Visa Signature Luxury Hotel Collection Privacy Notice

Last Updated: [October 1, 2010]

OVERVIEW

Thank you for using the Visa Signature Luxury Hotels Collection service and website (collectively, "Luxury Hotels"). Luxury Hotels is an exclusive service owned by Visa U.S.A. Inc. and its affiliates (collectively) ("Visa," "us," "we" or similar pronoun) made available only to Visa Signature cardholders. Luxury Hotels is described in more detail in the Luxury Hotels Terms of Service. We highly value and respect the privacy of the personal information we obtain from you in connection with your use of Luxury Hotels, including your name, address, credit or other account numbers and other information that can be used to individually identify you (collectively, "Personal Information") and we have created this privacy notice (the "Privacy Notice") to inform you about how we collect, use and share your Personal Information, and our privacy practices in general. As used in this Privacy Notice, the term "Website" shall refer to the Luxury Hotels website.

Applicability of this Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice applies solely to Luxury Hotels. Please note that this Privacy Notice does not apply to other Personal Information and information collected by Visa in connection with Visa Signature or any other Visa service.

KIWI Collection, Inc.

Luxury Hotels is hosted and operated by KIWI Collection, Inc. ("KIWI"), as a service provider to and on behalf of Visa. KIWI will collect, use and share personal and other information in connection with Luxury Hotels solely as necessary to perform its services and KIWI will not be permitted to use such information for any other purpose without your consent. For example, in the following cases KIWI will collect, use and share member's personal and other information on behalf of Visa:

  • When a user registers to participate in Luxury Hotels, KIWI will collect and store the registration information;
  • When a member books a room at a participating hotel though Luxury Hotels, the member's Personal Information on file with Luxury Hotels will be shared by KIWI with the hotel to complete the requested transaction; and
  • When a member requests their Preferences (as defined below) be shared with a participating hotel, KIWI will share such Preferences with the hotel.

A special note about minors

Luxury Hotels is not available to minors below the legal age of majority and Visa does not knowingly collect Personal Information from such minors.

NOTICE

Information Visa collects

Visa may collect Personal Information in a number of ways in connection with Luxury Hotels, including, without limitation, as follows:

  • When you book a hotel room through Luxury Hotels or set up a Luxury Hotels account ("Account"), we will collect the Personal Information you voluntarily choose to provide, such as your name, mailing address, email address and credit or debit card details. We may also collect your username, password and other demographic information and Preferences you choose to provide.
  • We collect login information when you login to your Account.
  • When you ask us a question, we may collect email address or other contact information you choose to provide.
  • When you choose to participate in sweepstakes, contests or other promotions, we collect your email address and other relevant contact information.
  • We also collect information you voluntarily submit when participating in one of our various services, programs or surveys.

How Visa uses your information

  • To generally provide the features and functionality of Luxury Hotels to you.
  • To complete bookings through Luxury Hotels.
  • To deliver you information and updates about Luxury Hotels and your Luxury Hotels Account.
  • To send you promotional emails from Luxury Hotels, Visa Signature or other third party advertisers when you opt-in to receive such emails.
  • To respond to questions and comments.
  • For analytics and other internal purposes.
  • To arrange the Website in a user-friendly way and to customise your browsing experience.
  • Enhance your travel experience at participating hotels.
  • To improve, enhance and tailor Luxury Hotels for you, and to improve and enhance the overall Luxury Hotels experience for all Luxury Hotels users.
  • For validation and security purposes.

To whom Visa discloses your information

Visa may disclose to third parties all categories of Personal Information that it collects as follows:

