Privacy Statement

alternativevoyage, the operator of www.alternativevoyage.com, we prioritize your privacy and are dedicated to safeguarding your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains how we gather, use, share, and protect your data, along with your rights concerning your personal information and how you can reach us.

www.alternativevoyage.com, part of alternativevoyage, (“we” or “us”) values you as our customer and recognizes that privacy is important to you. This Privacy Statement explains how we collect, use, and disclose personal information when you use our platform and associated services, your rights in determining what we do with the information that we collect or hold about you, and tells you how to contact us.

Privacy Statement Summary

This is a summary of our Privacy Statement. To review our Privacy Statement in full, please click, or scroll down.

What is included in this?

This Privacy Statement is designed to describe:

• How and what type of personal information do we collect and use?
• When and with whom do we share your personal information?
• What choices can you make about how we collect, use, and share your personal information?
• How can you access and update your personal information? And use, and how do we collect it?

We collect personal information when:

• You provide it to us
• We collect it automatically
• We receive it from others

When you register for an account on our site, subscribe to receive offers or updates, or make a booking through our platform, you provide us with your personal details. Additionally, we collect personal information through automated technologies like cookies on your browser (with your consent, where required) when you visit our websites or use our mobile apps. We also receive personal information from affiliated companies within alternativevoyage, as well as business partners and other third parties, which help us improve our platform and associated tools and services, update and maintain accurate records, potentially detect and investigate fraud, and more effectively market our services.

Your personal information may be shared for several purposes, including: to help you book your travel and/or vacation, assist with your travel and/or vacation stay, communicate with you (including when we send information on products and services or enable you to communicate with travel providers and/or property owners), and comply with the law. The full Privacy Statement below details how personal information is shared.

You can exercise your data protection rights in various ways. For example, you can opt out of marketing by clicking the “unsubscribe” link in the emails, in your account as applicable, or contacting our customer service. Our Privacy Statement has more information about the options and data protection available to you.

More information about our privacy practices, You can also contact us as described below in the “Contact Us” section to ask questions about how we handle your personal information or make requests about your personal information.

Legal Grounds for Processing

We will collect personal information from you only when one of the following lawful bases applies:

• Consent: This means that we will process your personal information where you have given your consent to do so (e.g., sending you marketing communications where consent is required).
• Legal obligation: This means we will process your personal information when we are legally required to do so, such as when it's necessary to use your transaction history to fulfill our financial and tax obligations in accordance with the law.
• Performance of a contract: This means that we will process your personal information where the personal information is necessary to perform a contract with you (e.g., manage your booking, process payments, or create an account at your request).

- If we ask you to provide personal information to comply with a legal requirement or to perform a contract with you, we will make this clear at the relevant time and advise you whether the provision of your personal information is mandatory or not (as well as of the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal information).

• Legitimate interest: This means that we will process your personal information where the processing is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your rights (as explained below).

- Certain countries and regions allow us to process personal information on the basis of legitimate interests. If we collect and use your personal information in reliance on our legitimate interests (or the legitimate interests of any third-party), this interest will typically be to operate or improve our platform and communicate with you as necessary to provide our services to you, for security verification purposes when you contact us, to respond to your queries, undertaking marketing, or for the purposes of potentially detecting or preventing illegal activities. While the concept of legitimate interest only exists in certain countries and regions, we balance our usage of your personal information against your rights globally.

Types of Personal Information We Collect and Use

We collect personal information for the following purposes:

Platform Usage and Booking Purposes – including, to:

• Enable your booking, verify your identity, and for travel insurance purposes.
• Book the requested travel or enable vacation property booking.
• Provide services related to the booking and/or account.
• Create, maintain, and update user accounts on our platform and authenticate you as a user.
• Maintain your search and travel history, accommodation and travel preferences, and similar information about your use of alternativevoyage's platform and services, and as otherwise described in this Privacy Statement.
• Enable and facilitate acceptance and processing of payments, coupons, and other transactions.
• Administer loyalty and rewards programs.
• Collect and enable booking-related reviews.
• Help you to use our services faster and easier through features like the ability to sign in using your account within the online services and sites of some of the alternativevoyage brands.

