+44 (0)1224 323 505 info@atholl-aberdeen.co.uk

Privacy and Cookie Policy

Summary

This Privacy and Cookie Policy describes how we collect, use, share, store or otherwise process the information we hold about you.
Your personal information allows us to provide the products and services you have asked for, as well as enabling us to improve those products and services by understanding your interests and preferences. By understanding what you like (and what you don’t) we are able to personalise your experience, show relevant adverts and improve your stay.

Who we are

The Atholl Hotel (“we”, “our”, “us”) is the data controller when you provide information to us.

Legal basis for using your information

All organisations need a legal reason to use your personal information, if they don’t have one, they can’t use it. There are a number of legal grounds that enable data processing. It’s quite complicated but below are the most relevant grounds you should be aware of.

To fulfil a contract (A)

We also process your personal information in order to fulfil a contract we have with you. For example, when you book a stay with us, we will process your information to administer that stay.

For a legitimate interest (LI)

Sometimes we may use your information to help achieve our business objectives but only where that activity doesn’t negatively affect your rights. For example, we might use your information to analyze occupancy rates of our hotel and adjust room rates.

To comply with legal obligations (LO)

There may be situations where we need to use your information to comply with legal obligations. For example, we are required by law to keep records of who is in our hotels in case there is an emergency, so we can make sure you’re safe.

What information do we collect?

When you interact with our products and services we collect information about you and that particular interaction. Generally this may include:

  • Your personal details;
  • Contact information, and preferences;
  • More sensitive information, for example when you tell us about dietary requirements, disabilities, and religious beliefs;
  • Images of you in areas of our hotels covered by CCTV;
  • Information about anyone you’re travelling with or meeting, if that information is provided to us; and
  • Information about the devices you use to interact with us.

Where you provide information to us about other people, you need to make sure you have their permission to do so.

When and how we collect your information

We collect information you provide to us directly and indirectly when interacting with our products and services, including when you stay with us.

  • This may include when you:
  • Book a room online, over email or on the phone;
  • Create, use or manage an online account;
  • Visit our website
  • Visit our hotel or use our hotel services, like room service
  • Access hotel internet;
  • Use our restaurant;
  • Use social media login functionality;
  • Post reviews of your stay or interaction with us; and
  • Enter competitions or promotions.

Our processors

We also receive information about you indirectly when you interact with us. For example, when you visit our websites or use our apps the devices you use may provide us with your general location (like which country or region you’re in), if you are using ad-blockers, and your IP address. We may also receive information from cookies and other technologies that are on your device or browser. For more information on our use of cookies, please see the section on cookies.

Travel agents and partners

We collect information about you when it is provided to us by third parties. This might include online travel agents, travel websites, and other partners. This could be when you make bookings, review your stay online, or where you interact with our anyone who promote our brands. You should always read the privacy policies of travel companies or other third parties you use, as they will use your information in accordance with their own privacy policies.

When you, or someone on your behalf, make a booking using travel agent, booking platform or other third party to use our services, they may pass us information about your booking, including information about anyone else on that booking. The same would be true where you use a third party to make enquiries about our products or services.

Where you interact with third parties who promote our services for us, these third parties may pass us your information.
When you post comments, reviews, or engage in discussions and polls about our products and services, we may receive this information from the platform you interacted with or from our partners who monitor how our brands are performing.

How we use your personal information

The reason we use your information will often be obvious from the way you interact with us. For example, if you book a room at one of our hotels, we would use that information to administer your stay with us.

Use of personal information Legal basis for processing (where there is more than one, the exact grounds will depend on the activity – see the section above for an explanation of each) 
Provide you with the products and services you have requested, including administering your booking, responding to any enquiries, complaints or requests you may have C, LI, A 
To manage our relationship with you C, LI, A
Tailor our service to your preferences, where you tell us about them LI,C,A
Improve our products and services online and offline, including our website LI
Allow you to interact with us online and offline, in forums, on social media and elsewhere LI, C,A
Conduct analysis, system testing and statistical research  LI, LO
Comply with legal obligations on us LO, LI
Detect ad blockers and other technologies that affect the services we provide LI,A,C
Manage our hotels efficiency, including regulating the use of utilities light lighting and heating based on occupancy LI
Send you product or service related communications, service messages LO, LI,C,A
Send you direct marketing, where you have consented  C,LI
Allow social sharing functionality  C,LI,A
Keep guests safe and ensure the security of our hotels LO,LI
Ensure the acceptable use of our services LI,LO
Facilitate payments and credit checks LO,A,C,LI
Investigate and respond to disputes LI, LO, C
Provide you with help and support where it may be required. For example, we contact you to provide assistance if you do not complete the booking process or experience technical difficulties, where we have your contact details LI,A

Further Information on how we use your information

We sometimes use your information for reasons that we think you might want a bit more detail on, so to help we have added more information to these below.

Profiling and preferences

We sometimes make decisions about what your interests are based on the way that you interact with us and the information we hold about you, this is called profiling. For example, if you regularly stay at a particular hotel or frequently choose a specific room or pillow type, then we might use this information improve your experience by pre-selecting certain features of your stay for you, so you don’t need to. Understanding your preferences and personalising your experience in this way allows us to deliver the very best service possible.

Do not track signals or browser/device settings

Our websites are not designed to respond to “do not track” signals or browser/device settings.

Direct marketing

Direct marketing communications may be sent by post, email, telephone, SMS and MMS, through social media (such as Whatsapp, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook), messages including push notifications to your mobile devices, and via other electronic means such as when you visit our websites or use our apps. This may also include any websites and apps of our partners who are in our advertising networks.