  • Provision of Services: We disclose your Personal Information to third parties where necessary to provide Luxury Hotels to you.
  • At Your Request: We disclose your Personal Information to a third party whenever you request us to do so. For example, when you book a hotel room, we will share your Personal Information and other information (including Preferences) with the designated hotel.
  • Business transfers: If a third party acquires all or substantially all of Visa's assets, your Personal Information, aggregated information, and any other information that we have collected in connection with Luxury Hotels may be transferred to such third party as part of our business assets. Also, if any bankruptcy or reorganization proceeding is brought by or against us, all such information may be considered one of our assets and may be sold or transferred to third parties.
  • Disclosure of Personal Information for legal purposes and protection of Visa and others: We reserve the right to share your Personal Information with third parties or governmental authorities if required to do so by law, or if we believe such action is necessary in order to: (1) conform to the requirements of the law or comply with legal process served upon us; (2) protect or defend our legal rights or property, Luxury Hotels, or our users; or (3) investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, or violations of the Luxury Hotels Terms of Service.
  • Service Providers: We use third-party service providers to perform certain services on our behalf (for example, KIWI) such as processing, storing, maintaining and transmitting data, processing and fulfilling email and other promotional campaigns, and providing marketing assistance, web analytics and data analysis. We may provide your Personal Information to these third-party service providers when the information is necessary for them to perform their duties. These third-party service providers are contractually restricted from using Personal Information for any other purpose and required to comply with all applicable laws with respect to the Personal Information they receive.
  • As Otherwise Permitted By Law. We may disclose your Personal Information or other information to third parties as otherwise permitted by applicable law.

Registration

If you register for an Account, your Personal Information and other information (including Preferences) will be stored and available for future use. If you choose to not have this information stored for any reason other than your current booking, you must re-enter the information each time you make a reservation. In order to register for an Account, you must provide your full name, mailing address, email address, Visa Signature card number, and other Personal Information that Visa may request. This information will be collected, used and shared by Visa (or KIWI on our behalf) for purposes of enabling your participation in Luxury Hotels. During registration you can also opt-in to receive a Visa Signature Luxury Hotel Collection newsletter as well as information about special promotions that may occur from time to time.

Validation

The credit or debit card number provided in connection with Luxury Hotels (for example, when you book a hotel room or register for an Account) must be validated to ensure the cardholder is eligible to participate in Luxury Hotels. You acknowledge that Visa will perform an online validation check for such validation purpose.

Preferences

During registration or during a reservation process, you will have the option to establish preferences (collectively, "Preferences"), such as travel, room and food and beverage preferences. Upon your request, Visa (or KIWI on our behalf) will share the selected Preferences with your designated hotel.

Information Shared With Hotels

Please note that in order for Visa to provide Luxury Hotels, personal or other information will be shared with participating hotels. For example, when you book a room at a participating hotel, Visa will provide your Personal Information to the hotel to enable the transaction. Preferences may also be provided if you request. Any information provided to a participating hotel is no longer subject to this Privacy Notice, and the hotel will collect, use, share and secure the information according to its own privacy notice and practices. You should review the privacy notice of each hotel you transact with to understand how your information will be treated by the hotel. Visa is not responsible for any hotel privacy policies or practices. Please note that Visa cannot guarantee a hotel will honor or act upon Preferences sent to a participating hotel in connection with Luxury Hotels.

Automatically collected non-Personal Information

When you use Luxury Hotels, we also may collect certain standard information from your browser and personal computer that websites often collect, such as your IP address, your browser information (including browser type, capabilities and language), your operating system and the date and time you accessed Luxury Hotels. We also capture the country from which the visit came and the paths taken as you move from one website or webpage to another website or webpage (i.e., your "click stream" activity). We may group some or all of this information into aggregate data in order to describe the use of Luxury Hotels by our users to our existing or potential business partners, sponsors, advertisers or other third parties, or in response to a government request. We may also group demographic information that we collect from Luxury Hotels users into aggregate data for the same purposes. We reserve the right to use and share any such non-Personal Information with third parties for any lawful purpose.

Visa does not typically associate such non-Personal Information with any individual. However, to the extent Visa associates your Personal Information with non-Personal Information within our database, we will treat all the associated information as Personal Information under this Privacy Notice. Except as noted in this Privacy Notice, we do not share this associated information with third parties.

Browsing and the use of cookies, Web beacons and other tracking technologies

Visa uses cookie technology as part of the Website's statistical reporting and for other purposes related to making Luxury Hotels available to you. A cookie is a small piece of information sent by a website that is saved on your hard disk by your computer's browser. It holds information a website may need to personalize your experience (such as, rotating images on the home page of the Website). We also utilise cookies to identify if you are logged into your Account.

