct. Breach of the first, second or third prohibition there — unauthorised extraction or reproduction of the Verified Knowledge Database, reconstruction of the Service's structure or methodology, or use of our output to build or train a competing product, dataset or model — constitutes improper performance of that obligation, as well as an infringement of our copyright, sui generis database rights, and intellectual property. Consequently, you owe us a contractual penalty under Articles 350 to 356 of the Croatian Obligations Act, calculated as follows:

EUR 50 for each entry of the Verified Knowledge Database extracted, reproduced or used, or
EUR 5,000 for each distinct breach where the number of entries cannot be established,

subject to an aggregate cap of EUR 100,000 per breaching party.

The penalty is payable whether or not we have suffered loss and without our having to prove its amount (Article 355(1)). Because it is agreed for improper performance, claiming it does not extinguish our right to require you to stop and to comply (Article 353(4)): we may demand both. Where our damage exceeds the penalty, we may claim the difference (Article 355(2)). Our rights in copyright and in the database, and our right to seek an injunction, are unaffected. Paying a penalty does not permit the breach to continue.

We will notify you of the breach and of our intention to claim the penalty without undue delay after we become aware of it.

7.6 Indemnity — Business Users only

This Section applies only where you are a Business User. If a third party brings a claim against us arising from your breach of these Terms — in particular from your use of our materials under Section 7.2, from personal data you entered into the Service contrary to Section 7.1, or from your presentation of our answers to your guest or customer — you will indemnify us against the reasonable costs, damages and legal fees we incur in consequence.

We will notify you of any such claim without undue delay, will not settle it without consulting you, and will give you a reasonable opportunity to take part in the defence.

8. How Information Is Produced

This Section describes how the Service works, because it determines what you can and cannot rely on.

Verified data, not generated data. Operational facts are served exclusively from the Verified Knowledge Database. They are not generated by an AI language model. Where we hold no verified entry, the Service tells you so rather than produce an answer.

Role of AI. Artificial intelligence is used to interpret your question, select relevant entries, phrase the reply in natural language, and present descriptive and cultural content.

The Service uses large language models (LLMs) to rephrase data and interact with you. While the operational facts within our database are verified, you acknowledge that AI systems can occasionally misinterpret information, hallucinate, or produce phrasing that alters the original meaning. We do not warrant that the machine-generated text will always flawlessly reflect the underlying database entry. Your use of any machine-generated response is at your own risk.

Opening hours. The Service does not state opening hours. Opening hours change frequently and without notice, and we do not present information we cannot stand behind. Check them with the venue or an official source.

Freshness. Each entry records when it was last checked. Information verified at one point in time may have changed since. Prices, routes, availability and business status change, sometimes daily.

Editorial content. Recommendations, descriptions and characterisations of venues are our editorial opinion. They are not statements of fact and not professional advice.

Verify what matters. Despite the safeguards above, the Service may contain errors, omissions or outdated entries, and the AI may misinterpret a question. Where a decision has real consequences for you — health, safety, money, travel documents, departure times — verify the information with the provider concerned or with an official source before acting on it.

Not professional advice. The Service does not give legal, medical, financial, safety or professional travel advice, and does not diagnose, prescribe or advise on any personal legal or financial matter. Where a question calls for such advice, the Service will say so and direct you to a qualified professional.

9. What You Send Us

Keep it to your question. Send only what is needed to answer it. Do not send your own identification or payment details, and do not send anyone else's personal data.

Photographs and other media. You may send a photograph to help identify a place. Do not send photographs or recordings of identifiable people, whether yourself or anyone else. Media you send is used only to answer that question and is not retained afterwards (Privacy Policy, Section 5). We cannot prevent you from sending such material; if you do, you are responsible for having the right to send it, and we will delete it.

Questions about people. The Service answers questions about public figures — historical figures, and living people in their public capacity — where our data covers them. It does not answer questions about private individuals, and does not confirm, deny or supplement information about where a named private person lives, works, can be found, or what they do. Do not use the Service to locate, investigate, monitor or build a picture of another person.

10. Emergencies and Safety-Critical Information

The Service is not an emergency service and must never be used as one.

In an emergency in Croatia, call 112. That single number reaches police, fire, ambulance and sea rescue, is free from any telephone, and works without a SIM card.

By design, the Service holds no emergency information. It does not maintain entries for emergency numbers, emergency departments, on-call services or civil protection procedures, and it will not answer such questions from its own data. Any message the Service recognises as concerning an emergency, injury, danger or urgent medical need receives one response: a direction to call 112. This is deliberate. Information we cannot keep verified from minute to minute is more dangerous than no information at all.

Do not use the Service to report an emergency or to summon help. It may be unavailable, delayed, or unable to interpret your message, and no one is monitoring it.

Exclusion. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we exclude all liability for loss, injury or damage arising from use of the Service, or inability to use it, in connection with an emergency or a safety-critical situation, including any delay, failure, unavailability or misinterpretation. This exclusion does not apply to liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or to any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

11. Notices We Send

Apart from answering your questions, the Service sends two kinds of notice. They work differently and come from different places.