Communications and Customer Service Purposes – including, to:

• Respond to your questions, requests for information, and process information choices.
• Enable communication between you and the travel supplier like hotels and vacation property owners.
• Contact you (such as by text message, email, phone calls, mail, push notifications, or messages on other communication platforms) to provide information like travel booking confirmations and updates, emergency notifications, or for other purposes as described in this Privacy Statement.

Marketing Purposes – including, to:

• Contact you (such as by text message, email, phone calls, mail, push notifications, or messages on other communication platforms) for marketing purposes.
• Analyze information such as browsing and/or purchase history and use the result to optimize advertising and marketing in accordance with your interests and preferences.
• Measure and analyze the effectiveness of our marketing and promotions.
• Administer promotions like contests, sweepstakes, and similar giveaways.
• Deliver targeted advertising and advertising based on your profile. Our Cookie Statement further explains how we use cookies and similar tracking technology.

Market Research, Analytics, and Training Purposes to improve our Services – including, to:

• Conduct surveys, market research, and data analytics.
• Maintain, improve, research, and measure the effectiveness of our sites and apps, activities, tools, and services.
• Monitor or record calls, chats, and other communications with our customer service team and other representatives, as well as platform communications between or among partners and travelers for quality control, training, dispute resolution, and as described in this Privacy Statement.
• Create aggregated or otherwise anonymized or deidentified data, which we may use and disclose without restriction where permissible.

Security and Compliance Purposes – including to:

• Promote security, verify the identity of our customers, prevent and investigate fraud and unauthorized activities, defend against claims and other liabilities, and manage other risks.
• Comply with applicable laws, protect our and our users’ rights and interests, defend ourselves, and respond to law enforcement, other legal authorities, and requests that are part of a legal process.
• Comply with applicable security and anti-terrorism, anti-bribery, customs and immigration, and other such due diligence laws and requirements.

We collect the following types of personal information for the purposes outlined below:

Sharing of Personal Information

• We share your personal information as described below and in this Privacy Statement, and as permitted by applicable law.
• Joint Use of Your Personal Information

We jointly use, and our alternativevoyage companies are joint controllers of your personal information in the following manner:

• We process all the categories of personal information identified in the “Categories of Personal Information We Collect and Use” section jointly for the uses identified in the table above.

The alternativevoyage companies listed at, process this personal information jointly.

alternativevoyage is the party responsible for managing your personal information. More information about how to contact us regarding this joint use can be found in the “Contact Us” section.

How We Use Artificial Intelligence

We utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning for a variety of purposes to enhance our platform and related services. Your personal information may be used for the following reasons:

• To enhance your user experience and keep our site safe.
• To determine the sort order you see on our site.
• To provide destinations, property or activity recommendations.
• To provide flight price insights and alerts.
• To screen the content you upload on our site (e.g., images of your properties) to ensure they meet our quality or formatting requirements, and to identify relevant amenities included in your listing.
• To screen the reviews you share with us to ensure they do not contain identifiable personal information or to assess customer satisfaction,
• To prevent and detect a breach of our terms and conditions or other fraudulent activities to keep our site safe,
• To display your language and dialects within our virtual agents’ experience.

Automated decisions may be made by processing your personal information through a system, where decisions are determined using automatic procedures. We will base this on our legitimate interest to maintain the security of our site and improve your user experience. However, we will not engage in automated decision-making that results in legal or similarly significant consequences solely from automated processing of personal information, unless:

• You explicitly consented to the processing,
• The processing is necessary for entering into a contract, or for its performance
• When otherwise authorized by applicable law.

You may have rights in relation to automated decision making, including:

• The ability to request a manual decision-making process instead, or
• Contest a decision based solely on automated processing.

If you want to know more about your data protection rights, please see the section below.

