Privacy Policy

PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT

Walworth Castle Hotel may collect “Personal Data” from you, meaning information that identifies you as an individual or from which you may be identified. For example, we may collect:

• contact information, such as your name, mailing address, e-mail address, and telephone number;
• credit card number or other payment account number, billing address, and other payment and billing information (“Payment Information”);
• Best Western Rewards® (“BWR®”) loyalty program member information, online user account details, profile or password details and any frequent flyer or travel partner program affiliation;
• records and copies of your correspondence if you contact us;
• information necessary to fulfil special requests (e.g., health conditions that require specific accommodation);
• guest stay information, including the hotels where you have stayed, date of arrival and departure, and goods and services purchased;
• information collected through the use of closed circuit television systems, card key and other security systems; and
• in limited cases, information relating to the credit of customers.

We may collect Personal Information from a variety of sources including:

• through the Site;
• through reservation and call centres;
• through social media and brand channels (e.g. Facebook, Twitter);
• From Best Western, Licensed Hotels, Affiliates, or other third parties; or
• when you otherwise voluntarily provide it to us, including in connection with our loyalty program (i.e. BWR).

We may also combine Personal Data we collect with publicly available Personal Data and Personal Data we receive from others or cross-reference with others. The collection and use of Personal Data, whether separately or combined, is done in accordance with and for the purposes described in this Policy.

Our website may also use a website recording service which may record mouse clicks, mouse movements, page scrolling and any text keyed into website forms. Data collected by this service is used to improve our website usability. The information collected is stored and is used for aggregated and statistical reporting, and is not shared with anybody else. Entry into website forms can be removed by visiting https://sessioncam.com/choose-for-form-data-not-to-be-recorded/ and selecting ‘Enable Masking of All Data’, whilst tracking on the website entirely can be removed by visiting https://sessioncam.com/choose-not-to-be-recorded/ and selecting ‘Disable Tracking Completely’.

If you voluntarily share “Sensitive Personal Data” (e.g., Personal Data related to your health, racial or ethnic origins, political opinions, religious or similar beliefs, membership of a trade union or professional association, physical or mental health or condition, genetic data, sexual life or judicial data) with us, that information may be used to provide a better experience and meet your particular needs. For example, if you voluntarily convey a health-related need to us, we may store and use that information in order for a Licensed Hotel to provide a room with appropriate amenities. We do not collect or store Sensitive Personal Data unless it is voluntarily provided by you. By providing such Sensitive Personal Data, you expressly consent to our collection, processing and storage of that information in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy.

HOW WE USE THE PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT

Walworth Castle Hotel collects Personal Data about guests, visitors to the Site, and others so that we can provide an experience that is responsive to the needs of such individuals. Walworth Castle Hotel may collect, use, and disclose Personal Data for one or more of the following purposes:

