Privacy Policy

Overview

Our Privacy Policy

This policy details how we use and store your personal information here at Edinburgh Old Town Holiday Apartments, along with why that information is stored – and how we protect your privacy when doing so.

We pledge to handle any personal information under our control with a great deal of care, and to keep that information safe whilst respecting your privacy and rights.

It’s our aim to be 100% clear when collecting your information, and how we are going to use it.

Edinburgh Old Town Holiday Apartments is a small business owning and managing our two holiday apartments – The Botanist Apartment and The Malt Kiln Apartment, and also managing The Rock View Apartment. Our use of personal information allows us to operate in Edinburgh, providing holiday lets and helping to ensure we offer a professional and personal service.

This policy is effective from 30th October 2018.

Who are we?

In terms of this privacy policy, ‘Edinburgh Old Town Holiday Apartments’, ‘we’ or ‘our’ means: Edinburgh Old Town Holiday Apartments – a small business based in the Edinburgh.

How we collect and store information about you

We collect and store information about you in a couple of different ways which we’re going to detail now.

Information you provide to us directly

You may get in touch with us to make an enquiry, or to book one of our self-catering holiday apartments online via our website or other booking channels. We collect your name, guests names, full postal address, mobile phone number and email address, as well as information to do with your stay.

When you’re using our website, we also collect a small amount of anonymised information using what’s known as cookies (see below) and other methods of tracking to allow us to know aggregated statistics about visits to our site. This is in accordance with common website practice.

Information you provide to us indirectly

Your information may be passed onto us by third parties. For example, when you book one of our properties direct on our website or through online travel agents such as Booking.com, your card details will be passed onto SuperControl, the booking software company that we use. From there we will only have encrypted access to this information to process your details.

We’d also advise you to check any privacy policy that has been provided where there is any mention of a third party giving us your data. For example when you place a booking through a third party website. Here are links to privacy policies of some third party sites that we may receive booking information from:

Information from other sources

We may also use information from the sources detailed below:

Social media

Your privacy settings for social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter might be set up so that you give us permission to access certain information from those platforms – for example, tagging us in a post or photo.

Information available publicly

We may also collect information available from public sources such as company websites, public social media accounts, the electoral register and Companies House. This helps us to put together a more complete picture of someone’s interests in Edinburgh Old Town Holiday Apartments.

The personal information we collect

We store, collect and use the information detailed below:

Your name

Your email address

Your address and contact details (mobile number and/or landline)

Details of your booking (including the number of guests in your party)

Any queries or requests you’ve submitted to us

Any other personal information you’ve provided to us

How we use your personal data

We’ll use your personal information in the following ways:

Take bookings for your stay as a guest in one of our properties

Keep a record of your relationship with us

Contact you regarding your booking or property

Respond to any complaints or queries you get in touch with us about

Better understand how to improve the services we provide by analysing data and conducting market research

Send correspondence to you

Display content that is suitable for the device you’re viewing our website on (such as a smartphone, tablet or PC)

Protect our staff

Practice due diligence

Conduct training and/or quality control via our systems

Audit and administration of our accounts

To meet legal obligations, such as fulfilling a contract with you, or our obligations to regulators, government and/or bodies of law enforcement

Establish, enforce or defend legal claims

How we protect your information

We ensure that the appropriate technical and organisation safeguards are in place in order to protect your personal data. This includes using a secure network.

Sharing your information with other organisations

We’ll never pass or sell your information onto third parties for their marketing efforts. As a caveat, we may disclose your personal data to third parties regarding some of the other purposes we’ve set out in this privacy policy to:

Marketing agencies performing services on our behalf

IT service providers

Analytics and search engine providers

Systems, and technical elements involved in the provision of our website, eg AddToAny, Google Fonts, WordPress.com, Single Sign On; WordPress.com

Please note that we do reserve the right to disclose your information to third parties under the following conditions:

A property being managed by us is handed to another agency to manage – we would hand over your personal information related to your future bookings to the new agency, to allow them to fulfill your booking.

