Gites.co.uk Limited Privacy Policy

Revised May 2018

We take your privacy seriously. This Privacy Policy explains the personal information we collect via our website at www.gites.co.uk and email to the gites.co.uk domain name, how we use that information, who we share it with, and how we protect it.

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. By continuing to use our web site or signing up to our services you confirm that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy in its entirety.

Overview

We respect your right to privacy and only request or collect information that we need to provide you with the services that you request. We aim to ensure that our collection and use of your personal information is appropriate to the provision of services to you and is in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

Who We Are

We are Gites.co.uk Limited (registered company number 10256342) and out registered office is c/o Majors, Merchants Warehouse, Trinity Square, Hull, United Kingdom, HU1 2JJ.

(together referred to in this Privacy Policy as “Gites.co.uk”, “we”, “us” or “our”)

Our ICO Registration Number is: ZA388084

Our Data Protection Office can be contacted by emailing mail@gites.co.uk.

Information covered by this Privacy Policy

The Privacy Policy covers all personal information collected and used by Gites.co.uk.

When we talk about “personal data” or “personal information” we mean information that, either in isolation or in combination with other information held by us, enables you to be identified as an individual. Personal information may include your name, date of birth, postal address, e-mail address, computer IP address, phone number(s), mobile phone number(s), payment card details, user generated content, login information, and technical information from the devices you use to access our services.

Children

You must be aged 18 or over to subscribe to our services. Our Sites and services are not directed at children and do not knowingly collect any personal information from children.

If you are a child and we learn that we have inadvertently obtained personal information from you on our Sites then we will delete that information as soon as possible.

What information do we collect from you?

We collect information from different sources.

Information you give us

When you access our services, such as when you:

  • Create an account to subscribe to our services
  • Sign up for a newsletter from us
  • Purchase a paid service from us

then we will collect personal information about you.

When you create a property owner or agent account with us, the personal information we may require is:

  • You name
  • Email address(es)
  • Username and password (your password is encrypted and we cannot see it)
  • Your address or addresses
  • Your language(s)
  • Your telephone number(s)
  • Your mobile telephone number(s)

It is necessary for you to provide this information to use our services. If you cannot or will not provide this information you may not be able to use our services.

When you sign up for a newsletter (as a guest and not a property owner member or guest member), we will collect your:

  • Name
  • E-mail address

Information we collect about you

When you visit our site, and whether you are a member or not, we use cookies and other technologies to collect the following information:

  • Technical information, including you IP address, browser type and version, device identifier, location and time zone setting, browser plugin types and versions, operating system and platform, page response times, and download errors;
  • Information about your visit including referring pages if any;
  • Length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks and mouseovers) and methods used to browse away from the page.

To learn more about how we use cookies and how to control which cookies are used, please see our Cookie Policy.

How do we use your personal information?

We may use your personal information to:

Create and manage your account

We need your personal information (such as your email address) to set up and manage your account. For example, we may need to send you password re-set instructions.

Relay enquiries between owners / agents and guests and vice-versa

Owners can receive enquires from users of our site by email or telephone and we therefore need this information to relay these messages.

Likewise, guests who submit an enquiry to an owner or agent will have their supplied contact details relayed to the owner / agent.

Deal with your enquiries and requests

We will need to use your personal information to deal with enquiries and requests. Use of your information in this way is in our legitimate interests.

Provide you with service status and important notices

Members with an owner / agent membership may be informed of service statuses, planned or unplanned outages, service changes, upgrades, new features and other information that is directly relevant to their account.

Provide you with marketing information (provided you have consented to this)

We will need to use your personal information (such as email address) to send you information about content or services on our web site that may be of interest to you.

Combine information we receive and collect

We may combine the information we receive and collect about you to better understand your interests and preferences, so that we can provide you with an experience that is tailored to those interests and preferences. For example, we may send you personalised offers or promotions by e-mail (where you have agreed to receive our marketing e-mails), or offering you advertising content that is relevant to your interests either on our site or on other websites and we will use a range of technologies to achieve this. This may include in relation to Facebook, using the Facebook Custom Audiences service by sharing your email address in a protected format with Facebook so that we can include you in a custom audience that we will serve relevant advertising content to on Facebook or creating an audience of other Facebook users based on the information in your Facebook profile. You can opt-out from Facebook Custom Audiences in your Facebook privacy settings.

It is in our legitimate interest to look at your preferences that we derive from your browsing behaviour and purchases so that we can personalise our service and our advertising for you, to better meet your needs as a customer, provided this is in line with your marketing choices (please see the section below on preventing our use of your personal information for direct marketing purposes) and we do not believe that your interests or fundamental rights override (or outbalance) our legitimate interests.

Comply with legal requirements

We may sometimes need to process personal information to comply with legal requirements to which we are subject (for example tax or financial reporting requirements).

We need to handle your personal information for the purposes of complying with legal requirements to which we are subject.

Process your payments and protect against fraudulent transactions

We need to process your personal information to allow you to pay for any subscriptions and in order to keep your payments safe and secure and protect against fraudulent transactions.

It is in our legitimate interests to process personal information to process payments and keep our customers' payments secure and we do not believe that your interests or fundamental rights override (or outbalance) our legitimate interests.

Process your personal information where this is necessary to keep our websites safe and secure

We need to process your personal information in order to keep our websites safe and secure and protect against illegal or fraudulent activity such as cyber-attacks.

It is in our legitimate interests to monitor how our websites are used to detect and prevent fraud, other crimes and the misuse of our websites. This helps us to ensure that you can safely use our websites and we do not believe that your interests or fundamental rights override (or outbalance) our legitimate interests.

