Privacy Statement
The International Association of Hotel General Managers, a company incorporated and registered in the Cayman Islands, and its global subsidiaries (who we refer to as "we", "us" and "our" below), are committed to upholding your privacy as a valued member, prospective member, customer or user of this website.
This Privacy Statement explains what personal information we collect, how and when it is collected, what we use it for now and how we will use it in the future, and details of the circumstances in which we may disclose it to third parties. Whenever you give us personal information, you are consenting to its collection and use as explained at the time of collection and in this Policy, including our use of ‘cookies’. Please note that not all information you provide us may be subject to legal protection according to the jurisdiction in which you are providing the information in or from, although we treat all information received from you under this Privacy Statement.
If you have any questions about the way in which your information is being collected or used which are not answered by this Privacy Statement and/or any complaints please contact us on membership@hotelgms.com.
By visiting and using www.hotelgms.com (the "Website") or any other application or website connected to the Website for the purpose of e-commerce, data collection or information ("Applications") you acknowledge that you have read, understood and are consenting to the practices in relation to the use and disclosure of your personal information described in this Privacy Statement and our Terms and Conditions. This Website and the Applications are not intended for the use of individuals under the age of 18.
WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT AND HOW WILL WE USE IT?
We may collect certain personal information from you, for example, your name, postal address, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, employer/s, position and date of birth. We may also obtain information about you as a result of authentication or identity checks. When you order certain goods and services through the Website and Applications you will be asked for further information such as your credit card details and expiry date and to verify the delivery address where relevant.
We use this information to identify you, to deliver material, to process payments, to update our records, to enable your use of interactive features of our service, and to generally manage your relationship with us. If you have consented, we will also use the information to provide you with information by post, e-mail, mobile messaging, telephone communications and/or through any other electronic means including social network platforms about our services, events, and benefits.
We may also at times ask you for other information, for example, preferences and any special dates which will be used to enhance our service to you. Providing us with this sort of information is entirely voluntary, however we may not be able to provide certain benefits if you do not provide us with all the requested information.
We may also use your personal information for our internal marketing and demographic studies, together with non-personal data to analyse, profile and monitor member patterns so we can consistently improve our services and understand what may be of interest to you and other members.
We may also use this information to tailor how our website appears to you and to tailor the contents of our communications with you, so as to make the website and those communications more relevant to you. When you visit the Website, your Internet Protocol (‘IP’) address and other information relating to your visit will be tracked by a method called URL Rewriting where the link (URL) to any page on the site has a unique session ID appended to it.
All users of the information we collect will be required to comply with our strict privacy requirements, and to demonstrate that they follow best practice guidelines for data protection.
HANDLING OF PAYMENT INFORMATION
When you order certain goods and services through the Website and Applications you will be asked for further information such as your credit or debit card details and expiry date and to verify the delivery address where relevant. Credit or debit card details will NOT be stored by the Association and will NOT be passed to third parties.
In most cases, credit or debit card details will only be requested through secure portals provided by our banking partner or that of third parties, and will not be requested by the Association or third parties through any other channel. We encourage you to confirm the security of the webpage according to the normal international banking protocols which are in place from time to time.
The Association will NEVER ask you for banking passwords, pin numbers or any security related information regarding online banking or payments by email, phone or any other method.
If you have any doubts about a request for credit or debit card details, please contact us before sharing any such information.
RETENTION AND DELETION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We shall only keep your information as long as you remain an active member, subject to any third party or regulatory requirements to hold information for a certain period of time.
If you wish to request the deletion or amendment of your personal details, or wish to change your preferences at any time please contact us on membership@hotelgms.com
We will at all times seek to comply with the requirements of information privacy and data protection legislation in force to ensure that the personal information you give us is kept appropriately secure and processed fairly and lawfully.
OTHER PEOPLE WHO MIGHT USE YOUR INFORMATION
We may also share information with third party suppliers such as contractors, agents or professional advisers appointed by us to assist us in providing services, facilities and products. In no other case, unless obliged to do so by law, will we sell, rent, lease or otherwise share your information with third parties, unless you have provided your specific, positive and unambiguous consent.