We sell or buy any business assets and disclose your personal information to a prospective buyer or seller of these assets

All of our assets are acquired by a third party – your personal information may be included in those assets

Keeping your information updated

We may from time-to-time use information from external sources to keep our records updated. This includes sources such as the public electoral roll, and the post official national change of address database. We’ll only use sources we’re confident that you’re aware of and where you are fully informed of how your information may be accessed and used. This helps us to ensure we never store duplicate records or preferences that are out-of-date – and also helps make sure we don’t contact you against your wishes (when you’ve explicitly asked us not to). We want to give you full control of your data, and you may feel free to opt out from this activity at any time. If you wish to be removed from our contact list please just contact us via our contact page. If you wish to let us know of a change in your contact details, similarly just get in touch via the email address above. We will update our records accordingly and appreciate you informing us of any changes.

How long we keep hold of your data

Edinburgh Old Town Holiday Apartments has specific guidelines in place to determine how long we keep hold of your personal data. These are determined by both legal and operational considerations. As an example, we’re required to keep some of your information for tax purposes.

Your rights

According to UK data protection law, you have rights over any personal information that is held about you. We’ve broken these down for you below:

The right to access your personal information

It’s your right to request access to any personal data we hold about you. It’s also your right to request a copy of that information from us – which we will provide to you unless legal exceptions dictate otherwise. If you wish to access your information, you may send a written request to us using our contact page.

The right to have incorrect personal information corrected

It’s your right to get any inaccurate or incomplete information we hold about you amended. If you think the information we hold about you might be wrong or incomplete, just provide us with the details (using the details mentioned above) and we’ll investigate and correct any inaccurate information.

The right to restrict use of your personal information

It’s your right to ask us to restrict the processing of some or all of your personal information if:

Some information we hold about you is incorrect

We’re not legally allowed to use it

You require us to retain your information in order to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim

You believe your right to privacy outweighs our interests to use your information for a specific purpose and you object to this

The right to be forgotten

It’s your right to request that we delete some or all of your personal information from our system. We will carry out this request as long as there are no legal exceptions preventing us from doing so.

The right for your personal information to be portable

If we’re processing your personal information by automated means (either to carry out a contract with you or having received your consent to do so) it’s your right to request we provide you or another service provider with that information in a digital or machine-readable format.

The right to object to the use of your personal information

If we happen to be processing your personal information based on our own interests or for research or statistics, you have the right to object to your information being used in this way. If we’re processing your information for the purposes of direct marketing, and you decide to object, we’ll stop processing your information as soon as possible. You can exercise any of the above rights at any time. To do so, please contact us by email. It’s possible we may need to request further information and/or proof of your identity. However, all requests will be responded to within one month – unless we contact you to state otherwise. Please bear in mind that exceptions will apply to several of the above rights, and not all rights will be applicable in all circumstances. For more details, it’s recommended that you check the guidance outlined on the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) website.

How we use cookies

Cookies are basically little text files placed on your computer by the websites you visit, and are essential to ensure a website is functioning optimally. Often they contain a unique number which can recognise your computer when you return to a website you’ve been to before. They also collect statistics to ensure maximum site functionality.

Third party cookies set by Edinburgh Old Town Holiday Apartments:

MailChimp

MailChimp is the world’s largest email automation service. We use MailChimp to send out any emails, including newsletters, updates or promotions. We also use MailChimp to store our email list and monitor how recipients are reacting to emails (such as click and open rates) to gauge how we can improve in future. Learn more about MailChimp’s privacy policy by following this external link.

JetPack

JetPack is a technical part of our website which, amongst other things, shows us how visitors are using our website and which pages are most frequented. Check Jetpack’s privacy policy via this external link https://jetpack.com/support/privacy/

Disable cookies on browsers

If you want to disable cookies on your web browser (such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer), just click the ‘Help’ menu in the toolbar. This should guide you on how to change the settings on your browser, and how to disable cookies completely. For more guidance, click this link to AllAboutCookies.org (external link).

Changes to this policy

There may be future changes to this privacy policy. If any significant changes occur regarding the way your personal information is handled, we’ll make this clear via our website – or by contacting you via email.

Contact us

If you would like to get in touch with us for any reason (whether to ask a question, leave a comment, suggest a change or make a complaint) please contact us via the contact page.