Product related communications and “in-life” updates

We may use your information to send you newsletters, bulletins, and other “in-life” communications (about your stay), and triggered communications where you make changes to your account or other information about products and services you have signed up for.

For example, we may send you email or text messages about an upcoming stay with us in order to help you plan your visit and give you the best experience possible. You’ll be able to opt-out of these.

Service communications will be sent to you regarding products and services you interact with. These are important messages relating to the products and services we provide to you.

Analysis and product development

We may use your information to improve the products and services we offer. For example, we may look at the preferences our guests have when they stay with us to offer more relevant personalization to customers.

Linked services, third party sites and content

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to other websites which are outside of our control and are not covered by this Policy. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for other sites’ privacy policies. If you access other websites using the links provided, please check their policies before submitting any personal information.

Payments and credit checks

Your information may be used to take payment for products and services and may be used to verify credit details related to payments.

Disclosures required by law

Your information will be disclosed where we are obliged by law to do so. We may also disclose your information where we are allowed by law to protect or enforce our rights or the rights of others and for the detection and prevention of crimes, such as fraud.

Acceptable usage If you post or send offensive or inappropriate content anywhere on or to any of our websites or apps, or otherwise engage in disruptive behaviour on any of our websites or apps, we may use the information that is available to us about you to stop such behaviour. This may involve responding to or informing relevant third parties and law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour.

Data Transfers

When you give us information about other individuals, you confirm that you have authority to act for them and have made them aware of the potential transfer of their information outside the EEA.

Social media login

Our websites and apps provide plug-ins to social media websites, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

If you make use of, or log-in to, the social media features on our websites or apps, we may (depending on your privacy settings) access, use and store information about you, including, but not limited to: your name, e-mail address, gender, location, profile, picture, contacts, and any other information you have chosen to make available.

How we share your personal information

Where you provide your information to us we do not share it with any third parties.

Sale of our business

If we restructure or sell all or part of our business or business operations, we may transfer your information as part of that activity, including, but not limited to, where we transfer or cease to manage (or license the use of a brand at) a hotel. Where this is the case your information will be used in accordance with this Policy unless you are notified otherwise.

Access and Control

Updating your information

Please ensure you keep your information up to date by logging into your account and modifying it. Alternatively you can tell us when you check-in that your information has changed and we will update it for you.

Controlling direct marketing

You can change your mind about receiving direct marketing from us or change your preferences by logging into your account, if you have one. Opting-out in any marketing or product communication you have received from us or emailing us using the contact details below.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files placed on your devices when you visit websites via internet browsers. Our use of cookies is to primarily help enhance your user experience and improve the efficiency of our website. In order to make purchases on our website and for an optimal user experience, you will need to enable cookies.

What cookies do we use?

Essential cookies

These make our websites work. They remember what dates you want to stay with us, what sort of room you want and that you are logged in to your account. They also allow us to collect information about your use of our websites and apps, enabling us to improve the way they work. analytics cookies also allow us to see if there are any technical issues on our websites and if you are experiencing any issues using our websites. They also allow us to look at usage statistics and performance. We use Google Analytics to help us understand how you use our services. For more information on Google Analytics, please visit Google’s website.

Functional cookies

These cookies collect information about the language you have requested the site display content in, remembering your username so you can log-in more quickly, text size, location you are in and generally allow us to customise your experience. Nobody likes having to repeat themselves and these cookies help with that.

Tracking and advertising cookies and similar technologies

We use these types of cookies and similar technologies to provide adverts that we think may be more relevant to your interests. This can be based on your browsing activity and is known as Online Behavioural Advertising or OBA. Cookies are placed on your browser, which remembers what websites you’ve been to. Advertising based on what you have been viewing is then displayed.

Web beacons and tracking pixels

These technologies help us to count users on a web page, and see if a cookie has been activated. They allow us to see how popular content is and if an email has been delivered to a recipient, opened and links clicked on. We use this information to track how successful campaigns have been.

Flash cookies – Sometimes we may use flash players to deliver special content, such as video clips. This uses Local Shared Objects or flash cookies to remember settings. Device Fingerprinting – Sometimes we may use a device’s browser information to identify that device, conduct analysis, help detect and prevent fraud and and present content correctly. We also use cookies and similar technologies to:

  • Allow you access to our websites;
  • Permit your internet connection to our websites;
  • Allow our servers to record information about your device (such as IP address, browser type, location, hardware and software information;
  • Collect unique device identifier (UDID), geo-location and other transactional data to validate free trials when you use a mobile device;
  • Assess contage usage;
  • Provide relevant content;
  • Sell third party advertising and enable frequency capping;

Managing cookies

You can change your cookie settings very easily in your browser settings. However, you need to be careful about restricting the use of cookies, as they may prevent the websites you visit from working as they were intended.
You can also control which companies set cookies on your devices by visiting the following pages. Please note that you will need to turn off any ad blockers or privacy tools to see what cookies are being set:

Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) Your Online Choices is an industry programme that allows you to control which companies can set cookies and show you advertising. It provides you an easy way of opting out several advertising networks.

The Network Advertising Initiative control page also allows you to control OBA from the advertising networks they represent.
The Digital Advertising Alliance’s control page also allows you to control cookies too.

It is important to remember that these schemes use cookies to remember that you have opted-out of cookies being placed on your browsers. If you clear your cache, the opt-outs will be forgotten and you will have to opt-out again.

You can stop web beacons being set, although you cannot decline receiving them in emails. For information about managing these, please visit https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies/

Changes to our Privacy and Cookie Policy

From time to time we may make changes to this Policy. This might be in relation to changes in the law, best practice, changes to the services we provide or collection and use of your personal information. We will always display clearly when the Policy was last updated and where appropriate, notify you of any relevant changes.