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Privacy policy

Your privacy is important to us. We value your trust and are committed to protecting and safeguarding any personal information you give us. This document, which we update from time to time, describes how we use and process your personal data and how we use cookies. It also tells you how you can contact us if you have questions about your personal information.

Geographic Travel Georgia (GTG) provides online travel services through its own websites and mobile apps and through other online platforms such as social media. The information that follows applies to all of these platforms.

 

Privacy

What kind of personal information does GTG use?

When you make a Booking, you’ll be asked for your name, address, telephone number, email address, payment details, the names of guests traveling with you and your preferences for your stay.

To make it easier to manage your Bookings, you can open a user account. This allows you to save your personal settings, review previous bookings and manage future Bookings.

When you visit our website, even if you don’t make a Booking, we may collect certain information, like your IP address, or browser, and information about your computer’s operating system, application version, language settings and pages that have been shown to you. If you’re using a mobile device, we might also collect data that identifies your mobile device, device-specific settings and characteristics and latitude/longitude details.

We may also receive information about you when you use certain social media services.

 

Why does GTG collect, use and share your personal data?

Bookings: First and foremost, we use your personal data to complete and administer your online Booking and forward your Booking details to the accommodation you have booked.

Customer service: We provide international customer service 24/7 from our local offices in English, Russian and German. Sharing your details with our customer service allows for a quick response when you need us – including helping you find an appropriate services and any questions you might have about your Booking.

Account administration: We offer a user account facility on our website. We use the information you give us to administer this, allowing you to manage your bookings, take advantage of special offers, make future Bookings more easily and manage your personal settings. Managing personal settings allows you to keep and share lists, share photos, see properties that you’ve searched for before, and see other information you’ve provided about accommodations and destinations. It also allows you to see any reviews you submitted about places you stayed in. If you want, you can share certain information in your user account by creating a public profile that’s associated with either your own first name or a screen name of your choice. The type of information you can share on this platform includes your photo, the names of places you’ve stayed in, your lists, your plans for future trips, your reviews and other information about services and destinations.

Other communications: There may be other times when we get in touch by email, by post, by phone or by texting you, depending on the contact information you share with us. There could be a number of reasons for this:

– We may need to respond to and handle requests you have made.

– If you haven’t finalized a Booking online, we may email you a reminder to continue with your Booking. We believe that this additional service is useful to you because it allows you to carry on with a Booking without having to search for the service items again or fill in all the Booking details from scratch.

– When you use our services, we may send you a questionnaire or invite you to provide a review about your experience with GTG.

Market research: We sometimes ask our customers to take part in market research. Any additional personal details that you give us as part of the market research will only be used with your consent.

Fraud detection and prevention: We may use personal data for the detection and prevention of fraud and other illegal or unwanted activities.

Improving our services: Finally, we use personal information for analytical purposes, to improve our services, enhance the user experience, and improve the functionality and quality of our online travel services.

 

How does GTG use social media?

We use social media to promote our services partners’ properties and to promote, improve and facilitate our own services website. For example, we integrated social media plugins into the GTG website. So when you click on one of the buttons and register with your social media account, information is shared with your social media provider, and possibly presented on your social media profile to be shared with others in your network.

In addition to implementing these buttons, GTG uses social media by maintaining accounts on several social media sites and by offering social apps. These social media services may allow you to share information with GTG. When you register with a social media app, you’ll be told which information will be shared withGTG. The information you choose to share with us may include the basic information that’s already available in your social media profile, email address, status updates and your friends list. This information is necessary to create a unique user experience either in the app itself or on our website. It facilitates things like personalizing our website to suit your needs, connecting you with your friends on travel destinations and analyzing and enhancing our travel-related services.

 

How does GTG share your data with third parties?

In certain circumstances, we may share your personal data with third parties.

The accommodation you booked: In order to complete your Booking, we need to transfer relevant Booking details to the services (hotels/rentals/cars/cruises/tours/activities) you booked with. This may include information like your name, contact and payment details, the names of guests traveling with you and any preferences you specified when making a booking.