11.1 Safety notices — issued by a public authority

Where the City of Dubrovnik, the competent civil protection authority or another competent public body issues a notice concerning danger to life, health or property — a civil protection warning, a severe weather alert, a fire, a maritime hazard, an evacuation instruction or similar — we may transmit it to users whose conversation is active, that is, who have written to the Service within the preceding 24 hours. It reaches you as an ordinary message in your existing conversation.

Because of their purpose, safety notices cannot be switched off while your conversation is active. A conversation closes by itself 24 hours after your last message, and you can end it sooner by sending STOP or by blocking the number.

11.2 City and cultural information — our editorial choice

These are not safety notices and are not sent on anyone's instruction. We decide what is worth telling you about, on the same editorial basis as everything else in the Service; a public body or an organiser may bring something to our attention, but the decision is ours alone.

They are sent only to users who have asked to receive them, and only for as long as they want them. They cover matters of general public interest in the city, for example:

the opening of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival and other public cultural programmes;
fireworks, processions, concerts and public celebrations;
temporary closures of public sites, roadworks and transport changes;
expected crowding, cruise-ship days and access restrictions to the historic core.

You ask to receive them by telling the Service so, and you stop at any time by sending STOP NOTICES. Stopping takes effect immediately and does not affect your use of the Service in any other way. Sending STOP also stops them, together with everything else (Section 17).

11.3 Common rules

We decide. For safety notices, an authority may ask us to transmit; for city and cultural information, anyone may bring something to our attention. In both cases we decide whether, when and to whom a message is sent. We may decline any message, edit it for clarity and length, or stop transmitting it at any time, without giving reasons. We are not obliged to transmit anything.
Information, not advertising. We never accept payment or any other benefit in exchange for sending a message, from a public body, an event organiser, a venue or anyone else, and we do not send messages on behalf of commercial parties. A notice is sent because we judge it to be of general public interest in the city, not because someone wants it sent. Announcing a public cultural event is information; promoting a business, a ticket sale or a commercial offer is advertising, and we do not do it through these channels.
Content responsibility. For a safety notice under 11.1, the substance is the responsibility of the issuing authority: we transmit it, we do not draft, verify or endorse it. Where such a notice conflicts with an instruction from the emergency services or official warning channels, follow the official instruction. For city and cultural information under 11.2, the wording is ours, and Section 8 applies to it as it does to any other answer — check times, tickets and access arrangements with the organiser.
No guarantee of delivery. Transmission depends on WhatsApp, on your connection and on your device. We do not guarantee that any message will reach you, and you must not rely on the Service as a means of receiving warnings. Official warning channels take precedence in all cases.

The data protection basis for each category is set out in Section 3 of the Privacy Policy.

12. Recommendations, Commercial Relationships and Affiliate Links

What cannot be bought. Ranking, order of presentation, the wording of a recommendation, and the decision to recommend a venue at all are editorial and are not for sale. No payment to us causes a venue to be recommended, recommended more often, or described more favourably, and no payment prevents us from describing a venue accurately or from removing it.

Preferred Partner. A venue or operator may hold a paid subscription with us. A subscription entitles the holder to exactly the following, and to nothing else:

the label Preferred Partner shown wherever the venue appears;
a fuller entry — a longer description, images, and additional verified detail such as languages spoken or accessibility information;
a direct contact or booking link in the entry;
more frequent re-verification of its entry;
the ability to tell us promptly when its details change.

A subscription does not affect whether a venue is recommended, how often it is recommended, where it appears in a list, or how it is described in editorial terms. Those remain ours alone. A subscribing venue that is not a good answer to your question is not shown to you, and a non-subscribing venue that is the best answer is. If we ever introduce a feature that does affect prominence, we will label it as paid placement at the point where it appears and amend this Section first.

The Preferred Partner label is itself the disclosure that a paid relationship exists.

Affiliate links. Some links are affiliate links: if you book or buy through them, we may receive a commission at no additional cost to you. Every such link is marked Partner. An unmarked recommendation carries no commercial relationship.

Tracking by affiliate partners. An affiliate link normally carries a tracking parameter, and the destination site may set its own cookies or identifiers to attribute the referral. That processing is carried out by the destination site or its affiliate network under their own terms, not by us. See Section 10 of the Privacy Policy.

Third-party transactions. Any booking, purchase or contract you enter into with a venue, operator or platform is between you and that third party. We are not a party to it and are not responsible for its performance, quality, safety, cancellation, refund or price.

13. Third-Party Services

The Service depends on third-party platforms, including WhatsApp (Meta Platforms), cloud infrastructure providers and AI model providers. Those services operate under their own terms and privacy policies and are outside our control.

Links to third-party websites are provided for convenience and do not imply endorsement.

14. Intellectual Property

Our rights. The Service and everything constituting it — the Verified Knowledge Database and its contents, its structure, taxonomy, identifiers and metadata, the verification methodology, editorial texts and cultural narratives, conversational logic, system prompts, software, the website, and the "Ask Dubrovnik" name, logo and visual identity — are the property of Argosy Technologies d.o.o. or its licensors, protected by copyright, the sui generis database right under the Croatian Copyright and Related Rights Act and Directive 96/9/EC, and other intellectual property rights.

