Privacy Statement and Cookie Statement 

Categories of Personal Information We Collect 

When you use our website, Apps, or associated tools or services, we may collect the following kinds of personal information from you as needed: 

• Name, username, email address, telephone number, and home, business, and billing addressees (including street and postal code)
•  Government-issued Identification required for booking or identity verification, such as driver’s license, government redress numbers, and country of residence (for travel insurance purposes), and for vacation property owners, tax identification number,
• Payment information such as payment card number, expiration date, billing address, and financial account number
• Travel-related preferences and requests such as favorite destination and accommodation types, and special dietary and accessibility needs, as available
• Loyalty program and membership information
• Birth date and gender
• Geolocation
• Images (including facial photographs), videos, and other recordings
• Social media account ID and other publicly available information
• Communications with us (such as recordings of calls with customer service representatives for quality assurance and training purposes)
• Searches you conduct, transactions, and other interactions with you on our online services and Apps
• Other communications that occur through the platform among partners and travelers, and in-group chat and traveler-collaboration tools 
• The searches and transactions conducted through the platform
• Data you give us about other people, such as your travel companions or others for whom you are making a booking
• Information we receive about you from third parties such as our business and affiliate partners and authorized service providers which may include updated contact information, demographic information, interests, and purchase history, which we may add to your account or profile and use for market research and analysis

When you install any of our apps or use our website, we may automatically collect the following types of information from your device: 

• IP address
• Device type
• Unique device identification numbers
• Internet browser-type (such as Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer)
• Internet Service Provider
• Operating System
• Mobile carrier
• How your device has interacted with our online services, including the pages accessed, links clicked, trips viewed, and features used, along with associated dates and times
• Details of any referring website or exit pages, as well as general geographic location (such as at the country or city-level)

Our Cookie Statement section, included below in this Privacy Statement, further explains how we use cookies and similar tracking technology.

Mobile Apps 

When you download and use any of our mobile apps, we collect certain technical information from your device to enable the app to work properly and as otherwise described in this Privacy Statement. That technical information includes: 

• Device and telephone connectivity information such as your carrier, network type, network operator, subscriber identity module (“SIM”) operator, and SIM country
• Operating system and version
• Device model
• Performance and data usage
• Usage data, such as dates and times the app accesses our servers, the features and links clicked in the app, searches, transactions, and the data and files downloaded to the app
• Device settings selected or enabled, such as Wi-Fi, Global Positioning System (“GPS”), and Bluetooth (which may be used for location services, subject to your permission as explained below)
• Mobile device settings
• Other technical information such as app name, type, and version as needed to provide you with services

Permissions for Location-Based Services: 

Depending on your device’s settings and permissions and your choice to participate in certain programs, we may collect the location of your device by using GPS signals, cell phone towers, Wi-Fi signals, Bluetooth or other technologies. We will collect this information if you opt in through the app or other program (either during your initial login or later) to enable certain location-based services available within the app (for example, locating available lodging closest to you). To disable location capabilities of the app, you can log off or change your mobile device’s settings.

Use of Personal Information 

We use your personal information for various purposes described below, which depend on the site you visit or the app you use.  

Your Use of Online Sites, Apps, and Services: 

• Book the requested travel or enable vacation property booking
• Provide services related to the booking and/or account
• Create, maintain, and update user accounts on our website and authenticate you as a user
• Maintain your search and travel history, accommodation and travel preferences
• Enable and facilitate acceptance and processing of payments, coupons, and other transactions
• Administer loyalty and rewards programs
• Collect and enable booking-related reviews

Communications and Marketing

• Respond to your questions, requests for information, and process information choices
• Contact you (such as by text message, email, phone calls, mail, push notifications, or messages on other communication platforms) to provide information like travel booking confirmations and updates, for marketing purposes, or for other purposes as described in this Privacy Statement
• Market our products and services, optimize such marketing to be more relevant to you, and measure and analyze the effectiveness of our marketing and promotions
• Administer promotions like contests, sweepstakes, and similar giveaways