• Fulfillment of Reservation or Information Requests: To fulfil your requests such as completing a credit card transaction or booking a reservation through our central reservation system (who could be located outside the UK/EEA), or responding to your requests that we send marketing, informational or other newsletters to you (and to personalize such newsletters and the Site to your preferences). For example, when you make a reservation through Best Western’s central reservation system, we may collect Payment Information from you, and may use and disclose such Payment Information to fulfil your reservation. BWI and BWGB maintain worldwide accessible websites, call centres, and database computers.
• Membership Programs: To administer and operate voluntary membership programs, including loyalty programs such as BWR, which allows members to earn and redeem rewards, points, or credits in connection with the programs. For complete BWR program terms and conditions, visit www.bestwesternrewards.com.
  Best Western Travel Card®: To process and ship a Best Western Travel Card, which is a stored value card redeemable for lodging charges (room rate and applicable taxes) for stays at Licensed Hotels worldwide. We may also use your Personal Information as necessary to permit your use and redemption of a Best Western Travel Card. For complete Best Western Travel Card terms and conditions, see www.travelcard.bestwestern.com.
• Administrative and Other Communications: To send you important information regarding the Site, changes to our terms, conditions and policies, or other administrative information (e.g., information about your travel reservations, such as reservation confirmations).
• Marketing Communications: We may use your Personal Data to determine whether you are eligible for and/or inform you, if you have provided your consent, of products, programs, enhancements, events, special offers, and services of Best Western and third parties (including Licensed Hotels and Affiliates) that might be of interest to you. We promise to only send you relevant and timely marketing communications and we will give you the opportunity to decline to receive some or all of these communications every time we send them. For more information, see the “Your Choices” section of this Policy below and if you wish you can Opt-out here to receiving further communications. Please allow us up to one month to process all data regarding your opt out.
• Promotions. To operate sweepstakes, contests, or other marketing or promotional activities (collectively, “Promotions”). We typically ask you for certain Personal Data when you enter or participate in such Promotion and, if applicable, win a prize, and we use such Personal Data to administer the Promotion. Participation in these Promotions is completely voluntary, and you have a choice whether to disclose your Personal Data. You should carefully review the rules, if any, of each Promotion in which you participate, as it may contain additional important information about Best Western’s use of your Personal Data. To the extent that the Promotion’s rules concerning the treatment of your Personal Data conflict with this Policy, the Promotion’s rules shall control.
• Services: Upon completion of a reservation, to provide suggestions and recommendations of goods or services that may be of interest.
• Surveys: To conduct or facilitate surveys and to ask for your responses to questionnaires in order to provide better products and services to guests and Site visitors. Completion of any surveys or questionnaires is strictly voluntary.
• Customer Care: To track, process, and respond to customer care enquiries and to enhance and improve the customers’ experience. We may also transmit your Personal Data to third party service providers, Affiliates, and Licensed Hotels to allow those third parties to track, process, and respond to customer care inquiries.
• Internal Business Purposes: For our internal business purposes, such as data analysis, audits, developing new products, enhancing the Site, improving our services, identifying usage trends and visiting patterns, determining the effectiveness of our Promotions, and meeting contractual obligations (e.g., a contractual obligation with regard to earning or redeeming BWR points or miles through our airline partners).
• Our Rights and Legal Obligations: To: (i) comply with legal and regulatory requirements or demands in accordance with applicable law, a court order, subpoena or other legal processes, (ii) detect, prevent, or take action against illegal activities, suspected fraud, or situations involving potential threats to the rights, privacy, safety, or property of Best Western, Licensed Hotels, Affiliates, you, or others; or (iii) enforce or apply our Terms of Use and/or other agreements and policies.
• E-mails to Friends: To permit you to forward information about our products, services, and Licensed Hotels to another individual, such as a friend or co-worker. If you wish to use this feature, you may be required to provide to us, and we may use, the applicable individual’s name and e-mail address to facilitate your sending of such messages to such individual (and any
• Personal Data—such as your name and your email address—provided in connection with sending such information, will be disclosed to such individual). By using this functionality, you affirm that you are entitled to use and to provide to us the recipient’s name and e-mail address for this purpose. We will not seek to use the applicable individual’s Personal Data for any purpose other than to allow the e-mail to be sent unless we disclose such other purpose to you at the time that you provide such Personal Data to us or unless we have separately collected such Personal Data through other means.
• Co-brand credit card: To promote and assess eligibility for Best Western’s co-brand credit cards.
  We may also use your Personal Data in other ways as described when you provide such information to us or for other purposes with your consent

COOKIES

Cookies are small text files placed on your computer or mobile device by a website’s server and are commonly used on the internet. It contains anonymous information, for example, a unique identifier and the name of the website, as well as some numbers and digits. We use them to:

• remember your preferences, and items you have placed in your shopping cart;
• collect information that will help us understand visitors’ browsing habits on our website;
• compile statistical reports on website activity, e.g. number of visitors and the pages they visit;
• temporarily store any information which you may enter into tools, such as calculators or demonstrations on our website;
• in some cases, remember information about you when you visit our site. We may need to do this to provide some of our services;
• in some cases information about your booking so you can return to it at a later stage.

We also collect Non-Personal Information when you voluntarily provide this information to us. Additionally, we may aggregate or anonymize Personal Data in a manner such that the end product does not personally identify you or any other individual (e.g., by using Personal Data to calculate the percentage of our Site users who are from a particular geographic location).

We do not store any personal information in cookies that others could read and understand.