Your Rights and Choices

You have certain rights and choices with respect to your personal information, as described below:

• If you have an account with us, you may change your communication preferences by either (1) logging in and updating the information in your account (not available for all alternativevoyage companies) or (2) contacting us.
• You can control our use of certain cookies by following the guidance in our Cookies pop-up.
• You can access, amend, inquire about the deletion of, or update the accuracy of your personal information at any time by either logging into your account or contacting us.
• If you no longer wish to receive marketing and promotional emails, you may unsubscribe by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link in the email. You can also log into your account to change communication settings (not available for all alternativevoyage companies) or by contacting us. Please note that if you choose to unsubscribe from or opt out of marketing emails, we may still send you important transactional and account-related messages from which you will not be able to unsubscribe
• For our mobile apps, you can view and manage notifications and preferences in the settings menus of the app and of your operating system.
• If we are processing your personal information on the basis of consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time by contacting us. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing that occurred before you withdrew consent and it will not affect our processing of your personal information that is conducted in reliance on a legal basis other than consent.

Some countries and regions offer their residents extra rights concerning personal information. These additional rights differ by location and may include the the ability to:

• Request a copy of your personal information
• Request information about the purpose of the processing activities
• Delete your personal information
• Object to our use or disclosure of your personal information
• Restrict the processing of your personal information
• Opt out of the sale of your personal information
• Port your personal information
• Request information about the logic involved in our automated decision-making, the result of such decisions,
• Object to the use of fully automated decision making, including profiling, with significant legal effect, and request a manual decision-making process instead,
• Contest a decision based solely on automated processing.

For questions about privacy, your rights and choices, and in order for you, or (where applicable) your authorized agent to request to amend or update your personal information, or to inquire about deletion of your information, please contact us.

Along with the rights mentioned above, you may have the right to file a complaint with a data protection authority regarding our collection and use of your personal information. However, we encourage you to reach out to us first so that we can make every effort to address your concerns. You can submit your request using the contact details provided in the section.

We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wanting to exercise their personal data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws. Should you have the right to appeal a decision not to take action on a request under applicable law, instructions on how to make that appeal will be included in our response to you.

International Data Transfer

The personal information we process may be accessed from, processed, or transferred to countries other than the country in which you reside. Those countries may have data protection laws that are different from the laws of your country. Such cross-border transfer of your personal information is necessary for us to service your transaction with us, and for the purposes outlined in this Privacy Statement.

Our platform's servers are located at Globally, and the alternativevoyage companies, along with third-party service providers, operate across various countries. When we collect your personal information, it may be processed in any of these locations. Our employees may access your personal data from different countries worldwide, and the recipients of your information could also be based in countries other than your country of residence.

We have taken appropriate steps and put safeguards in place to help ensure that any access, processing, and/or transfer of your personal information remains protected in accordance with this Privacy Statement and in compliance with applicable data protection law. Such measures provide your personal information with a standard of protection that is at least comparable to that under the equivalent local law in your country, no matter where your data is accessed from, processed, and/or transferred to. We will comply with obligations regarding personal information cross-border transfer in accordance with application data protection laws, regulations, and conditions set by the competent authorities. This may include fulfilling obligations such as security assessments and/or certifications and signing agreements with overseas recipients in accordance with the standard contract established by the competent authorities.

Some measures that we have in place include the following:

Adequacy decisions of the European Commission confirming an adequate level of data protection in respective non-EEA countries. Please check the latest list of such countries published by the European Commission HERE.

Transferee countries’ participation in the APEC-CBPR forum. Please see the latest list of participant countries . alternativevoyage is in the process of getting APEC-CBPR certification, and we have accordingly established measures across all alternativevoyage companies to ensure that data is shared only in accordance with the CBPR requirements.

