Introduction
This website is operated by Sandy Mount House (“we”, “us”, “Sandy Mount House” or “SMH”) and we are a controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679. 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.
SMH understand that customers care about the use and storage of their personal information and we value your trust in allowing us to do this in a careful and sensible manner. We have created this privacy policy statement in order to demonstrate our commitment to the privacy of our customers.
By using SMH, our website (including our mobile site), our social media pages, our telephone reservations line and any other SMH 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 employment vacancies, such activities are governed by a separate privacy policy which outlines how we process your personal information for these purposes and your rights in relation to the same. This separate privacy policy is available upon request.
Personal information which we collect:
We collect personal information about you (and others if their personal information is provided by you) when you:
- make or manage a booking either personally or as a guest of another guest.
- request a brochure.
- sign up for our newsletter and other marketing emails (in line with Marketing below).
- engage with us to receive helpdesk services (such as by contacting our customer services department, through the “Contact Us” form on our website or by calling our telephone number (which may be recorded).
- post material to our website and / or social media page;
- complete customer feedback or surveys as part of your stay at SMH.
- register at reception when checking in at SMH.
- raise a complaint or dispute with us or are involved in a legally recordable incident at our premises (e.g. in relation to health and safety reporting);
- speak to one of our representatives, employees or PR team.
- participate in competitions or promotions.
- 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):
- full name
- postal address
- email address
- telephone number
- payment details
- geo-location
- machine identifiers (such as IP addresses)
- dispute resolution information
- disability and health information
- supplementary information (dietary and other preferences and special requirements)
- image data
- behavioural data (tags and cookies – see Cookies and Tracking section below)
- voice recordings; and
- identification information (such as passports, drivers’ licences or national identity cards)
Personal information provided by third parties
We may receive information about you from other sources (such as the Mail Preference Service), which we will add to the information we already hold about you in order to help us provide our products and services in accordance with your requirements and to ensure that the quality of data we have on your account(s) is maintained properly.
We may also obtain information about you from social media providers such as Twitter and Facebook or from third party websites where you have left commentary or 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
- Bookings and payments – provide communications about bookings, products and services being provided to you (and others if their personal information is provided by you)
- 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
- 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)
- Customer service communication – provide you with requested information or correspondence, such as a venue brochure or a response from us to an enquiry made by you
- To provide assistance in completing online bookings
With your consent:
- Marketing communications – create a profile about you for marketing purposes to tailor our communications to you. We may use automated processes to do this
- Promotional offers – inform you about promotional offers and other products or services that may be of interest (in line with Marketing communications above)
- Maintain records indicating your consent to status – to ensure we accurately reflect your wishes when communicating to you
In our legitimate interest* improve our services:
- Market research – to contact you (and others if their personal information is provided by you) to ask about the experience at SMH 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 for example TripAdvisor to provide such market research communications to you on our behalf.
- Website customisation – to customise our website and its content to your particular preferences in accordance with the Cookies and Tracking section below.
- Customer support – monitor calls and help train staff in relation to our customer support and helpdesk function.
- Product and service improvement – to improve our product and services.
- 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.
In our legitimate interest* to protect against fraud:
- Website improvement and fraud prevention – improve our website, prevent or detect fraud or abuses of our website and enable third parties to carry out technical, logistical or other functions on our behalf.
- Security – carry out security checks when allowing you access to our services and to block fraudulent or suspected fraudulent activity.
In order to meet our legal obligations:
- Taxation – ensure we meet our tax and other regulatory obligations;
- Registration – ensure local jurisdiction regulations are complied with (where registration is necessary in such jurisdictions).
*any reliance on legitimate interest shall not prejudice your interest or fundamental rights and freedoms.
Marketing
We may periodically send promotional material to you about new products, special offers or other information which we think you may find interesting based on the profile we have created about you to the email addresses and phone numbers which you have provided.