Nothing in these Terms grants you any licence beyond ordinary personal use of the Service and the revocable permission in Section 7.2.

Your messages. You retain ownership of the content you send. You grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to process that content in order to operate, secure, correct and improve the Service, as described in the Privacy Policy. This licence does not extend to training or fine-tuning AI models, which we do not do with your messages.

Corrections and feedback. If you tell us that something is wrong, out of date or missing, we may use that information to correct our data, without obligation, attribution or compensation. Reporting an error does not oblige us to correct it, to correct it within any particular period, or to inform you of the outcome.

15. Availability, Changes and Force Majeure

The Service is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. We do not guarantee that it will be uninterrupted, error-free or available at any particular time.

We may change, suspend, limit or discontinue all or part of the Service at any time. The Service is free of charge and we give no undertaking as to its continued availability.

We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by circumstances beyond our reasonable control, including failure or change of terms of WhatsApp, an AI model provider or a hosting provider; failure of electronic communications networks; cyber-attack; act of a public authority; natural disaster, fire, storm or earthquake; war, civil unrest or terrorism; epidemic; or industrial action.

Complaints. You may submit a written complaint about the Service to hello@askdubrovnik.com, or by post to our registered address. We will confirm receipt without delay and reply in writing within 15 days of receiving it, in accordance with the Croatian Consumer Protection Act. Requests concerning personal data are handled under the deadlines in the Privacy Policy, and complaints about data protection go to privacy@askdubrovnik.com.

16. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law:

we exclude all warranties not expressly given in these Terms, whether express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, completeness and non-infringement;
we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, opportunity, data, time or enjoyment;
we are not liable for loss or damage arising from your reliance on information provided by the Service, or from the acts, omissions, quality or safety of any third-party venue, operator or platform;
our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the Service is limited to EUR 100.

Free service. The Service is supplied free of charge, without consideration of any kind, and our obligations are assessed accordingly.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for intent or gross negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including under mandatory product liability law.

If you are a Consumer, these limitations apply only to the extent permitted by the mandatory consumer protection rules of your country of residence. Your statutory rights are not affected.

17. Termination

By you. You may stop using the Service at any time. On WhatsApp, send STOP or block the number. You may request deletion of your data as set out in the Privacy Policy.

By us. We may suspend or terminate your access where we reasonably believe you have breached these Terms, where required by law, or where we discontinue the Service.

Survival. Sections 7.4 to 7.6, 10, 14, 16, 19 and 20, and any other provision that by its nature is intended to survive, remain in force after termination.

18. Changes to These Terms

We may amend these Terms. Where changes are material, we will give notice through the Service — a message in the chat or a notice on the website — before they take effect, and we will update the Version and Effective Date above. Continued use after that date constitutes acceptance.

Superseded versions remain available at askdubrovnik.com/legal/archive, each with the period during which it was in force.

19. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the law of the Republic of Croatia, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules. If you are a Consumer resident in another EU/EEA member state, this choice does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence.

Informal resolution first.

Business Users. Before starting proceedings you must contact us at hello@askdubrovnik.com and set out the matter in writing, and neither party may commence proceedings until 30 days have passed from that notice. This does not apply to an application for interim or injunctive relief.
Consumers. We invite you to write to us first so that we can try to resolve the matter, and we will reply within the period in Section 15. This is an invitation, not a condition: nothing prevents you from going to court or to a supervisory body at any time.

If you are a Business User. Where you are a Business User as defined in Section 2 — including a Hospitality User, a partner, a subscriber, or anyone displaying our materials under Section 7.2 — the courts of the Republic of Croatia have exclusive jurisdiction, and the competent court in Dubrovnik is exclusively competent, for any dispute arising out of or in connection with the Service, these Terms, our intellectual property, or any unauthorised extraction or use of the Verified Knowledge Database. Both parties waive any objection to that forum.

If you are a Consumer. Mandatory European rules on jurisdiction in consumer contracts apply and we do not seek to displace them. You may bring proceedings either in the Croatian courts or in the courts of your place of residence, and we may bring proceedings against you only in the courts of your place of residence. Nothing in this Section limits your rights under those rules.

Interim relief. Either party may apply to any court of competent jurisdiction for interim or injunctive relief, in particular to protect intellectual property or to stop unauthorised extraction of the Verified Knowledge Database.

Online dispute resolution. Consumers resident in the European Union may use the European Commission's ODR platform: https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.

20. General

Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy constitute the entire agreement between you and us in relation to the Service.
Severability. If a provision is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions stay in force.
No waiver. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.
Assignment. We may assign our rights and obligations, including in connection with a transfer of the business. You may not assign yours without our written consent.
Language. These Terms are drafted in English. Where a translation is provided and there is a discrepancy, the English version prevails, except where mandatory consumer law provides otherwise.

21. Contact

Argosy Technologies d.o.o. Brune Bušića 30, 20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia General: hello@askdubrovnik.com Data protection: privacy@askdubrovnik.com