We use three types of cookie:

• Session cookies – these are temporary and are deleted as soon as you close your browser.
• Persistent cookies – these are stored on your computer until they expire or you remove them. Persistent cookies store your personal preferences such as your language preferences on multi-lingual sites to make subsequent visits easier. They also, for example, remember questions we have asked you previously, such as a request to complete an online survey. A persistent cookie will prevent you from being asked to complete the same survey every time you visit the website.
• Third Party cookies – In addition, we may engage third party tracking and advertising providers to act on Best Western’s behalf to track and analyze your usage of our Site through the use of such automatic data collection technologies. These third parties collect and share with us, as we may request, Site usage information about visits to our Site, measure and research the effectiveness of our advertisements, track page usage and paths followed during visits through our Site, help us target and track use of our Internet banner advertisements on our Site and on other sites, and track use of other links from our marketing partners’ sites to our Site. We do not control these third parties’ tracking technologies or how they may be used. If you have any questions about an advertisement or other targeted content, you should contact the responsible provider directly. Our website may also use a website recording service which may record mouse clicks, mouse movements, page scrolling and any text keyed into website forms. Data collected by this service is used to improve our website usability. The information collected is stored and is used for aggregated and statistical reporting, and is not shared with anybody else. For information about how you can opt-out of receiving targeted advertising from many providers, see the “Your Choices” section of our Privacy Policy.

For a list of all the cookies we use on the website, please view the table below:

Our website may also use software to improve your user journey by identifying areas you have visited before or areas you may be interested in. To do this we may drop persistent and session cookies onto your computer or device. The information collected is safely stored and is also used for aggregated and statistical reporting. We will not collect any Personal Data.

ACCEPTING OR REJECTING COOKIES

Most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to be notified when you receive a new cookie, and how to disable existing cookies. The “Help” function within your browser should tell you how to do this.

If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this Site may then be inaccessible or not function properly. Please note: If you wish to make a booking online, the Best Western International, Inc. booking engine requires you to have cookies enabled in your browser in order to complete the online reservation. This is a necessary part of our secure system for online booking. If you do not wish to have cookies enabled then you can telephone one of our central reservations agents to book with us over the telephone on 08457 74 74 74 or if you prefer you can always email us via reservations@bestwestern.co.uk.

If you want to delete any cookies that are already on your computer, please refer to the instructions for your file management software to locate the file or directory that stores cookies. Alternatively, the websites www.aboutcookies.org and www.allaboutcookies.org have produced a series of web pages which explain how cookies work and how they can be managed.

IP ADDRESSES

Your IP address is a number that your Internet Service Provider automatically assigns to the computer that you are using to access the Site. This number is identified and logged automatically in our server log files whenever users visit the Site, along with the time of each visit and the page(s) that were visited. Collecting IP addresses is standard practice on the Internet and is done automatically by many websites. We use IP addresses for purposes such as calculating Site usage levels, helping diagnose server problems, validation of a legitimate user session via Google® captcha and administering the Site. Please note that we treat IP addresses, server log files, and related information as Non-Personal Information, except when we are required to do otherwise under applicable law.

DO NOT TRACK

Your web browser may let you choose your preference as to whether you want to allow websites to collect information over time about your online activities across different websites or online services. At this time, the Site does not respond to such “Do Not Track” or similar preferences you may have configured in your web browser, and the Site may continue to collect information in the manner described in this Policy. However, as stated in the “Non-Personal Information” section above, we do allow you to exercise some choice in the information collected by adjusting your browser’s cookie settings.

THIRD-PARTY SITES

The Site may contain links to third-party websites. These linked sites (which may include the websites of Licensed Hotels, Affiliates, and various BWR partners or other third parties) are not under Best Western’s control, and we are not responsible for the privacy practices or the contents of any such linked site (or any link contained in any linked site). We provide such links only as a convenience, and the inclusion of a link on the Site does not imply endorsement of the linked site by Walworth Castle Hotel. If you decide to access any of the third-party websites linked to this Site, you do so entirely at your own risk and subject to the terms and conditions of use and privacy policies for such websites. If you provide any Personal Data through any such third-party website, your transaction will occur on such third-party website (not this Site) and your Personal Data will be treated in accordance with the privacy policy of that third party. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS POLICY DOES NOT ADDRESS THE PRIVACY OR INFORMATION PRACTICES OF ANY THIRD PARTIES, INCLUDING LICENSED HOTELS AND AFFILIATES.

SECURITY

Because the security of your Personal Data is important to us, we have implemented security measures that provide reasonable precautions against the unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction of Personal Data. The Personal Data we collect from you online is stored by us and/or our service providers and protected through a combination of physical and electronic access controls, firewall technology, and other reasonable security measures. Nevertheless, such security measures cannot prevent all loss, access, misuse, or alteration of Personal Data, and, to the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not responsible for any damages or liabilities relating to any such incidents. Where required by law, we will notify you of any such loss, access, misuse, or alteration of Personal Data that may affect you, so that you can take the appropriate actions to protect your rights.

