MyHotels Website Privacy Policy

Introduction

This website is operated by Hotels Limited, a company registered in Malta and having its registered address at St Julian’s Bay Hotel, 48, Main Street, St Julian’s (hereinafter referred to as “we”, “us” or “MyHotels”) and we are a data controller for the purposes of the Malta Data Protection Act 2018 (Chapter 586 of the Laws of Malta) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR). This means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, the personal information you provide to us when using this website in accordance with this privacy policy. We have created this privacy policy statement in order to demonstrate our commitment to the privacy of our customers.

By making use of our services, including our websites (including our mobile site), our social media pages, our telephone reservations line and any other MyHotels service, you are acknowledging that we are processing your personal information and, where necessary consenting to such practices, as outlined in this statement.

If you are using our website to apply for a career with us, such activities are governed by a separate privacy statement which outlines how we process your personal information for these purposes and your rights in relation to the same.

Personal information which we collect

We collect personal information about you (and others if their personal information is provided by you) when you:

1. make or manage a booking either personally or as a guest of another guest;
2. sign up to receive promotions from us (in line with Marketing below);
3. engage with us to receive helpdesk services (such as by contacting our customer services department, through the “Contact Us” form on our website
4. post material to our website and / or social media page;
5. complete customer feedback or surveys as part of your stay at one of our hotels;
6. register at the reception or kiosks in one of our hotels;
7. raise a complaint or dispute with us and/or are involved in an incident at our premises (e.g. in relation to health and safety reporting);
8. speak to one of our representatives, call centre agents or members of our customer services or marketing representatives;
9. participate in competitions or promotions;
10. and / or use our website and customer applications in any other way.

The personal information collected in the above manner may include the following about you (and others if their personal information is provided by you):

1. full name;
2. postal address;
3. email address;
4. telephone number;
5. payment details;
6. geo-location;
7. dispute resolution information;
8. supplementary information (dietary and other preferences and special requirements);
9. behavioural data (tags and cookies – see Cookies section below);
10. identification information (such as passports, drivers’ licences or national identity cards).

Personal information provided by third parties

We may receive information about you through third parties (such as travel agents), however, we are not responsible for third parties’ use of your personal data where such use is permitted for their own purposes and you should consult their respective privacy policies for further information.

We may also obtain information about you from social media providers such as Facebook and Twitter or from third party websites where you have left feedback about us (for example on TripAdvisor).

How we use your information

We will collect personal information:

• In order to take the necessary steps in preparation of, or to fulfil our obligations under, a booking contract:

1. Bookings and payments– provide communications about bookings, products and services being provided to you (and others if their personal information is provided by you);

1. Bookings and account updates– send details of new, amended or cancelled bookings– usually via email;

1. Update you on matters affecting your booking– contact you (and others if their personal information is provided by you) in the event of a change that affects a booking or any data or personal information you have provided us with, such as changes to terms and conditions of booking or this privacy policy;

1. Website service communication– provide notifications of any changes to our website or to our services that may affect you (and others if their personal information is provided by you);

1. Customer service communication– provide you with requested information or correspondence, or a response from us to an enquiry made by you;

1. To provide assistance in completing bookings– send reminder emails to continue with a booking on our websites or mobile app but is not paid and completed;

2) With your consent (which consent may be withdrawn at any time should you wish to do so):

1. Marketing communications– create a profile about you for marketing purposes to tailor our communications to you. We may use automated processes to do this;

1. Promotional offers– inform you about promotional offers and other products or services that may be of interest (in line with Marketing communications above);

1. Maintain records indicating your consent to status– to ensure we accurately reflect your wishes when communicating to you;

3)  In our legitimate interest (*) improve our services:

1. Market research– to contact you (and others if their personal information is provided by you) to ask about the experience using our hotels and services as part of a continual programme of customer service improvement. This is not marketing communication and is separate to Marketing communications above. We may use third parties such as for example TripAdvisor to provide such market research communications to you on our behalf;

1. Website customisation– to customise our website and its contents to your particular preferences in accordance with the Cookies section below;

1. Product and service improvement– to improve our product and services;

1. Service analysis– to conduct research, statistical analysis and behavioural analysis. This may include providing aggregate statistical information relating to customers, sales, traffic patterns and related site information to reputable third parties.

(*) any reliance on legitimate interest shall not prejudice your interest or fundamental rights and freedoms.

4)  In order to meet our legal obligations, such as tax and other regulatory obligations;

Marketing

If we have obtained your consent, we may periodically send promotional material to you about new products, special offers or other information which we think you may find interesting.

We will always ask your permission before sending you email marketing information. We do this by asking for your positive confirmation – by ticking a box – indicating that you wish to receive marketing and you can opt out at any time (please see ‘The right for your consent to be withdrawn’ below for further information). This ensures you only receive information that you have given us permission to send and are willing to receive.

Please note that we do not want to send you information that you do not want to receive and you can opt out at any time (please see ‘The right for your consent to be withdrawn’ below for further information).

We may use your information to create a profile about you in order to tailor, by automated means, our communication and marketing to you. You can object to such profiling, please see ‘The right to object to automated decision making / profiling’ below).

From time to time, we may also use your information to contact you for research purposes and / or to ask about your experience using our hotels and services as part of a continual programme of customer service improvement. We may contact you by email, telephone, text, social media and / or mail. We may also use the information to customise the website according to your interests.

How long we will keep your personal information

We retain your information for a range of purposes which determine the period of time for which we need to keep such information. For example (list is not exclusive):

We will remove your data from our systems at the end of the applicable data retention periods, unless we are required by current or future law to retain your personal information for a longer period.