All credit/debit cards details and personally identifiable information will be used only as per this Privacy Statement and will NOT be sold, shared, rented or leased to any third parties.
You also acknowledge and agree that in certain circumstances we may disclose personal information relating to you to third parties in order to conform to any requirements of law, to comply with any legal process, for the purposes of obtaining legal advice, for the purposes of credit risk reduction, to prevent and detect fraud and/or to protect and defend our rights and property. At all times where we disclose your information for the purposes of credit risk reduction and fraud prevention we will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that it remains secure.
SURVEYS
We may from time to time invite you to participate in surveys through an online or other communication channel. Anonymity of individual respondents and protection of personal details will be maintained except where you have expressly granted permission to the contrary. Information gathered through surveys will be researched and compiled on an aggregated basis and results may be published on www.hotelgms.com or elsewhere. Such results will not identify you.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
We may supplement your personal data with other information about you we have received from third parties, provided that they have obtained and shared that information with us in a manner that is compliant with all relevant laws and codes. For instance, a third party may be used to verify your payment details. We may also combine information about your purchasing habits with similar information about you to create a personalised user profile. We can then use this to send you communications which are more likely to be of interest to you.
OPTING OUT
You may at any time opt out of any future communication, digital or non-digital, promotional or non-promotional. If you wish to opt out of receiving postal communications please contact us on membership@hotelgms.com. If you wish to opt out of email communications please use the ‘Unsubscribe’ link provided and follow the instructions.
COOKIES
A cookie is a small piece of data that is sent from our web server to your browser when you visit www.hotelgms.com. It is stored on your hard drive. There are several types of cookie that are used to keep track of information needed by a site user as they travel from page to page within a website. We use a method called URL Rewriting where the link (URL) to any page on the site has a unique session identifier (session ID) appended to it. This allows www.hotelgms.com to track a user's behaviour during each visit to the website (session) without the need to write a temporary cookie to their PC's hard drive.
Other types of cookie can be used to track internet activity after the user has left a website. These are normally facilitated by organisations external to the website being visited and are generally known as ‘third party’ cookies. These usually have a long lifetime with several months being quite common. They are "harvested" and "refreshed" whenever the user visits a page where the same or a similar cookie is being used. We currently have a third party cookie written from www.hotelgms.com as follows:
We currently use Google Analytics to measure and analyse visitor information related to our web site. For that purpose, your IP address, Internet traffic data and data on your browser type and PC are collected. We will not use any of this data to identify you personally, it is used only to monitor and improve the Website.
Internet browsers normally accept cookies by default, but it is possible to set a browser to reject cookies. If this is done it is important not to exclude the benign and useful cookies. Choose an option that rejects all third party and long-lived cookies.
CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY STATEMENT
We reserve the right to modify, alter or otherwise update this Privacy Statement at any time and users are encouraged to review this Privacy Statement from time to time. The amended Privacy Statement will be posted on the Website. Please check this page regularly for changes to this Privacy Statement. If you continue to use the Website or if you submit information to us following such changes, you will be deemed to have read and agreed them.
THIRD PARTY LINKS
The Website and/or Applications may from time to time contain links to other websites not controlled by us. We do not accept responsibility or liability for the privacy practices, data collected or the content of such other websites. The operators of these linked websites are not under a duty to abide by this Privacy Statement. If there are terms and conditions, other privacy statements or policies appearing on those websites, you should also review them carefully as your use of those sites may be subject to them.
SECURITY STATEMENT
Unfortunately transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal data we cannot guarantee the security of your data submitted to us and any transmission is at your own risk. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your passwords in your possession and/or any account information in your control.
We do however use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorized access wherever possible. Personal information provided to us via the Website or via any Applications and online credit card transactions are transmitted through a secure server using Secure Socket Layering (SSL), encryption technology. When the letters "http" in the URL change to "https," the "s" indicates you are in a secure area employing SSL; also, your browser may give you a pop-up message that you are about to enter a secure area or display a padlock image.
The Website and the Applications use this encryption technology to protect your information during data transport. SSL encrypts ordering information such as your name, address and credit card number. However, please note that e-mail is not encrypted and is not considered to be a secure means of transmitting credit card information.