Please do not send us your payment information or Sensitive Personal Data through e-mail or any undesignated area (e.g., submission of your credit card number in a “comment” field). If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure (e.g., if you feel that the security of any account you might have with us has been compromised), you must immediately notify us of the alleged problem by contacting our Customer Care Department as set forth below in this Policy. Please note that, if you choose to notify us via physical mail, this will delay the time it takes for us to respond to the alleged problem.

YOUR CHOICES

You may always choose what Personal Data (if any) you wish to provide to us. However, if you choose not to provide certain details, some of your experiences with us may be affected (for example, we cannot take a reservation without a name, and if we cannot disclose your Personal Data to Licensed Hotels or Affiliates, we may be unable to provide you with all or certain reservation services, other services, or membership-program-related benefits. Similarly, if we cannot disclose your Personal Data to other third parties, such as BWR partners (e.g., airlines, card issuers and other third parties), we may not be able to provide all of the available membership program services to you (e.g., earning of frequent customer points with such companies), or the provision of such services may be delayed).

Data privacy under the General Data Protection Regulation 2018 may require us to obtain your consent before we send you information that you have not specifically requested. In certain circumstances, your consent may be implied (e.g., where communications are required in order to fulfil your requests and/or where you have volunteered information for use by us). In other cases, we may be required to seek your consent expressly (e.g., where the information collected is regarded to be Sensitive Information under local regulations).

If you do not wish for us to use your contact information to promote our own or third parties’ products or services you can Opt-out here, or you can contact us as set forth in the “Contacting Us” section of this Policy below. If you have received a promotional e-mail from us and no longer wish to receive such e-mails going forward, you may opt-out by using the unsubscribe function in the e-mail you have received from us. Please note that when you unsubscribe from receiving promotional e-mails from us, your contact details will be “suppressed” rather than deleted. This will ensure that your request is recorded and retained unless you provide a later consent that overrides it.

If you have a BWR account, we ask you to indicate your communication preferences at the time you become a member of the BWR program. Once you have indicated your preferences, you can change them by logging into your account.

Please note that if you opt-out as described above, we will not be able to remove your Personal Data from the databases of Licensed Hotels, Affiliates, or other third parties with which we have already shared your Personal Data.

We are entitled to assume you do not object to our doing any of the things mentioned in this statement unless you tell us otherwise in writing or in any other approved manner. However please allow up to one month for us to process all data regarding your privacy choices. Opting out does not apply to service messages such as booking confirmation emails and statements.

If you do not opt-out, in all future marketing communications we will give you the opportunity to decline to receive further mailings. Except where expressly permitted by the General Data Protection Regulation 2018, we will only deal with the personal details you give us as set out above unless you agree otherwise. We have appropriate security measures in place to protect this information.

RETENTION PERIOD

Walworth Castle Hotel only collects Personal Data that it believes is necessary to perform the services that you seek from us and to exercise its rights and comply with its obligations as otherwise outlined in this Policy. We will keep your Personal Data only as long as we need it for the purposes for which we collect it or as otherwise permitted by law.

NOTE REGARDING THE USE OF THE SITE BY MINORS

The Site is not directed to minors (as defined by applicable law), and we request that such individuals do not provide Personal Data through the Site. If we learn we have collected or received Personal Information from a minor under the age of 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a minor under the age of 13, please contact our Customer Care Department as set forth in the “Contacting Us” section of this Policy.

CONTACTING US

If you would like to update your information or modify your communication preferences, please contact us by e-mail at enquiries@walworthcastle.co.uk or phone us on 01324 485470. Our hotel address is Walworth Castle Hotel, Walworth, Darlington, DL2 2LY.

Should you have any questions about this privacy statement or your personal data, please contact our Data Protection Officer the above.

Please note that e-mail communications will not necessarily be secure; accordingly, you should not include payment information or Sensitive Personal Data in your e-mail correspondence to us.

CHANGES TO THE PRIVACY POLICY

Walworth Castle Hotel reserves the right to change, modify, or amend this Policy at any time. If we make a material change to this Policy, we will indicate on the Site that our privacy practices have changed and will provide a link to the new policy. If we make material changes to how we use your Personal Information, we will notify you by e-mail to the e-mail address specified in your account (if applicable) and/or through a notice on the Site’s homepage, and we will provide you with an opportunity to opt-out of such new or different use. Any changes to the Policy will become effective upon our posting of the revised Policy on the Site. Use of the Site following such changes constitutes your acceptance of the revised Policy then in effect.