Other Business Purposes and Compliance 

• Conduct surveys, market research, and data analytics
• Maintain, improve, research, and measure the effectiveness of our sites and apps, activities, tools, and services
• Monitor or record calls, chats, and other communications with our customer service team and other representatives, as well as platform communications between or among partners and travelers for quality control, training, dispute resolution, and as described in this Privacy Statement
• Create aggregated or otherwise anonymized or deidentified data, which we may use and disclose without restriction where permissible
• Promote security, verify identity of our customers, prevent and investigate fraud and unauthorized activities, defend against claims and other liabilities, and manage other risks
• Comply with applicable laws, protect our and our users’ rights and interests, defend ourselves, and respond to law enforcement, other legal authorities, and requests that are part of a legal process
• Comply with applicable security and anti-terrorism, anti-bribery, customs and immigration, and other such due diligence laws and requirements
• Operate our business using lawful business purposes and as permitted by law

Lawful bases to collect, use, and share your personal information. 

We will only collect, use, and share your personal information where we have a lawful basis to do so. Lawful bases include (i) contract (if processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you), (ii) consent (where you have given consent), (iii) legitimate interests of VTrips or third parties or (iv) as otherwise may be allowed by applicable law and consistent with this Privacy Policy. 

Certain countries and regions allow us to process personal information on the basis of legitimate interests. If we collect and use your personal information in reliance on our legitimate interests (or the legitimate interests of any third-party), this interest will typically be to operate or improve our website and communicate with you as necessary to provide our services to you, for security verification purposes when you contact us, to respond to your queries, undertaking marketing, or for the purposes of potentially detecting or preventing illegal activities.  

We may in some cases use automated decision-making, for example, in relation to assessing fraudulent transactions or suspicious activity on our site. As part of this processing, automated decisions may be made by putting your personal information into a system and the decision is calculated using automatic processes. If you pose a fraud risk, this may affect your ability to book on our site. You may have rights in relation to automated decision making, including the ability to request a manual decision-making process instead or contest a decision based solely on automated processing. If you want to know more about your data protection rights, please see the Your Rights and Choices section below.

Sharing of Personal Information 

We share your personal information as described below and in this Privacy Statement, and as permitted by applicable law. 

•  Third-party service providers. We share personal information with third-parties in connection with the delivery of services to you and the operation of our business (for example, to provide credit card processing, customer service, business analytics, and fraud prevention and compliance services, and to serve you with advertising tailored to your interests). These third-party service providers are required to protect personal information we share with them and may not use any directly identifying personal information other than to provide services we contracted them for. They are not allowed to use the personal information we share for purposes of their own direct marketing (unless you have separately consented with the third-party under the terms provided by the third-party).
•  Travel suppliers. We may share personal information with travel-related suppliers such as hotels, airlines, rail, car-rental companies, insurance, vacation-rental property owners and managers, and where available, activity providers, who fulfill your booking. Please note that travel suppliers may contact you to obtain additional information if and as required to facilitate your booking or to otherwise provide the travel or associated services.
•  Business partners and offers.  If we promote a program or offer a service or product in conjunction with a third-party business partner, we will share your information with that partner to assist in marketing or to provide the associated product or service.  In most of those cases, the program or offer will include the name of the third-party business partner, either alone or with ours, or you will be redirected to the website of that business with notice. An example of such a business-partner relationship would be a third-party loyalty program for which you could earn points by completing a booking on our website.
•  Other Third-Parties. If you access certain features like Facebook’s “Like” button or a single sign-on that allows you to login with your social media credentials to our online services, you will share information with the third-party, like a social media company, such as the fact that you have visited or interacted with us. For more information, see our Cookie Statement, included below in this Privacy Statement. The third-party provider may combine this information with other information they have about you. The personal information shared will be governed by the third-party provider’s privacy policy (including any personal information we may access via the third-party provider). The third-party providers should inform you about how you can modify your privacy settings on their site.
•  Legal rights and obligations. We may disclose your personal information to enforce our policies, or where we are permitted (or believe in good faith that we are required) to do so by applicable law, such as in response to a request by a law enforcement or governmental authority, in connection with actual or proposed litigation, or to protect and defend our property, people and other rights or interests. We may also share your personal information pursuant to a subpoena or other legal request, or as necessary to remit certain taxes in the course of processing payments as required by law or legal process.
•  Corporate transactions. We may share your personal information in connection with a corporate transaction, such as a divestiture, merger, consolidation, assignments or asset sale, or in the unlikely event of bankruptcy. In the case of any acquisition, we will inform the buyer it must use your personal information only for the purposes disclosed in this Privacy Statement.

