Privacy Policy

Introduction

The Sport and Travel Group is a specialist travel company with over 17 years of experience in organising golf breaks, golf days and other holidays. Our website, www.golf-escapes.com is a major part of our service and operation, and acts as a central information point, as well as being the point of contact with our highly experienced team.  Our system means that we can create and process every aspect of your holiday as quickly and efficiently as possible and also may give you access to your individual booking.

We seek to always be transparent about the information that we collect and what we do with it

This privacy policy sets out how The Sport and Travel Group uses and protects any information that you give us when you use our services or our website.  This policy may be amended from time to time, and revisions will be published on our website.  The date on which it was most recently amended will be displayed at the end of the policy.

At The Sport and Travel Group, maintaining the security of personal data is taken very seriously and is a priority to us.  We undertake to respect your privacy rights by ensuring that your data is collected and kept securely and legally at all times, and in accordance with our Privacy Policy which can be found on our website, or a copy provided upon request.

The Golf Escapes website is owned and operated by The Sport and Travel Group Ltd, and The Sport and Travel Group is the data controller of any data that you provide.

In addition, The Sport and Travel Group also trades as Signature Safaris (www.signatureafricansafaris.com), Southern Sounds (www.southern-sounds.co.uk), and The Vegan World (www.theveganworld.com

Where we say “we”, “our” or “us” in this policy, we are referring to The Sport and Travel Group.

Without prejudice to your rights under applicable laws, this Privacy Policy is not contractual and does not form part of your contract with us.

Information collected

We only acquire personal data that is relevant and which is required in order for us to book and manage your booking with us, and we undertake to process such information specifically in relation to your contract with us, and to ensure its security. 

If you wish to enquire/book with Golf Escapes (The Sport and Travel Group), we require some personal details such as your name, address, email, contact number, golf handicap, specific dietary requirements etc.

In addition, where we book your flights (and where appropriate), we will also collect your passport information (full name, nationality, date of birth, passport number, issue/expiry date and country of issue).

When you provide these details to us, you consent to the collection and use of that information in the ways described below.

We use your personally identifiable information in order to book and amend your holiday (and any future holiday bookings).  Please also see our Data Protection clause in our Terms & Conditions for further details of how we use your personal identifiable information to process your booking.  We will retain this information securely (as many of our clients are repeat customers) or until you request that we delete any personal information.

If you provide us with personally identifiable information for any third parties (ie passport information for other members of your group etc), you must ensure that you have the authority of those third parties to provide their information for us to use to facilitate the booking and as set out in this Policy.  By submitting such information on behalf of others, you are confirming that you have their consent.

We may from time to time ask you for further information in order to update our records or for particular purposes. We will always tell you how we will use any further information received from you. We may share aggregate data, based on users’ demographics, interests, and behaviour with our advertisers or business partners but this aggregate data will not contain identifiable personal data.

We may also ask you whether you would like to receive promotional emails and mailings from us about our other products or services or from other companies about their products and services which may be of interest to you.

Golf Escapes collects and uses personal information you provide to us and that we collect, whether online, via phone, email, in letters or in any other correspondence or from third parties.

What we do with the information we gather

We require the above information to understand and process your needs, to provide you with the best service possible, and in particular for the following reasons: 

  • Internal record keeping.
  • Ensuring that your holiday is processed, managed and completed correctly and in line with your requirements. 
  • We may use the information to improve our products and services.
  • We use your information to help us understand you better and provide relevant offers, and to assist with future quotes and bookings.
  • We may periodically send promotional emails about new products, special offers or other information which we think you may find interesting using the email address which you have provided.  We will only pass on your details to other companies if you have indicated that you would like to receive further information from them.  If you would like to revise the information provided to us, or feel what we currently have on record is incorrect, you may update the information by emailing info@golf-escapes.com.
  • From time to time, we may also use your information to contact you for market research purposes. We may contact you by email, phone or mail. We may use the information to customise our website according to your interests.