Our approach to information security

To protect your information, MyHotels has policies and practices in place to make sure that only authorised personnel can access the information, that information is handled and stored in a secure and sensible manner and all systems that can access the information have proportionate and reasonable security measures in place. To achieve this, employees, contractors, sub-contractors and third party suppliers have contracts, with defined roles and responsibilities.

While we take commercially reasonable measures to ensure the safety and security of your data, due to the inherent risks with the Internet, we are unable to warranty the absolute security of your data when using our services.

Transfers of your information out of the EEA

We may from time to time need to transfer your personal information to support partners which are located outside the European Economic Area, for the purpose of ensuring our websites are operating correctly or in relation to third parties to whom we share your data. Any transfer of your data will be subject to adequate levels of protection that will safeguard your privacy rights and give you remedies in the unlikely event of a security breach.

Your rights

In order to process any of the requests listed below, we may need to verify your identity for your security. In such cases your response will be necessary for you to exercise this right.

I)       The right to access information we hold about you

At any point you can contact us to request details concerning the information we hold about you, why we have that information, who has access to the information and where we got the information. In most cases you may be entitled to copies of the information we hold concerning you. Once we have received your request we will respond within 15 days.

II)     The right to correct and update the information we hold about you

If the data we hold about you is out of date, incomplete or incorrect, you can inform us and we will ensure that it is updated.

III)   The right to have your information deleted

If you feel that we should no longer be using your data or that we are illegally using your data, you can request that we delete the data we hold about you. When we receive your request, we will confirm whether the data has been deleted or tell you the reason why it cannot be deleted.

IV)   The right to object to processing of your data

You have the right to request that MyHotels stops processing your data. Upon receiving the request, we will contact you to tell you if we are able to comply or if we have legitimate grounds to continue. If data is no longer processed, we may continue to hold your data to comply with your other rights.

V)    The right for your consent to be withdrawn

If you have consented to us sending you marketing communications, you have the right to request that we stop contacting you with such communications. On promotional emails we provide an ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of the email which will unsubscribe you from that service. If you wish to opt out with respect to more than one email address, you must complete a separate request for each email address.

Please note it is not possible to ‘opt-out’ of receiving communication from us which relates to your bookings or customer satisfaction surveys sent as part of the booking (which are not considered marketing for these purposes). This ensures that we can always contact you as a result of circumstances that may affect your stay with us and in order for us to improve our services going forward.

VI)    The right to data portability

You have the right to request that we transfer your data to another controller. Once we have received your request, we will comply where it is feasible to do so.

VII)   The right to object to automated decision making / profiling

You have the right to request that we stop profiling you in relation to our direct marketing practice. You can inform us and we will deal with your request accordingly.

VIII)  The right to complain

You can make a complaint to us by contacting us via stjuliansbay@myhotelsmalta.com or to the data protection supervisory authority – in Malta this is the Information and Data Protection Commissioner’s Office – https://idpc.org.mt/en/Pages/Home.aspx.

Consent

In those cases where we need your consent to process your information, we will ask you to make a positive indication. By actively providing us with your consent, you are stating that you have been informed as to the type of personal information that will be processed, the reasons for such processing, how it will be used, for how long it will be kept, who else will have access to it and what your rights are as a data subject and that you have read and understood this privacy policy.

Sharing your information

The information and data we collect is important for MyHotels and we understand that you care about the use and storage of your personal information we value your trust in allowing us to do this. We would not want to share this with anyone else unless we have your express consent, we will never disclose, rent, trade or sell your personal information to any third parties for their marketing purposes.

We do disclose or transfer your data or personal information to other companies, data processors or agents employed by us to perform any necessary functions on our behalf (such as hosting and maintaining our website, providing us with data management systems, market research, customer satisfaction surveys and support services) but they are bound by similar terms to those set out in our privacy policy and may not use this information for their own purposes.

In the event that MyHotels or any part of its business is sold to or integrated with another business, MyHotels may disclose your personal information to the new owners (and their professional advisers on the transaction) to be used by the new owners and their group of companies in the same ways as set out in this privacy policy, including to continue providing you with the same services and marketing information services as are currently provided by MyHotels.

We may also provide aggregate statistics about our customers, sales, traffic patterns and related site information to reputable third parties in order to better understand our services, website and overall customer satisfaction which may include personal data.

Cookies

The MyHotels websites use cookies and tags. A cookie is a small text file that can be stored by your browser on the device you use to access internet and allows the browser to pass small amounts of information about user behaviour on the given website to a web server. Tags are pieces of code that exist on web pages and collect information about usage of the web pages.

At MyHotels we use our own cookies and tags as well as those from third parties to enable the smooth operation of the websites. We also use cookies/tags to monitor visits to our website and continuously look for places to improve your website experience. Our marketing partners also use cookies and tags to monitor the performance of our advertising and to serve appropriate MyHotels advertisements to you on other websites. We will never share any personal information about you with these third parties and the cookies and tags used maintain your anonymity.

Cookie Consent

The first time you access a MyHotels website, you will be informed about our use of cookies to improve your site experience. By continuing to browse our website you consent to our use of cookies.

Description of cookies

How to reject and delete cookies

Should you wish to reject or block the use of cookies, you can do so at any time, usually by going on ‘Settings’ on your selected browser. Cookies are specific to individual browsers so if you use more than one browser, you will need to delete cookies on each browser. Please be aware though that by rejecting cookies you may not receive the optimum website experience.

Contact details

If you have any queries about this policy, need further information or wish to lodge a complaint you can use the details below to contact us.

MyHotels Limited (C-51590)

St Julian’s Bay Hotel

Censu Tabone Street

St Julians

Malta STJ1217

Email: stjuliansbay@myhotelsmalta.com

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may change this policy from time to time. You should check this policy occasionally to ensure that you are aware of the most recent version that will apply each time you access the website.