Privacy Policy

Travelnest respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website or sign up to our online managed account letting service. It will also tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

Important information and who we are

We are Travelnest Limited (trading as Travelnest). We are a company incorporated and registered in England. Our company number is 09141571. Our registered address is Johnston Carmichael Birchin Court, 20 Birchin Lane, London, United Kingdom, EC3V 9DU. 

When we refer to “Travelnest” or “we”, “us” or ”our” in this policy, we are referring to Travelnest Limited. We are the data ‘controller’ in relation to the personal data you provide to us, which means we determine the purposes and the way in which your personal data is, or will be, processed.

Purpose of this privacy policy

This privacy policy aims to give you information on how we collect and process your personal data so that you can be confident when you use our website or sign up to our service that you know what your personal data is being used for and that it is being kept safe. 

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you, so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

Third-party links

Our website or social media platform may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. 

Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave one of our websites, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

How is your personal data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

• Direct interactions. You may give us your personal data by corresponding with us in person, by email, by phone, by post or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when creating an account with us and when you request marketing communications to be sent to you. 
  
  
• Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources. For example, the property listing website that you have booked through (such as Airbnb, Booking.com, Facebook).

Information we collect from you

We may collect and process the following data about you:

• Contact Data. Your name, address and email address.

• Account Information. Contact data together with [date of birth, profile photo and other profile information which you opt to provide like gender, personal description].

• Payment Data. When processing a booking on behalf of our customers, we may require you to provide certain financial information (like your bank account or credit card information) in order to facilitate the processing of payments. 

How do we use your personal data?

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• To enable us to enter into and fulfil our contractual obligations and provide our property booking service to customers.

• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by Contacting us.

• Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate. 

Please note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please Contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Disclosure of your information

We may have to share your personal information with the following third parties:

• Owners (i.e. the person who owns the holiday home or other property you have booked).

• Channel partners (such as Airbnb, Booking.com).

• External third-party service providers acting as processors who provide the following services:

              > Payment transaction processors; 

              > Communication platform providers (such as Freshdesk/Freshsales); and

              > Business communication and collaboration tool providers (such as Google Suite).

• Professional advisers, including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.

• HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

• In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.

If Travelnest Limited or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

International transfers

If we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• The country has been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by either the Information Commissioner’s Office (in the case of the UK) or the European Commission (in the case of the EU). 

• If we use certain service providers based outwith the EEA or if there has been no adequacy finding of the recipient country, we may use specific contracts approved by the Information Commissioner’s Office (in the case of the UK) or the European Commission (in the case of the EEA) which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK and the EEA. These will include the standard contractual clauses for the EU or UK (as applicable) together with the UK Addendum (if required).

• In any other case, we will obtain your explicit consent before any transfer takes place.

Please Contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA.

Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures in accordance with industry best practice to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

All information you provide to us is stored on secure servers. Any payment transactions will be encrypted using SSL technology and using trusted third parties. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, no method of transmission of information via the internet is completely secure. However, we implement and follow generally accepted industry standards so that we can do our best to protect your personal data.

How long we store your personal data for

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. 

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. 

Cookies

What are cookies?

A cookie is a text file containing a small amount of information that is sent to your browser when you visit a website. The cookie is then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognises it. Cookies are an extremely useful technology and do lots of different jobs. 

A Web beacon is an often-transparent graphic image, usually no larger than 1 pixel x 1 pixel, that is placed on a website or in an email that is used to monitor the behaviour of the user visiting the website or sending the email. It is often used in combination with cookies.

We may collect information through the use of cookies, web beacons or similar analytics-driven technologies.

What cookies do we use?

We have listed below all the cookies that we use. These fall into the following categories:

• Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website.

• Analytical/performance cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.

• Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences.

• Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below:

Important information about cookies

Please note that third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies.

You block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

How do I change my cookie settings?

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

To find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers:

• Google Chrome

• Microsoft Edge

• Mozilla Firefox

• Microsoft Internet Explorer

• Opera

• Apple Safari

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Your rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. Please click on the links below to find out more about these rights:

• Access to your information

• Request correction of your personal data

• Request deletion of your personal data

• Object to processing of your personal data

• Request restriction of processing your personal data

• Request transfer of your personal data

• Right to withdraw consent

• Right to review by an independent authority

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please Contact us. You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Access to your information

You have the right to ask for a copy of the information which we hold on you (commonly known as a ‘data subject access request’).

This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Correcting personal data

You have the right to request that we correct personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data that you provide to us.

Deleting personal data

You may ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. This is more commonly known as the ‘right to be forgotten’. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. 

Please note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request to delete or remove personal data for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Objecting to processing

You have the right to stop us processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. We will always inform you if we intend to use your personal data for such purposes, or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes. You can usually exercise your right to prevent such marketing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your data. You can also exercise the right at any time by contacting us at Contact us.

You may also object to us processing your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Restriction of processing

This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: 

• if you want us to establish the data's accuracy; 

• where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; 

• where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or 

• you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Transferring your personal data

In certain circumstances, you may request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. 

Please note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdrawing consent

Where we are relying on consent to process your personal data you can withdraw your consent at any time. Please note that this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. 

Review by an independent authority

You will always have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory body. The relevant authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner’s Office. If you do have a complaint, we would appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO, so please do Contact us in the first instance if possible.

Changes to our privacy policy

We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy at any time in accordance with applicable law. If we do so, we will post the revised privacy policy and update the date of revision. This version was last updated on 14th June 2023.

If there is a material change, we will provide you with an explanation by email at least 30 days before the change is due to take place. If you disagree with the revised Privacy Policy, you can cancel your Account. If you do not cancel your Account before the date the revised Privacy Policy becomes effective, your continued access to or use of the Airbnb Platform will be subject to the revised Privacy Policy.

Changes to your details

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

Contact us

Questions, comments and requests regarding this policy are welcomed and should be addressed to our Privacy Compliance Officer at privacy@travelnest.com.