Your Rights and Choices 

You have certain rights and choices with respect to your personal information, as described below: 

• If you have an account with us, you may change your communication preferences by either (1) logging in and updating the information in your account or (2) contacting us as provided in the Contact Us section at the bottom of this Statement.
• You can control our use of certain cookies by following the guidance in our Cookie Statement included below in this Privacy Statement.
• You can access, amend or update the accuracy of your information at any time by either logging into your account or contacting us
• If you no longer wish to receive marketing and promotional emails, you may unsubscribe by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link in the email. You can also contact us provided in the Contact Us section at the bottom of this Statement... Please note that if you choose to unsubscribe from or opt out of marketing emails, we may still send you important transactional and account-related messages from which you will not be able to unsubscribe
• If we are processing your personal information on the basis of consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time by contacting us. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing that occurred before you withdrew consent and it will not affect our processing of your personal information that is conducted in reliance on a legal basis other than consent

Certain countries and regions provide their residents with additional rights relating to personal information. These additional rights vary by country and region and may include the ability to: 

• Obtain access to and request a copy of your personal information
• Request information about why we have your personal information or about the purpose of our processing activities
• Delete your personal information
• Object to our processing  or disclosure of your personal information
• Correct and update the information we hold about you
• Restrict or suspend the processing of your personal information
• Withdraw consent where we are relying on consent to process your personal information
• Transfer your personal information
• Request information about the logic involved in our automated decision-making used in our fraud prevention practices and the result of such decisions

For questions about privacy, your rights and choices, and in order to make a request to amend or update your information, please contact us as provided in the Contact Us section at the bottom of this Statement. 

In addition to the above rights, you may have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information. However, we encourage you to contact us first so we can do our best to resolve your concern. You may submit your request to us using the information in the Contact Us section, below. We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wanting to exercise their personal data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

International Data Transfer 

The personal information we process may be transmitted or transferred to countries other than the country in which you reside. Those countries may have data protection laws that are different from the laws of your country. 

The servers for our website are located in the United States and third-party service providers operate in many countries around the world. When we collect your personal information, we may process it in any of those countries. 

We have taken appropriate steps and put safeguards in place to help ensure that your personal information remains protected in accordance with this Privacy Statement.  

We also require that third-party service providers to whom a data transfer is made has appropriate safeguards in place to protect your personal information, in compliance with applicable data protection law. The particular measures used will depend on the service provider.

Security 

We want you to feel confident about using our website and all associated tools and services, and we are committed to taking appropriate steps to protect the information we collect. While no company can guarantee absolute security, we do take reasonable steps to implement appropriate physical, technical, and organizational measures to protect the personal information that we collect and process. 

Record Retention 

We will retain your personal information in accordance with all applicable laws, for as long as it may be relevant to fulfil the purposes set forth in this Privacy Statement, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. We will deidentify, aggregate, or otherwise anonymize your personal information if we intend to use it for analytical purposes or trend analysis over longer periods of time. 

The criteria we use to determine our retention periods include: 

• The duration of our relationship with you or recent bookings or other transactions you have made on our website
• Whether we have a legal obligation related to your personal information, such as laws requiring us to keep records of your transactions with us 
• Whether there are any current and relevant legal obligations affecting how long we will keep your personal information, including contractual obligations, litigation holds, statutes of limitations, and regulatory investigations.