We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. We may use your personal information to send you promotional information about third parties which we think you may find interesting if you tell us that you wish this to happen.

If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please write to or email us as soon as possible, at the above address. We will promptly correct any information found to be incorrect.  Similarly, please advise us if you wish us to remove any personal data.

Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure.  All personal information stored by us is kept on a server in a secure environment.  In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

Where we have provided (or you have chosen) a password which enables you to access specific areas of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential.  We highly recommend that you do not share your password with anyone.

Financial data

No financial data (ie credit/debit card details for payment of services) is retained by ourselves or by our Merchant bank, who are PCI-DSS compliant, and they adhere to the current legislation and stringent banking data protection principles.

Cookies, Log files and other technologies

Every time someone visits our web site a log file is generated. This contains information such as the user’s IP (Internet Protocol) address, how long that user spent on the site and which parts of it they looked at. We collect this information to help us diagnose problems and administer our systems, to analyse and report aggregate information to our advertisers, affiliates and partners, and to audit the use of our site (eg what part of the world users are connecting from, or what ISPs are being used).

We do not link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable, which means that you remain anonymous even though we include your IP address in our aggregate information.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not.  A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most computers/web browsers are set up to automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

A general guide to the types of cookies we use on our website, and the purposes for which they are used is below:

  • Strictly necessary cookies. These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around our website and use its features, including accessing secure areas. Without these cookies, any services on our website you wish to access cannot be provided or will be severely affected.
  • Analytical/performance cookies. These cookies collect information about how you and other visitors use our websites. This can be anything like which pages you go to most often, and if you get error messages from web pages. We use data from these cookies to help test designs and to ensure a consistent look and feel is maintained on your visit to our websites. We also use third-party web analytics software on our websites and apps (such as Google Analytics).
  • Functionality cookies. These cookies allow our website to remember choices you make (such as your password) and they remember settings in parts of web pages that you can customise.
  • Targeting cookies. These cookies are used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement, as well as help measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. They are usually placed by third parties (such as advertising networks or platforms) with the website operator’s permission. They remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with the advertiser (see Google Analytics below).
  • Social media extensions: These technologies allow you to share what you’ve been doing on our websites on social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. For example, by clicking the Facebook ‘Like’ icons that may appear on our product pages. Although we enable these tools to be displayed on our websites so that you may interact with them, if you choose to do so, they are not within our control. Please refer to the relevant third party privacy policies for how these functionalities work.

Current specific cookie information is provided below:

The Sport and Travel Group cookies

Cookie name: PHPSESSID (PHP Session Variables)

Our site uses session cookies to allow websites to link the actions of a user during a browser session. These session cookies expire after a browser session so would not be stored longer term. For this reason session cookies may sometimes be considered less privacy intrusive. PHPSESSID is a cookie for PHP sessions. When you are working with an application, you open it, do some changes and then you close it. This is much like a Session. The computer knows who you are. It knows when you start the application and when you end. But on the internet the web server does not know who you are and what you do because the HTTP address doesn’t maintain state. A PHP session solves this by allowing you to store user information on the server for later use (ie username, shopping items, etc). However, session information is temporary and will be deleted after the user has left the website. Sessions work by creating a unique id (UID) for each visitor and store variables based on this UID. The UID is either stored in a cookie or is propagated in the URL.

Cookie name: userAccess

– Used to identify signed-in users using a random key. No personal information is stored.

Cookie name: allowGEemailImg

Third Party cookies

The Sport and Travel Group uses Google Analytics.  More information on Google cookies can be found at: https://developers.google.com/analytics/resources/concepts/gaConceptsCookies 

To opt-out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising and customize Google Display Network ads please go to ttps://www.google.com/settings/ads or Google Analytics’ currently available opt-outs for the web.

Managing cookies

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most computers/web browsers are set up to automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.  If, after being presented with our cookie banner, you elect to use our websites without disabling cookies, then you agree to our use of cookies and other similar technologies for the purposes described above.

