Privacy Policy

This webpage sets out when and how we use your personal information that you or others provide to us.

Who We Are

We are Rural Retreats Holidays Limited, an English company, registered Company Number – 02711772.

Our registered address is Retreat House, Draycott Business Centre, Draycott, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, GL56 9JY.

We are part of a group of companies. You can find out who the other companies in our group are by clicking here

How Do You Use My Data?

When you book a holiday with us

When you book a holiday with us, we will use your personal information to confirm your booking. The details we collect from you will include your name, address, payment and other contact details including your email address.

To complete your booking, we share your personal information with our subcontractors who are involved in the booking process, such as payment providers, as well as credit reference agencies who we use to assess fraud, credit and/or security risks.

We need to process your personal information in this way to enter into and perform the booking contract for the holiday you have booked.

Subject to your chosen preferences we will also consider this as 'expressing an interest in our holidays' please also read the relevant section below.

When you phone us

When you phone us, we may also handle your personal information (your name, contact details and the other details you provide to us during the call) in order to provide the customer services you have asked us to. This could be when you ask us to confirm whether a particular holiday property is available, or explain how our holiday bookings process works.

We rely on your consent to handle your personal information in this way. If you do not provide us with the personal information we request from you for customer services purposes, we may not be able to fully answer your queries.

When you call us, we may record your call in order to assist in quality monitoring of staff, investigate and resolve a complaint, or for the detection, investigation and prevention of crime (including fraud). We do not record any payment details that you may give over the telephone.

Recording of calls maybe necessary to protect the interests of you, our staff or both. We rely on our legitimate interest in order to do this, although you may request that your call isn’t recorded by informing the operative who speaks with you.

When you have expressed an interest in our holidays

If you have opted in via our website or over the telephone to receive marketing communications from us, we will handle your personal information (for example your name, email address and postal address and telephone number) to provide you with marketing communications in line with any preferences you have told us about.

When we send you marketing emails, we rely on your consent to contact you for marketing purposes. Every email we send to you for marketing purposes will also contain instructions on how to unsubscribe from receiving them.

When we send you marketing material in the post, we rely on our legitimate interest to let you know about our latest holiday offers.

You are not under any obligation to provide us with your personal data for marketing purposes.

You can tell us that you do not want your personal information to be processed in this way at any time by contacting us at enquiries@ruralretreats.co.uk or, where relevant, by following the unsubscribe link shown in every marketing communication you receive from us.

When you let a property with us

When you let a property with us, the details we collect from you will include your name, address, telephone numbers, email, payment and other contact details.

If we only market your property, we will also collect details from you about your housekeeper and main contact person for customers.

We will treat all information we hold about you as confidential, and will only share it:

with the customers that have made the booking so that we can enter into and perform the booking contract for the holiday they have booked;
if you ask us to reveal the information or we have your permission to do so;
if we are required to share it by law;
if there is a duty to the public to share the information e.g. to governmental bodies, tax authorities.

Subject to your chosen preferences, we will also consider this as ‘expressing an interest in our holidays’ please also read the relevant section above.

To make our site better

We will also use your personal information to provide you with a more effective user experience (such as by displaying holidays we think you will be interested in, based on your purchase history and browsing habits).

Our use of your information in this way means that your experience of our site will be more tailored to you, and that the holidays you see on our site may differ from someone accessing the same site with a different purchase history or browsing habits.

We also share your aggregated, anonymous data with third party analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site.

We will also use your personal information for the purposes of making our site more secure, and to administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes.

We process your data for this reason because we have a legitimate interest to provide you with the best experience we can, and to ensure that our site is kept secure.

You can prevent us from using your personal information in this way by using the 'do not track' functionality in your internet browser. If you enable do not track functionality, our site may be less tailored to your needs and preferences.

If our business is sold

We will transfer your personal information to a third party:

if we sell or buy any business or assets, we will provide your personal information to the seller or buyer (but only to the extent we need to, and always in accordance with data protection legislation); or
if Rural Retreats or the majority of its assets are acquired by somebody else, in which case the personal information held by Rural Retreats will be transferred to the buyer.

