Terms of Service

1. Parties and scope

This agreement is between you ("the User", "you") and Wonderbench Hospitality Media GmbH, a limited liability company registered at Kärntner Ring 14/3, 1010 Vienna, Austria, company number FN 486213b, Vienna Commercial Court ("we", "us", "the Operator"). It applies to all pages, articles, hotel profiles, images, forms and downloadable material published on the domain lanternswonderbench.living and any subdomain.

The website is an editorial publication. We are not a travel agency, tour operator, booking platform, intermediary or agent of any hotel described on the site. No page constitutes an offer capable of acceptance, and nothing on the site creates a contractual relationship between you and any accommodation provider.

2. Eligibility and account-free access

The site is intended for users aged 16 or over. No registration or account is required to read the site. Where you submit an enquiry form, you confirm that the information you provide is accurate and that you are entitled to submit any third-party details contained in it.

3. User obligations

When accessing the site you agree that you will not:

• use the site for any unlawful purpose or in breach of Austrian, EU or applicable local law;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to the site, its servers, databases or any connected system;
• probe, scan or test the vulnerability of the site, or circumvent any security or authentication measure;
• deploy automated scraping, harvesting, crawling or data-mining tools beyond the scope permitted by our robots directives;
• reproduce, republish, redistribute or commercially exploit substantial portions of our content without our prior written consent;
• transmit malware, worms, logic bombs or other harmful code through any form or interface;
• use our contact forms to send unsolicited advertising, chain messages or abusive content;
• impersonate any person or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity;
• interfere with the proper working of the site or impose an unreasonable load on our infrastructure.

We reserve the right to block IP addresses, restrict access and report serious misuse to the competent authorities.

4. Intellectual property rights

All editorial text, structure, layout, graphic design, compiled data, source code and the marks "lanternswonderbench.living" and "Wonderbench Hospitality Media" are owned by or licensed to the Operator and are protected by Austrian and international copyright, database and trade mark law. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

You are granted a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to access the site and to view, download or print individual pages for your own personal, non-commercial travel-planning purposes. This licence does not extend to systematic copying, republication on another website, inclusion in any commercial product, or use in training or fine-tuning machine learning systems without a separate written agreement.

Third-party marks — including hotel names such as Hotel Sacher, Rosewood, Almanac, Hotel Imperial and The Ritz-Carlton — remain the property of their respective owners and are used descriptively for the purposes of editorial reporting, comment and criticism. Photographs sourced from third-party libraries remain subject to their own licence terms.

5. Accuracy of editorial content

We research and update our hotel profiles and journal articles with reasonable professional care, drawing on site visits and information published by the operators. Nevertheless, hotels change: room counts are reconfigured, restaurants close and reopen under new names, spa facilities are refurbished, and rates move constantly. Indicative rates shown on the site are observational, expressed in euro, exclusive of local tourist tax, and are not offers.

You must verify all facts material to your travel decision — availability, price, accessibility provision, pet policy, cancellation terms — directly with the relevant hotel before entering a contract. We accept no responsibility for decisions taken solely in reliance on our editorial content.

6. Third-party links

The site contains links to external websites, including hotel booking pages, museums, transport operators and cultural institutions. These links are offered for convenience and further reading. We have no control over external sites, do not endorse their content, and accept no liability for their availability, accuracy, security practices or terms. Following an external link is at your own risk and subject to that site's own terms and privacy policy.

7. Editorial independence and disclosure

We accept no payment for inclusion, ranking or favourable coverage. We operate no affiliate links and receive no booking commission. Where a stay, meal or treatment has been provided at a press rate or at no cost, that fact is disclosed on the relevant page. Our editorial judgements remain ours alone, and hotels have no right of pre-publication review.

8. Limitation of liability

The site is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, we exclude all warranties, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement, and we do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or free of viruses or other harmful components.

We are liable without limitation for damages caused intentionally or by gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, and under the Austrian Product Liability Act where mandatorily applicable. For slight negligence we are liable only for breach of a material contractual obligation, and then only for foreseeable damage typical for this type of agreement. All further liability — including for loss of profit, loss of opportunity, loss of data, travel disruption, booking errors or consequential loss — is excluded to the extent permitted by law.

Nothing in these terms limits statutory consumer rights that cannot lawfully be excluded.

9. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Operator, its directors, employees and contractors against any claim, demand, loss or reasonable legal cost arising from your breach of these terms, your misuse of the site, or your infringement of any third-party right in connection with your use of the site.

10. Availability, modification and termination

We may modify, suspend, restrict or discontinue any part of the site at any time, with or without notice, including for maintenance, security or editorial restructuring. We may revise these terms; the effective date at the head of this page will be updated and continued use after publication constitutes acceptance. We may terminate or restrict your access immediately and without notice where we reasonably believe you have breached Section 3. Sections 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11 and 12 survive termination.

11. Governing law

These terms and any non-contractual obligations arising from or connected with them are governed by the substantive law of the Republic of Austria, excluding its conflict-of-law rules and excluding the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. Where you are a consumer resident in another EU member state, you additionally retain the protection of any mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence.

12. Dispute resolution and jurisdiction

We ask that you first raise any dispute with us informally by writing to [email protected]. Most matters — particularly factual corrections — are resolved at this stage within a few business days.

If informal resolution fails, the competent courts of Vienna, Austria, shall have jurisdiction, save that a consumer may bring proceedings in the courts of their place of residence where mandatory law so provides. The European Commission operates an online dispute resolution platform for consumers at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr. We are not obliged, and are not generally willing, to participate in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.

13. Severability and entire agreement

If any provision of these terms is held invalid or unenforceable, that provision shall be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, or severed if modification is impossible, and the remaining provisions continue in full force. Our failure to enforce any right is not a waiver of that right. Together with the Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy, these terms constitute the entire agreement between you and the Operator concerning the site.

14. Contact

Wonderbench Hospitality Media GmbH, Kärntner Ring 14/3, 1010 Vienna, Austria. Email [email protected]. Further details and office hours are on our contact page.