Privacy Policy
Introduction
Your privacy is a very serious matter to Country House Escapes. We understand that booking online involves significant trust in us. We appreciate and value your trust and are committed to ensuring the security and confidentiality of your personal information. We will never sell your personal information. This document, which we update from time to time, describes how we use and process your personal information and how we use cookies and web beacons. It also tells you how you can contact us if you have questions about your personal information.
What kind of info do we collect?
Reservation Data
In order to process your reservation request, we must know basic information about you that can be used to identify you such as your full name, phone number, postal address, e-mail address, and billing information (such as credit card number, cardholder name, and expiration date). You may also choose to provide us with personal information about other members of your booking party. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have the other party’s permission to provide us with their personal information.
Website Browsing Information
We may automatically collect information about your computer when you visit our website. For example, we may collect your IP address and web browser software and information about your online activity, such as website pages viewed and reservations made. We use this automatic information to customize your user experience; to inhibit fraud; to serve advertisements, special offers and other information that may be of interest to you; and for other legitimate purposes we bring to your attention. If you are using a mobile device, we might also collect data that identifies your mobile device, device-specific settings and characteristics and latitude/longitude details.
We may also receive information about you, including photographs, when you interact with us via social media services. If you do not want us to collect or use this session information, you can access the accommodation we offer by booking with our Destination Experts by phone. Please email us at [email protected].
Why do we collect personal information?
We collect and use personal information about you to help you find the right accommodation options; to assist you in making bookings and any subsequent modifications or updates you may request; and to provide travel notifications. We use sensitive billing information (such as cardholder name, credit card number, and expiration date) for the purpose of completing the reservation requests you submit on our website.
We also use your information to communicate with you in general; to respond to your questions and comments; to troubleshoot any problems you may have with your booking, and to invite you to leave a review after your stay. If we receive your express consent, we may also use your information for marketing activities and for tailoring our products and services to suit your personal interests. For example we may email you to make it easy for you to take advantage of any special offers and products or services that may be of interest to you, and to send you regular newsletters. You will have the opportunity to choose not to receive these messages at the point of email collection and in any such email we send.
We may also use your information to contact you and ask for your help so that we may improve our products, service, and website. Lastly, we may use your information to prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities; to enforce our Terms of Use and to comply with our legal obligations.
Guest submissions
After your stay at any accommodation booked through us, you will be invited to submit a guest review, which may ask for information about the accommodation, the surrounding areas, and the destination. If you don’t want to use your name with the review, you can make use of a screen name or it can be displayed online anonymously. By completing a guest review, you are agreeing that it can be displayed (as further described in our Terms and Conditions) on, for example, the relevant accommodation information page on our websites, in our mobile apps, in our social media accounts and, or on the website of the relevant accommodation or on our business partner’s website, to inform other travellers about the quality and services at the accommodation you stayed in.
If you indicate that a guest review was helpful – or not helpful – we will aggregate this with feedback from other customers in order to sort and prioritize guest reviews. We may use the information in your shortlists or in other destination-related information you share with us in anonymous form to help other travelers to find the right destination.
Cookies
We use cookies for server diagnostic and website administration and maintenance purposes, for marketing and promotional purposes, to improve the site, to understand which areas of the site are used most often, to enhance your on-line experience, and to gather general demographic information. We also use cookies to deliver content specific to your interests.
A cookie is a small amount of data that is sent to your browser from a Web server and stored on your computer’s hard drive. Country House Escapes uses non-identifying cookies to provide easier site navigation and access to forms. Our cookies do not generate personal data, do not read personal data from your machine and are never tied to anything that could be used to identify you.
We are not set up to track, collect or distribute personal information not entered by visitors. Our site logs generate certain kinds of non-identifying site usage data, such as the number of hits and visits to our sites. This information is used for internal purposes by technical support staff to provide better services to the public and may also be provided to others, but again, the statistics contain no personal information and cannot be used to gather such information.
The Help portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. Please note that if you refuse to accept cookies from this site, you will not be able to access portions of our site.
Web beacons
Our website may also use Web beacons which are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, that are placed in the code of a Web page. We use Web beacons to monitor the traffic patterns of users from one page within our sites to another, to deliver or communicate with cookies, to understand whether you have come to our site from an online advertisement displayed on a third-party website, and to improve site performance. We also may allow our service providers to use Web beacons to help us understand which emails have been opened by recipients and to track the visitor traffic and actions on our site. This helps us measure the effectiveness of our content and other offerings.