Third-party service providers: We may use third-party service providers to process your personal information on our behalf for the purposes specified above. For example, we may use service providers to send the Booking information on our behalf to the service item you just booked, or we may instruct third parties to contact you. When a booking requires it, we may also work with third-party payment service providers to facilitate payment or payment guarantees. We also work with third-party advertisement networks to market our accommodation and services on other platforms, or involve third-party providers for analytical purposes. These third parties involved in any of these services will be bound by confidentiality agreements and will not be allowed to use your personal information for any purposes other than those specified above.

 

How does GTG use mobile devices?

We have free apps for a variety of mobile devices and use versions of our regular website that have been optimized for mobile. These apps and mobile websites process your personal details in a similar way as our website does – and they also allow you to use location services to find services nearby.

 

Cookies

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small amount of data that is placed in the browser of your computer or on your mobile device. This Privacy and Cookies Policy applies to cookies and similar technologies (hereafter together referred to as “cookies”).

 

Why are cookies used?

Web pages have no memory. If you are surfing from page to page within a website, you will not be recognized as the same user across pages. Cookies enable your browser to be recognized by the website. So cookies are mainly used to remember the choices you have made – choices such as the language you prefer and the currency you use. They will also make sure you are recognized when you return to a website.

 

Do all cookies do the same thing?

No, there are different types of cookies and different ways of using them. Cookies can be categorized according to their function, their lifespan and according to who places them on a website.

 

How are cookies used?

Our website uses the following types of cookies:

Technical cookies: We try to provide our visitors with an advanced and user-friendly website that adapts automatically to their needs and wishes. To achieve this, we use technical cookies to show you our website, to make it function correctly, to create your user account, to sign you in and to manage your bookings. These technical cookies are absolutely necessary for our website to function properly.

Analytics cookies: We use these cookies to gain insight on how our visitors use the website, to find out what works and what doesn’t, to optimize and improve our website and to ensure we continue to be interesting and relevant. The data we gather includes which web pages you viewed, which referring/exit pages you entered and left from, which platform type you used, date and time stamp information and details such as the number of clicks you make on a given page, your mouse movements and scrolling activity, the search words you use and the text you type while using our website. We also use analytics cookies as part of our online advertising campaigns to learn how users interact with our website after they’ve been shown an online advertisement, which may include advertisements on third-party websites. We will not know who you are, and we only obtain anonymous data.

 

How long do GTG cookies stay active?

The cookies we use have varying lifespans. The maximum lifespan we set on some is two years from your last visit to our website. You can erase all cookies from your browser any time you want.

 

How can you recognize GTG cookies?

You can find our cookies in your browser settings.

 

Who has access to GTG cookie data?

Only GTG has access to GTG cookies. Cookies placed by third parties can be accessed by these third parties.

 

How can you manage your cookie preferences?

Using your browser settings in, for example, Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox or Chrome, you can set which cookies to accept and which to reject. Where you find these settings depends on which browser you use. Use the “Help” function in your browser to locate the settings you need.

 

Security

What security procedures does GTG put in place to safeguard your personal data?

In accordance with Georgian data protection laws, we observe reasonable procedures to prevent unauthorized access and the misuse of personal information.

We use appropriate business systems and procedures to protect and safeguard the personal information you give us. We also use security procedures and technical and physical restrictions for accessing and using the personal information on our servers. Only authorized personnel are permitted to access personal information in the course of their work.

Your credit card details – when they are needed as part of the booking process – are stored for a maximum of 24 hours. After that, your credit card data will be either permanently deleted from our systems or will remain hashed in our system for fraud detection purposes. This is unless you have chosen to store your credit card details in your personal account.

 

Contact

How can you control the personal data you have given to GTG?

You always have the right to review the personal information we keep about you. You can request an overview of your personal data by emailing us at [email protected]. Please write “Request personal information” in the subject line of your email and include a copy of your identity card to help us prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing your personal data.

If the personal information we have for you is incorrect, we will update it at your request. You can also ask us to remove your personal data from our customer database by sending an email to [email protected] with “Request for removal of personal information” in the subject line. However, we may need to retain certain information, for example, for legal or administrative purposes, such as record keeping or to detect fraudulent activities.

 

Who is responsible for the processing of personal data on the GTG website and apps?

GTG controls the processing of personal data on its websites and mobile apps. If you have any suggestions or comments about this privacy notice, please send an email to [email protected].

 

Last updated, 24 June 2021