PRIVACY POLICY
About our policy
The Data Controller (the organisation responsible for looking after your data) is Whitstable Holiday Homes Ltd.
We are very grateful for the trust you place in us to arrange your holiday, manage your holiday properties and to use personal information responsibly. We are always committed to protecting your information and we believe you have a right to know how we will use it. This policy sets out the data protection principles we follow.
This policy covers our dealings with customers and owners – people who have booked or are looking for a holiday, and people who let their holiday properties through us. Please note that our customers and owners must be over the age of 18 and we do not therefore collect personal information from children.
We will update our Privacy Policy as data protection law or business practice changes. This version of the policy is effective from 17 May 2018.
Your rights
We will generally use your data either on the basis of your consent, or based on a contract between us when you book a holiday. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. All our marketing communications include an unsubscribe or opt in link, to make it easy to withdraw or consent.
If you withdraw your consent by opting out of our newsletters, we will stop processing your data as requested. Bear in mind if you have a holiday booked and you have not yet travelled, we’ll still need to hold onto your data so we can process the holiday. That’s because the contract between us is the basis for using your data (rather than consent).
You have the right to receive a copy of your personal data and have the right to request that we correct or remove your data, when there remains no legal basis for keeping it. Please note that when these rights are exercised, we will conduct identification checks in order to ensure your privacy is safeguarded. You will need to contact us by email or post, to exercise these rights.
Personal information we collect
In order to provide you with the best possible holiday service, we collect the following information:
Identification: name, title, date of birth, age/age range, gender.
Contact details: postal addresses, mobile and landline phone numbers, email addresses.
Bookings: name of property booked, holiday start and end date, cost of holiday, amounts paid, names of other people booked on the same holiday (names, gender, age range).
Marketing preferences: whether you wish to receive email marketing information from us.
Payment: method, credit/card numbers, payment card expiry date, amounts collected.. Please note that we only store your full card details for the duration of your stay only.
Browsing: historical searches, how you use our website and mobile apps, website experience user survey responses, the devices and IP addresses you use to access our services (operating system, browser, …). We collect this information so that we can continuously improve our website and our service to you.
Holiday experience: any feedback you leave in response to customer satisfaction emails
Specific to property owners: addresses of your properties, historical and future booking information (see above), photographs/videos of the properties you own.
Communication: emails, competition entries, your interaction with our marketing (clicking links in our marketing emails, for example – we track this to help ensure our communications are relevant and interesting).
How we use your personal information
We use your personal information to:
Manage your holiday booking/letting
Understand how to improve our services, to select the best holiday properties and provide the best information and offers, for example
Detect and prevent fraud or abuse of our services
Communicate with you, including for example, responding to your emails, messages on social media, handling customer service matters and so on
Process your payments
Personal information we collect
In order to provide you with the best possible holiday service, we collect the following information:
Identification: name, title, date of birth, age/age range, gender.
Contact details: postal addresses, mobile and landline phone numbers, email addresses.
Bookings: name of property booked, holiday start and end date, cost of holiday, amounts paid, names of other people booked on the same holiday (names, gender, age range).
Marketing preferences: whether you wish to receive email marketing information from us.
Payment: method, credit/card numbers, payment card expiry date, amounts collected.. Please note that we only store your full card details for the duration of your stay only.
Browsing: historical searches, how you use our website and mobile apps, website experience user survey responses, the devices and IP addresses you use to access our services (operating system, browser, …). We collect this information so that we can continuously improve our website and our service to you.
Holiday experience: any feedback you leave in response to customer satisfaction emails
Specific to property owners: addresses of your properties, historical and future booking information (see above), photographs/videos of the properties you own.
Communication: emails, competition entries, your interaction with our marketing (clicking links in our marketing emails, for example – we track this to help ensure our communications are relevant and interesting).
How we use your personal information
We use your personal information to:
Manage your holiday booking/letting
Understand how to improve our services, to select the best holiday properties and provide the best information and offers, for example
Detect and prevent fraud or abuse of our services
Communicate with you, including for example, responding to your emails, messages on social media, handling customer service matters and so on
Process your payments
With your permission, send you relevant marketing information such as details of competitions, special offers and properties we think will be of interest to you
Manage competitions, promotions and special offers in which you participate
Make sure our servers and websites are operating correctly
How we collect personal information
We receive personal information from:
You, as you provide it to us (e.g. when booking a holiday, leaving a review or enquiring about letting a property)
Your use of our websites
Third party holiday providers who advertise our properties
Your interaction with our marketing activities (provided you have not unsubscribed)
Third party review services such as Feefo and TripAdvisor
Legal basis of processing
There are several grounds on which we will store and use your data. As follows:
Consent: for certain types of processing (e.g. marketing activities), we rely on your consent to use your data. You may withdraw your consent at any time (see “Your rights”, above).
Contract: much of the time, our use of your data will be because of the contract between us – that is, in relation to your holiday booking. We will usually retain relevant data for up to six years from the date the contract completes – e.g. the last day of your holiday.
Legal obligations: we are under certain binding legal obligations, such as accounting to the government for tax and making financial records available for audit. In such cases, we are typically obliged to retain data for up to seven years from the date of the transaction.
Legitimate interests: we use data to manage our operations and to make business process improvements. Rest assured, our legitimate interests will never override your right to privacy
How we share your personal information
We give some of your contact information to property owners, so they can get in touch about key collection and so on. (We also give you their contact details, for the same reason.)
If you permit us to send you marketing information, we may share your data with companies that provide specialist marketing platforms. These companies are under strict obligations to protect your privacy and comply with your marketing preferences. Our marketing partner companies are:
Gocoastal.co.uk
Big Blue Sea Ltd, 15-17 Middle Street, Brighton BN1 1AL UK
Click HQ , Salpo Technologies Ltd, Festival House, Jessop Avenue, Cheltenham GL50 3SH
Security of your data
We protect your data with various technological measures. We also regularly test and evaluate the security of our systems, updating safeguards as appropriate. Our staff are trained in the importance of security and privacy and we treat breaches of confidentiality and privacy as disciplinary matters.
Payment service providers
In order to ensure your transactions are as secure as possible, we hand over payment card processing to the following suppliers:
Barclaycard Payment Solutions Registered Office: 1 Churchill Place, London E14 5HP
Internet advertising
We do NOT allow third party advertisers to place cookies on our websites.