If you do not want to accept cookies or Web beacons, you can access the accommodation we offer by booking with our Destination Experts by phone. If you have any questions about our use of cookies or other technologies, please email us at [email protected].
How do we use social media?
We use social media to promote our accommodation providers’ properties and to promote, improve and facilitate our own services. So when you click on one of the buttons and register with your social media account, information is shared with your social media provider, and possibly presented on your social media profile to be shared with others in your network. In addition to implementing these buttons, Country House Escapes uses social media by maintaining accounts on several social media sites. These social media services may allow you to share information with us. The information you choose to share with us may include the basic information that’s available in your social media profile, email address, status updates and your list of friends. This information is necessary to create a unique user experience.
Mobile devices
We use versions of our regular website that have been optimized for mobile devices. These mobile websites process the personal details you give us in much the same way as our website.
Who do we share your info with?
We do not and will never sell your personal information. In certain circumstances, we may share your personal information with third parties as described in this Privacy Promise.
We will share your information with our accommodation providers who fulfill your reservation requests. By sending us a reservation request you are authorizing us to disclose to our suppliers the information required to complete the booking. These suppliers are not controlled by Country House Escapes and personal information disclosed to them is subject to their applicable privacy policies and security practices. Therefore, we encourage you to review the privacy policies of any accommodation provider whose product you purchase through this site. Please note that these accommodation providers also may contact you as necessary to obtain additional information about you, facilitate your reservation, or respond to a review you may submit.
We will also share your information with third-parties who provide services or functions on our behalf, including credit card processing, marketing, distribution of surveys, and fraud prevention. We may also authorize third-party vendors to collect information on our behalf, including as necessary to operate features of our website or, as discussed below, to facilitate the delivery of online advertising tailored to your interests. Third-party vendors have access to and may collect information only as needed to perform their functions and are not permitted to share or use the information for any other purpose.
We may be required to disclose your personal information to law enforcement agencies and governments around the world for security, customs and immigration purposes. Such requirements may be in response to subpoenas, court orders, or other legal process; to establish or exercise our legal rights; to defend against legal claims; or as otherwise required by law. Also, when we believe it is appropriate to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal or suspected illegal activities; to protect and defend the rights, property, or safety of our company or this website, our guests, or others; and in connection with our Terms of Service and other agreements.
Your information may also be shared in connection with a corporate transaction, such as a divestiture, merger, consolidation, or asset sale. We may share aggregate or anonymous information with third parties, including advertisers and investors. This information does not contain any personal information and is used to develop content and services we hope you will find of interest. As discussed above, you can choose not to provide us with any information, although it may be needed to book accommodation. You also can add or update information at any time by emailing us at [email protected].
Security procedures to safeguard personal information
We want you to feel confident about using this website to make reservation requests, and we are committed to protecting the information we collect. We have implemented appropriate business procedures, including security, technical, and physical restrictions to help protect the personal information you provide to us. In addition, we use encryption when transmitting your sensitive personal information between your system and ours, and we employ firewalls and intrusion detection systems to help prevent unauthorized persons from gaining access to your information. However, please note that no electronic transmission of information can be entirely secure. We cannot guarantee that the security measures we have in place to safeguard personal information will never be defeated or fail, or that those measures will always be sufficient or effective. For additional details about the security measures we have implemented to safeguard personal information, please see our Security Protocols.
Children
At Country House Escapes we do not direct our website nor offer services to children. When we receive information from someone we believe to be under 18 years of age we contact that individual only to let them know that our service is unavailable to them and promptly delete any personal information that the individual has provided to us.
Data storage outside of Canada
Please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored in, and processed in the United States, where our servers are located and our central database is operated, as well as other countries. The data protection and other laws of the United States and these other countries might not be as comprehensive as those in your country. By using our services, you understand that your information may be transferred to our facilities and those third parties with whom we share it as described in this Policy.
Changes to this privacy policy
We may update this Privacy Policy in the future. We will notify you about material changes to this Privacy Policy by sending a notice to the email address you provided to us or by placing a prominent notice on our website.
How you can contact us
You always have the right to review the personal information we keep about you. You can request an overview of your personal data by emailing us at [email protected]. Please write ‘Request personal information’ in the subject line of your email and include a copy of your identity card to help us prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing your personal data.
This Privacy Promise is effective as of 1 March, 2014