Cookie Statement 

Types of cookies and similar technologies 

Cookies 

Cookies are small pieces of text sent as files to your computer or mobile device when you visit most websites. Cookies may be delivered by us (first party cookies) or delivered by a third-party partner or supplier (third-party cookies). Cookies are either session cookies or persistent cookies. Session cookies enable sites to recognize and link the actions of a user during a browsing session and expire at the end of each session. Persistent cookies help us recognize you as an existing user and these cookies are stored on your system or device until they expire, although you can delete them before the expiration date. 

Other similar technologies 

•        Web beacons, gifs, and clear gifs are tiny graphics, each with a unique identifier that are embedded invisibly on sites and in emails. Web beacons allow us to know if a certain page was visited or if ad banners on our sites and other sites are effective. We also use web beacons in our HTML-based emails to let us know whether our emails have been opened by recipients, which helps us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications, promotions, and marketing campaigns.
•        Proximity-based beacons send one-way signals over very short distances, to communicate with associated mobile apps installed on your phone. They can notify you, for example, about experiences related to your trip and can alert you to related deals or promotions. Beacons communicate with your device only when you are in close proximity and only if you have given consent within the relevant mobile application.
•        Pixels are small objects embedded into a web page that are not visible to the user. We use pixels to deliver cookies to your computer, facilitate the log-in process, monitor the activity on our sites, and deliver online advertising.
•        Tags are small pieces of HTML code that tell your browser to request certain content generated by an ad server. We use tags to show you relevant advertising and promotions.
•        Scripts are pieces of JavaScript code that launch automatically when certain webpages load, to determine whether users view associated advertisements.
•        Local Storage Objects, such as HTML 5, are used to store content and preferences. Third-parties with whom we partner to provide certain features on our site to display advertising based upon your web browsing activity use Local Storage Objects to collect and store information.

All of the technologies described above will be collectively referred to in this Cookie Statement as “cookies”. 

Our use of cookies 

At VTrips, we use cookies for a number of reasons, including: 

• Help us improve your experience when visiting our sites
• Fulfill transactions and ensure our sites perform as intended
• Remember your preferences, such as language, region, or currency
• Provide you with relevant advertising and analyze performance of the ads
• Enable you to return to previous travel searches
• Identify errors on our sites
• Help with data protection and potentially detect and investigate malicious or fraudulent activity
• Help us understand traffic to our site, including time and date of the visit, time and date of the last visit, and other information
• Analyze how well our sites are performing

Types of information collected by cookies 

The types of information that we collect through cookies include: 

• IP address
• Device ID
• Viewed pages
• Browser type
• Browsing information
• Operating system
• Internet Service Provider
• Whether you have responded to, or interacted with, an advertisement
• Referring or referred links or URLs
• Features used and activities engaged in on our sites and in our apps

See the Categories of Personal Information We Collect section above for more information on what types of information are collected automatically. 

Types and functions of cookies 

Essential Cookies 

Certain cookies are required or “essential” for our sites to function as intended. Essential cookies are necessary for you to navigate our site and use certain features like logging in to your account and managing your bookings. These cookies are also used to remember security settings that allow access to particular content. Lastly, we use essential cookies to collect information on which web pages visitors go to most, so we can improve our online services. You are not able to opt out of essential cookies. 

Other Types of Cookies 

We also use other types of cookies to make our site engaging and useful to you: 

•  Functional Cookies. We want to make sure when you visit our site, your preferences (such as your preferred language), settings, and previous searches are remembered. Functional cookies enhance your experience on any VTrips company’s site.
•  Analytics Cookies. We use analytics cookies to: Understand our site’s performance and how it is used, including the number of visitors, how long you stay on the site, and which parts of the site you visit. We can see details about how visitors interacted with the site, like the number of clicks visitors made on a given page, their mouse movements and scrolling activity, the search words visitors used, and the text visitors enter into various fields 
•        Test different designs and features for our site
•        Monitor how our visitors reach our sites
•        Determine effectiveness of our advertising
•        Improve our services, including your experience on our site

For analytics, our third-party service providers may use cookies to perform their services and may combine the information that they collect about you on our sites with other information that they have collected. For example, we use Google analytics cookies to monitor the performance of our sites. Our ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visit to our sites is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy. This Cookie Statement does not cover such third-parties’ use of your information. 