If you prefer, you can configure your browser to reject all cookies, or to notify you when a cookie is set. Each browser is different, so check the "Help" menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie and privacy preferences. However, if you reject cookies, your use of Luxury Hotels will be materially impaired or may altogether preclude your use of Luxury Hotels.

A Web beacon is an electronic image, also called a single-pixel or clear GIF, placed in the code of a webpage or in emails. The Website uses Web beacons to track traffic patterns of users as they navigate from one page to another. This information lets us tune and improve our users' browsing experience. As with cookies, the information that Web beacons collect is aggregated, anonymous "click stream" data, and is not associated with you as an individual.

We may use third parties to operate on our behalf to help manage and optimise our Internet business and communications. Through the use of cookies and Action Tags (commonly referred to as Web beacons or GIF tags - e.g., Atlas cookies and Action Tags, Omniture tags, and Doubleclick Web beacons), which are inserted in various places within the Website, such third party companies may collect anonymous information about your visits to the Website and your interaction with our ads and content. For instance, they may keep track of how many of our ads you had seen before visiting the Website. These third party companies may share such anonymous information about your visits to this and other websites with us. From time to time, we may also share anonymous information with such third party companies in an aggregate form, for purposes of analysis and improvement of the Website. If you would like more information about the use of third-party cookies and tags, or the process of opting out of such cookies or tags, please go to
https://www.atlassolutions.com/privacy.aspx,
https://www.networkadvertising.org,
https://www.omniture.com/en/privacy/2o7 and
https://www.omniture.com/privacy/product#optout.

We also use Web beacons through a third party website analytics provider (Google Analytics or other provider), as well as standard Web server log files, to help us count visitors and evaluate the Website's technical capacity. This information tells us how many people visit the Website, and helps us decide how to arrange pages in the most user-friendly way. This also helps us keep the Website browser-friendly and more useful to our users. We record information on Website traffic, but not on individual visitors to the Website, so no Personal Information about you will be kept or used.

Information posted to any forums, chats or blogs

If you chose to use a forum, a blog, participate in a chat room or otherwise use a social media feature available through Luxury Hotels, you should be aware that any Personal Information or other information you post can be read, collected or used by other users of Luxury Hotels, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages or used in an otherwise unauthorised manner. We cannot be responsible for any Personal Information you choose to post through those means and we recommend careful consideration before you post such information.

Sweepstakes, contests, games and surveys

From time to time, Visa may conduct sweepstakes, contests, games or other promotions, and also conduct surveys through the Website. If you choose to participate-unless otherwise noted in the applicable rules, terms and conditions, or disclaimers-we may use the information you provide in connection with the administration of the applicable promotion, including for selection and notification of sweepstakes or contest winners and for creation of new promotions, and/or to publish survey results in aggregate on the site. Except where necessary to administer a sweepstakes, contest, game or other promotion, or survey, unless you have otherwise agreed or unless required by law, we will not share or publish any response you give connected to your name or address. We will hold these responses only as anonymous statistics.

Email, mailing lists and other services

When you send us an email, we use your email address to thank you for your comment or reply to your question. We store your communication and our reply in case we correspond further. Beyond our initial reply, we will not use your email address to send you any unsolicited message or information, nor will we share it with, or sell it to, anyone else for such use, other than as specified in this Privacy Notice.

When you request information or services, we use your email address and any other information you give us to provide you with the information or services until you opt-out from receiving such information (by using the "unsubscribe" instructions provided on each email and/or the Website, through your Account or as we otherwise provide), or until the information or service is no longer available.

Third party websites, content and resources

Please be aware that when you are using Luxury Hotels, you could be directed via hyperlinks or other means to third party websites, content and resources that are not affiliated with Luxury Hotels. In addition, you can use the Plugin while you are browsing third-party websites, content and resources, such as merchant websites. These third party websites, content and resources may send their own cookies to visitors, collect data or solicit and use your Personal Information in ways different than set forth in this Privacy Notice. The privacy policies of these third party websites, content and resources may be very different from this Privacy Notice. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of the providers of these other websites, content and resources and cannot guarantee the security of any of your Personal Information collected, used or shared there. For example, any information you choose to populate at a merchant website will be collected, used and shared under such merchant's privacy notice and practices. Another example is other websites owned and operated by KIWI, which are subject to KIWI's privacy notice and practices and not this Privacy Notice.