If you do not want to allow cookies at all, or only want to allow use of certain cookies, please refer to your browser settings. You can also use your browser settings to withdraw your consent to our use of cookies at any time, and delete cookies that have already been set. Please note: by deleting certain cookies or disabling them for future use, you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our websites. In some cases this can disable your ability to shop at all on any of our websites.

To find out more about cookies please visit: www.allaboutcookies.org or see www.youronlinechoices.eu which contains further information about behavioural advertising and online privacy.

To opt-out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising and customize Google Display Network ads please go to https://www.google.com/settings/ads or Google Analytics’ currently available opt-outs for the web.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. If you follow a link to any other websites of our partners, affiliates and other third parties, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. We recommend that before submitting any personal data to these websites, you check the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Controlling your personal information

You may choose to restrict the collection or use of your personal information in the following ways:

  • whenever you are asked to fill in a form on the website, look for the box that you can click to indicate that you do not want the information to be used by anybody for direct marketing purposes.   
  • If you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by writing to our office, or emailing us info@golf-escapes.com.

3rd Party Information for Marketing Purposes

We may receive personal information about you from third-party sources, but only where we have checked that these third parties either have your consent or are otherwise legally permitted or required to disclose your personal information to us.
The types of information we collect from third parties may include your contact details, name, address and email address. We use the information we receive from these third parties to share offers and products that could be of interest to you.

Use and disclosure of personal information

Any communication (email/letter etc) received from you may be kept and any information contained therein incorporated into our system.

If we are requested by the police or a regulatory or government authority investigating illegal activities to provide information concerning your activities whilst using the network we shall do so. Similarly, we will disclose your personal data as part of a transaction whereby our company or business assets are transferred to a third party or if we are compelled to do so by law.

Retention of personal information

We generally keep your records on our secure server for a period of 5 years from the date of your last booking, but if you wish us to remove your personal information prior to this time, please email us on info@golf-escapes.com or write to us at St Andrews House to make this request in writing.

Right to Data Portability

This gives you the right to ask a holder of your information to transfer that information to another business. The right would most commonly be used if you were switching bands, mobile phone providers etc.

How you can help to protect your information

Please keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information online in non-protected environments – for example on message boards, through email, or in chat areas – that information can be collected and used by others. In short, if you post personal information online that is accessible to the public, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return.

Also remember to close your browser window when you have finished your work. This is to ensure that others cannot access your personal information and correspondence if you share a computer with someone else or are using a computer in a public place like a library or Internet cafe. We cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Emailed Newsletters

We will not send you any electronic emails or marketing unless you have expressly consented to receive it.  We always give the option to unsubscribe from our database on every newsletter sent and mailing list subscribers must opt-in to receive our emails.  If you receive an email message that you think is spam which is sent from or on behalf of The Sport and Travel Group, please let us know the details of the email and we will investigate the matter.

Surveys, Competitions and Promotions

From time to time we conduct surveys, competitions and promotions and may request information from you as part of these. Participation in these is entirely voluntary and you therefore have a choice whether or not to disclose any information which might be required.

Right of access

You may request details of personal information which we hold about you under the Data Protection Act 1998. A small fee may be payable. If you would like a copy of the information held on you please write to The Sport and Travel Group at St Andrews House, Cinder Hill, Horsted Keynes, West Sussex, RH17 7BA, UK or email us at info@golf-escapes.com.

Complaints

If you have any complaints or concerns about this Privacy Policy or about personal information that we hold about you, please contact us in the first instance.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) under the registration reference ZA039112.

If you are not satisfied with the way we have dealt with any concerns, you have the right to complain to the ICO (the UK’s Supervisory Authority for data protection) – please see their website for further details (www.ico.org.uk). 

Our Contact Information

Email:    info@golf-escapes.com
Phone:   01342 811777
Postal:   The Sport and Travel Group Ltd, St Andrews House, Cinder Hill, Horsted Keynes, West Sussex RH17 7BA, UK

Date of Revision:  05 December 2019

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