Some analytics cookies can perform tasks essential and/or functional to online services like enabling site improvements and testing changes on a site.   

•  Advertising Cookies. VTrips and our third-party advertising partners may use advertising cookies to show you advertisements both on and off our sites that are based on your interests. We may allow third-parties to collect information about your online activities through cookies to perform their services and may combine the information that they collect about you on our sites with other information that they have collected. These third-parties include business partners who collect information when you view or interact with one of (1) their advertisements on our sites or (2) our advertising or booking information on their sites and advertising networks, which collect information about your interests when you view or interact with one of the advertisements or tracking mechanisms they place on many different sites on the Internet. Our partners may make assumptions about your interests, characteristics, or preferences and add you to groups based on those assumptions in order to show you tailored advertisements. VTrips does not have access to the cookies these third-parties may use to collect information about your interests, and the information practices of these third-parties are not covered by this Cookie Statement, part of our Privacy Statement. Some of these companies are members of the Network Advertising Initiative, which offers a single location to opt out of ad targeting from member companies. 

Your information choices 

You can choose not to receive tailored online advertising on this site and other sites and learn more about opting out of having your information used for tailored advertising purposes by accessing one of the following resources: 

•          For EEA, Switzerland, and UK:  http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/
•          For Canada:  http://youradchoices.ca/choices/
•          For U.S. and rest of world:
  • http://www.aboutads.info/choices/
  • http://optout.networkadvertising.org/ 

Note that if you choose not to receive tailored ads, you will still see online advertisements, but they will be general and less relevant to you. 

How can you manage your cookies? 

You can set or amend your web browser controls to accept or refuse cookies whenever you like, but please remember if you do choose to reject cookies, your access to some of the functionality and areas of our site may be restricted. 

Do-Not-Track Signals and Similar Mechanisms. 

Some web browsers may transmit “do-not-track” signals to sites with which the browser communicates. Because of differences in how web browsers incorporate and activate this feature, it is not always clear whether users intend for these signals to be transmitted, or whether users are even aware of them. Participants in the leading Internet standards-setting organization that is addressing this issue are in the process of determining what, if anything, sites should do when they receive such signals. We currently do not take action in response to these signals. If and when a final standard is established and accepted, we will reassess our sites’ responses to these signals and make appropriate updates to this Cookie Statement.

Contact Us 

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, or wish to inquire about our personal handling practices, please contact us using this email address: legal@vtrips.com 

Updates to Privacy Statement 

We may update this Statement in response to changing laws or technical or business developments. If we propose to make any material changes, we will notify you by means of a notice on this page. You can see when this Privacy Statement was last updated by checking the last updated” date displayed at the top of this Statement. 

For California Residents

If you reside in California and have provided personally identifiable information to us, you may request information about our disclosure of certain categories of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes under California’s Shine the Light law. Such requests must be submitted to us at the following e-mail address: legal@vtrips.com 

If you are a resident of California, effective January 1, 2020, you have the following rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”): 

1. to know what categories of personal information about you we have collected and used, including how the personal information was collected;
2. to know what categories of personal information is being sold or disclosed and if it is being sold or disclosed to third parties and a list of categories of information that are sold, or to know that your personal information has not been sold;
3. to opt out of the sale of your personal information;
4. to access your personal information, including the right to download or transfer personal information collected during the previous 12 months;
5. to request that your personal information be deleted; and
6. to equal service and equal price for goods or services even if you exercise your rights under the CCPA.

While California residents have the right to opt out of the sale of their personal information under CCPA, we do not sell personal information to any third parties. If our practices change, we will update this Privacy Policy and take any other necessary action to comply with applicable law. 

For all requests, it is helpful to put the statement “California Privacy Rights” in the body of your request, describe the nature of your request, and provide your name, street address, city, state, and zip code. In your request, you need to attest to the fact that you are a California resident and provide a current California address for our response.  

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights. Unless permitted by the CCPA, we will not: 

• Deny you goods or services.
• Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties.
• Provide you with a different level or quality of goods or services.
• Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.