Our policy regarding selling or renting of Personal Information

It is our policy not to sell or rent your Personal Information to any third parties without your consent, except in the event of a bankruptcy or reorganization, a sale of all or substantially all of our assets, or as otherwise provided in this Privacy Notice.

Banners and other advertisements on the Website

The Website may display banners and other advertisements that may be placed by third parties. Such advertisers may collect non-Personal Information when you click or scan one of their advertisements, by placing cookies on your computer or by using other technology. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any such third parties. In addition, we may share aggregate information about our visitors to third-party ad servers or potential advertisers in order to provide advertisements on the Website about products and services that may be of interest to you.

CHOICE

How you can decide what communications you'll receive from Luxury Hotels

You can opt-in or opt-out from promotional email communications from Luxury Hotels by visiting your Account page and editing your preferences. You can also opt-out from receiving promotional email communications by utilising the appropriate link within each such communication. Please note that you cannot opt-out of certain non-promotional communications from Luxury Hotels (such as information regarding updates to the Website and other required disclosures) without cancelling your Account.

ACCESS AND DATA RETENTION

How to update, correct, or delete certain of your Personal Information

If you created an Account, you can access and modify your Account preferences (such as opting-out from receiving promotional offers) and certain Personal Information stored with Luxury Hotels, such as your name, email address and mailing address, by logging into your Account at the Website.

If you created an Account, you may cancel and delete your Account at anytime by simply emailing info@vlhcreservations.com and asking us to remove your Account. Your account should be deleted within five (5) business days. Once deleted your Account cannot be recovered. Deleting your Account will delete all your personal profile settings, including Preferences, as well as remove any connection between you and reservations you may have booked in the past.

If you used Luxury Hotels without creating an Account, we will use the information you provide for the purposes it was collected but will automatically remove your information from our active databases within a reasonable period of time after your information is no longer reasonably needed for the purposes such information was collected.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, Visa may retain certain information (including Personal Information) provided to us indefinitely for the following or other lawful purposes:

  • Auditing and accounting purposes
  • Troubleshoot problems
  • Assist with investigations
  • Enforce the Luxury Hotels Terms of Service
  • Comply with legal requirements

Therefore, you should not expect that all of your Personal Information will always be completely removed from our databases in response to your requests. In addition, please note that after your Personal Information is removed, there may be residual information that remains within one of our databases that may or may not contain your Personal Information, such as information that may be retained in back-up servers. Visa will apply this Privacy Notice to information we maintain regarding former users of Luxury Hotels.

SECURITY

How your Personal Information is protected and secured

The security of your Personal Information is very important to us, and we are committed to protecting the Personal Information we collect. While we cannot guarantee absolute security of your Personal Information, we require that KIWI employ firewalls and Secure Socket Layers for Personal Information collected for Luxury Hotels. We also require restricted access to Personal Information to those employees, agents and service providers who need to know or access the information in order to provide you with Luxury Hotels. We require physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with applicable federal privacy and data security laws and regulations to guard your Personal Information. Unfortunately, no transmissions or data available through the Internet can be 100% secure and, accordingly, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any Personal Information or other information you provide to us.

PRIVACY NOTICE UPDATES

This Privacy Notice was updated on the "Last Updated" date noted above. We continually strive to find new ways to enhance Luxury Hotels and Visa reserves the right to change, modify, or amend this Privacy Notice from time to time to reflect changes in our privacy practices. You are encouraged to review this Privacy Notice periodically and to check the "Last Updated" date at the top of this Privacy Notice for the most recent version to inform yourself about how your Personal Information is collected, used and shared when you use Luxury Hotels. To the fullest extent under applicable law, your use of Luxury Hotels after the "Last Updated" date means you are subject to Privacy Notice then in effect.

CONTACT US

How to contact Visa regarding your privacy concerns and questions

If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, or complaints about this Privacy Notice, our privacy practices, or the way either of them affects you, please feel free to email us at askvisa@visa.com

Disputes

Should you have a dispute regarding this Privacy Notice, we will resolve it and take any remedial action as we reasonably determine in our discretion and in accordance with applicable laws. Disputes regarding this Privacy Notice are subject to the Luxury Hotels Terms of Service.

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