We process your personal information for this purpose because we have a legitimate interest to ensure our business can be continued by the buyer. If you object to our use of your personal information in this way, the relevant seller or buyer of our business may not be able to provide services to you.

In some circumstances we may also need to share your personal information if we are under a duty to disclose or share it to comply with a legal obligation.

What About Technical Information and Analytics?

Information we collect about you

When you visit our site we will automatically collect the following information:

technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, screen resolution, operating system and platform; and
information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators, clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time), page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs) and methods used to browse away from the page.

Information we receive from other sources

We are also working closely with third party advertising networks, analytics providers, hosting providers and search information providers from whom we may also receive general aggregated anonymous information about you.

We will combine the information you provide to us with information we collect about you.

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, which we do not have any control over. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies.

You can 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.

Where is My Data Stored?

The data that we collect from you will be stored in a location within the EU.

All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers or those of our third party booking agents. 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. You must not share your password with anyone.

How Long Do We Retain Your Data For?

Where you have booked a holiday with us, we will retain your data for a period of 7 years for legal purposes, to ensure that we are able to assist you should you have any questions, feedback or issues in connection with a holiday you have purchased from us or if any legal issues arise – for example a VAT issue.

Where you have let a property with us, we will retain your data for a period of 7 years after termination of the Agreement for legal purposes, and to ensure that we can assist you should you have any questions, feedback or issues in connection with your Agreement with us.

Where you have given your consent for us to use your personal information to contact you for marketing communications:

we will send you our email communications for 5 years and then twice a year for 6-7 years. There will be a link within each email to allow you to unsubscribe from receiving them at any time during this period
we will contact you every 5 years to ensure you are happy to continue receiving postal and telephone communications from us

If you tell us that you no longer wish to receive marketing communications from us, we promise to stop sending them to you.

Where we have processed your data for any other reason (such as where you have contacted us with a question in connection with a potential holiday booking) we will retain your data for 3 years.

Your Right to Object Under Data Protection Laws

You have the right to object to us handling your personal information when we are handling it:

based on our legitimate interests (as described in the “How do you use my data” section above). If you ask us to stop handling your personal information in this way, we will stop unless we can show you that we have compelling grounds as to why our use of your personal information should continue
for marketing purposes. If you ask us to stop handling your personal information on this basis, we will stop.

What Are My Rights Under Data Protection Laws?

Right of access

You are entitled to receive confirmation as to whether your personal information is being processed by us, as well as various other information relating to our use of your personal information.

You also have the right to access your personal information which we are handling.

You can exercise this right by contacting us. The easiest way is by email at enquiries@ruralretreats.co.uk.

Right to rectification

You have the right to require us to rectify any inaccurate personal information we hold about you. You also have the right to have incomplete personal information we hold about you completed, by providing a supplementary statement to us.

Right to restriction

You can restrict our processing of your personal information where

you think we hold inaccurate personal information about you
our handling of your personal information breaks the law, but you do not want us to delete it
we no longer need to process your personal information, but you want us to keep it for legal reasons
we are handling your personal information because we have a legitimate interest (as described in the “How We Use Your Data” section above, and are in the process of objecting to this use of your personal information

Where you exercise your right to restrict us from using your personal information, we will then only process your personal information when you agree, except for storage purposes and to handle legal claims.

Right to data portability

You have the right to receive the personal information we hold about you in a structured, standard machine-readable format and to send this to another organisation controlling your personal information.

Right to erasure

You have the right to require us to erase your personal information which we are handling in the following circumstances:

we no longer need to use your personal information for the reasons we told you we collected it for
where we needed your consent to use your personal information and you have withdrawn your consent
you object to our use of your personal information and we have no compelling reason to carry on handling your personal information
our handling of your personal information has broken the law
we must erase your personal information to comply with a law we are subject to.

Right to complain

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office, the supervisory authority for data protection issues in England and Wales. Their address is Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

What About Websites We Link To?

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks and affiliates.

We do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies or websites. Please check their policies before you submit any personal information to these websites.

When Will You Change Your Privacy Policy?

Any changes we make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail or post.

Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.

How Do I Contact You With Feedback?

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to enquiries@ruralretreats.co.uk.

This privacy policy was last updated on 12-02-2024