Keep an up to date suppression list where you have asked not to be contacted, so we do not inadvertently re-contact you

We understand that you may prefer for us not to contact you with details of our products, service, or promotions. We keep records of your preferences to ensure that we do not contact you if you have asked us not to. We may need to process some of your personal information (such as your name and e-mail address) in order to do this.

It is in our legitimate interests to process personal information in order to maintain an up to date suppression list and ensure that we do not contact you where you have asked us not to and we do not believe that your interests or fundamental rights override (or outbalance) our legitimate interests.

Who may use your personal information?

Your personal information is used by us and is shared with third parties in certain circumstances.

Our web site may contain links to the websites of partner networks, advertisers, and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that they will have their own privacy policies and that we have no control over how they may use your personal information. You should check the privacy polices of third party websites before you submit any personal information to them.

We may share your personal information with the following types of third party organisations:

Our service providers

We use other companies, agents or contractors (“Service Providers”) to perform services on our behalf or to assist us with the provision of our services to you. For example, we may use Service Providers to:

  • Provide marketing, advertising, communications, infrastructure and IT services;
  • Personalise and optimise our services;
  • Process credit and debit card transactions or other payment methods including bank transfer and PayPal transactions;
  • Provide customer service;
  • Collect debts.

In the course of providing such services, these Service Providers may have access to your personal information. However, we will only provide them with the information necessary for them to perform the services, and they are only authorised to use your personal information in accordance with our instructions.

Third parties permitted by law

In certain circumstances, we are required to disclose or share your personal information in order to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

We will also disclose your personal information to third parties where disclosure is both legally permissible and necessary to protect or defend our rights, enforce our Terms and Conditions, or protect your rights or those of the public.

Third parties connected with business transfers

We may need to transfer your personal information to third parties in connection with a reorganisation, restructuring, merger, acquisition or transfer of assets, provided that the receiving party agrees to treat your personal information in a manner consistent with this Privacy Policy. If we are involved in such a business transfer, you will be notified afterwards via e-mail and/or a prominent notice on our Sites of any change in ownership or uses of personal information as well as any choices that you may have regarding your personal information.

We will not sell your personal information to third parties.

Where we store your personal information

The personal information that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area ("EEA") (for example, in the USA). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA or one of our Service Providers.

Please be aware that countries which are outside the European Economic Area may not offer the same level of data protection as in the European Union, although our collection, storage and use of your personal data will continue to be governed by this privacy policy.

When transferring personal information outside the EEA, we will ensure that the country in which your personal information will be handled has been deemed "adequate" by the European Commission under Article 45 of the GDPR.

Your rights

You have the legal right to:

  • gain access to any personal information we hold about you;
  • update any of your personal information which is out of date or incorrect;
  • delete any personal information which we are holding about you;
  • restrict the way that we process your personal information;
  • prevent the processing of your personal information for direct-marketing purposes;
  • provide your personal information to a third-party provider of services;
  • provide you with a copy of any personal information which we hold about you;
  • object to our use of your personal information; or
  • give instructions on the management of your personal information after your death.

If you would like to request submit amendments you can do this by logging in to your control panel or by emailing mail@gites.co.uk. We will consider all such requests and provide our response within a reasonable period. Please note that certain personal information may be exempt from such requests in certain circumstances.

If an exception applies, we will tell you this when responding to your request. We may request you provide us with information necessary to confirm your identity before responding to any request you make.

Your right to have your information corrected, updated or deleted

If you have an account with us, you can sign into that account to update or delete some of your personal information.

If you have problems updating the information on your account or if you would like us to update or delete your information, please e-mail your request to mail@gites.co.uk.

Where we need to collect your personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you want to delete your personal information then we may not be able to perform the contract we have (for example, to provide you with an account). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

Your right to stop us from processing your personal information for direct-marketing purposes

You also have the right to ask us to stop processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes, including any profiling we undertake for the purposes of direct marketing. If you want to opt-out of our targeted advertising then please contact mail@gites.co.uk.

We will in any case only send you marketing communications if you have previously agreed to this, but if you change your mind you can easily unsubscribe from our marketing communications at any time by following the instructions included in these marketing communications. Members cannot opt out of essential service status or update announcements.

Your right to provide us with instructions on the management of your personal information after your death

You have the right to provide us with instructions on the management (e.g., retention, erasure and disclosure) of your data after your death. You can change or revoke your instructions at any time. Please contact mail@gites.co.uk with instructions.

How long do we keep your personal information?

Your personal Information is stored by us and/or our Service Providers, strictly to the extent necessary for the performance of our obligations and strictly for the time necessary to achieve the purposes for which the information is collected, in accordance with applicable data protection laws. When we no longer need to use your information, we will remove it from our systems and records and/or take steps to properly anonymise it so that you can no longer be identified from it (unless we need to keep your information to comply with legal or regulatory obligations to which we are subject). This means that, if you no longer have a live and valid entitlement to our services and you have not logged into our service for 5 years then we will take steps to delete or anonymise your personal information.

How do we keep your personal information secure?

Your personal information is collected via a secure server. The secure server software encrypts the information provided before transmitting it to us. In addition, we have security procedures in place to protect the storage of and prevent unauthorised access to your personal information. As part of our security measures, we may sometimes require you to give proof of your identity before we disclose personal information to you.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in response to changing legal, regulatory or operational requirements. We will notify you of any such changes (including when they will take effect).

Phew, all done! Lawyers: Don't you love 'em?!