If these are similar to products, services and bookings previously supplied by us to you, we will assume, under our legitimate interests to promote similar goods and services, that you are willing to receive this information unless you tell us otherwise.
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 to ask us to stop contacting you with direct marketing’ below for further information).
We will always ask your permission before sending you email marketing information. We do this by asking for your positive confirmation (e.g. by providing a tick or inserting your contact details in the relevant boxes) indicating that you wish to receive marketing and you can opt out at any time (please see ‘The right to ask us to stop contacting you with direct marketing’ below for further information). This ensures you only receive information that you have given us permission to send and are willing to receive.
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):
Recorded telephone conversations: 7 days from the day of call received
For the purposes of marketing: 3 years from the point of last contact with you, this may include use of our websites, stays in our hotels or responses to communications with you
For compliance with legal obligations arising from contracts entered into with you, for example tax regulations: 7 years from date of last transaction
Our approach to information security
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.
To protect your information, SMH has policies and procedures 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 service
How we store information
We only keep your personal data for as long as we need to in order to use it as described in this privacy policy, and/or for as long as we have your permission to keep it.
Emails
When you send an email to the email address displayed on our website, we collect your email address and any other information you provide in that email (such as your name, telephone number and the information contained in any signature block in your email). This data is held on secure servers and password protected work computers.
Eviivo Booking System
Hotel room booking data is stored on a secure database operated by our booking manager Eviivo. This database is fully compliant with the GDPR Data rules. Neither SMH or Eviivo will transfer any personal data to any other party if it is not part of the booking process.
Eviivo is fully GDPR compliant. They are Level 1 PCI Compliant and all the data is stored correctly. They have a Designated Data Protection Officer. Eviivo use their own cookies to gather essential data about you. You can read more about their Privacy & Cookie policy here.
You can turn off cookies in your browser settings although this may affect the performance of the software we use on our website.
Mailchimp
When you sign up to our mailing list, your email is sent via a secure connection to Mailchimp, our email marketing provider. Mailchimp holds personal data securely and in compliance with current regulatory requirements. You can read more about their privacy policy as it relates to your contact details here.
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.
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 30 days.
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.
The right to have your information erased
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 erase the data we hold. When we receive your request, we will confirm whether the data has been deleted or tell you the reason why it cannot be deleted.
The right to object to processing of your data
You have the right to request that SMH 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.
The right to ask us to stop contacting you with direct marketing
You have the right to request that we stop contacting you with direct marketing. 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.
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.
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.
The right to complain
You can make a complaint to us by contacting the General Manager (data controller) via marketing@sandymounthouse.co.uk or to the data protection supervisory authority – in the UK, this is the Information Commissioner’s Office, https://ico.org.uk/.
Consent
In those cases where we need your consent to process your information, we will ask you to make a positive indication (e.g. to tick a box or insert your contact details on the relevant form or web page requiring consent). 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 SMH 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 Sandy Mount House or any part of its business is sold to or integrated with another business, SMH 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 SMH.
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 personally identifying information.
Use of cookies
The SMH website uses 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 SMH we use our own cookies and tags as well as those from third parties to enable the smooth operation of our website, such as the use of the basket function or to automatically log you in when you visit (with your permission). 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 SMH 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 the SMH 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.
A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web page server which allows the website to recognise you when you visit. Cookies only collect data about browsing actions and patterns, and do not identify you as an individual.
We use cookies for the following purposes:
- Performance and analytics: We use Google Analytics cookies to help us analyse how our web pages are being accessed and used. We also use cookies to provide insights such as page views, conversion rates, device information, visitor IP addresses, and referral sites.
- Third Parties: Third Party services may use cookies to help you sign into their services from our services. Any third-party cookie usage is governed by the privacy policy of the third party placing the cookie.
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 clicking ‘Help’ on your 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.
To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
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.
General Manager (Data Protection Officer)
Sandy Mount House
High Street
Rhosneigr
Anglesey
LL64 5UX
marketing@sandymounthouse.co.uk
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.