Ensuring that the third-party partners, vendors, and service providers to whom data transfers are made have appropriate mechanisms in place to protect your personal information. For instance, our agreements signed with our third-party partners, vendors and service providers incorporate strict data transfer terms (including, where applicable, the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses issued by the European Commission and/or United Kingdom, for transfers from the EEA/UK), and require all contracting parties to protect the personal information they process in accordance with applicable data protection law. Our agreements with our third-party partners, vendors and service providers may also include, where applicable, their certification under the EU-U.S. DPF and the UK extension to EU-U.S. DPF and/or Swiss-U.S. DPF certification (and any other country specific extension to the DPF adopted from time to time), or reliance on the service provider's Binding Corporate Rules, as defined by the European Commission. In regard to the onward principle of the DPF Frameworks, if alternativevoyage learns that a third party is using or disclosing your Personal Information in a manner that is contrary to this Policy, we will take reasonable steps to prevent or stop such use or disclosure. alternativevoyage may not be liable for onward transfers of Personal Information to third parties in violation of this Policy and the DPF Frameworks.

Intra-group agreements in place for our Group companies which incorporate strict data transfer terms (including, where applicable, Standard Contractual Clauses issued by the European Commission and/or United Kingdom, for transfers from the EEA/UK) and require all group companies to protect the personal information they process in accordance with applicable data protection law.

Carrying out periodic risk assessments and implementing various technological and organizational measures to ensure compliance with relevant laws on data transfer.

alternativevoyage commits to resolving DPF Principles-related complaints about our collection and use of your personal information. EU and UK individuals and Swiss individuals with inquiries or complaints regarding our handling of personal data received in reliance on the DPF Frameworks should first contact us via our Contact Us section.

Security

We want you to feel assured when using our platform and its related tools and services. We are dedicated to taking the necessary measures to safeguard the information we collect. Although no company can offer complete security, we make every effort to implement reasonable physical, technical, and organizational safeguards to protect your personal data.

Our cybersecurity team develops and deploys technical security controls and measures to ensure responsible personal information collection, storage, and sharing that is proportionate to the personal information’s level of confidentiality or sensitivity. We take efforts to continuously implement and update security measures to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, loss, destruction, or alteration. We hold our data-handling partners to equally high standards.

We have established an information security protection system based on industry best practices and have obtained PCI-DSS certification. We have also implemented appropriate security measures throughout the entire lifecycle of data collection, storage, processing, use, transmission, and sharing, and have taken certain technical and management measures including but not limited to verification and access controls, VPN, SSL encrypted transmission, and multi factor authentication mechanisms, based on our information classification and processing standards, to ensure the security of systems and services.

We have management and approval mechanisms for employees who may have access to your information and provide regular information security training for employees.

In the event of a personal data security incident that may affect your rights and interests, you will be notified in accordance with applicable data protection laws and regulations. We will also report the relevant incident to the competent regulatory authorities, if required by applicable laws and regulations.

Minors

Our website and mobile application are not intended for minors (as defined by applicable data protection laws), and we are unable to determine the age of individuals who access or use them. If a minor has shared personal information with us without parental or guardian consent, the parent or guardian should get in touch with us. If we learn that personal information has been collected from a minor without the necessary consent, we will deactivate the minor’s account, if they have one with us.

The limited circumstances we might need to collect the personal information of minors include: as part of a reservation, the purchase of other travel-related services, or in other exceptional circumstances (such as features addressed to families). When processing personal information of minors, we strictly adhere to the principles of legality, necessity, clear purpose, openness, transparency, and security, and we take strict measures to protect such data.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding our protection of minors’ personal information, or if you (in your capacity as the parent or guardian of the minor) wish to delete or correct the personal information of minors, please Contact Us .

Record Retention

We will retain your personal information in accordance with all applicable laws, for as long as it may be relevant to fulfill the purposes set forth in this Privacy Statement, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. We will de-identify, aggregate, or otherwise anonymize your personal information if we intend to use it for analytical purposes or trend analysis over longer periods of time.

When we delete your personal information, we use industry standard methods to ensure that any recovery or retrieval of your information is impossible. We may keep residual copies of your personal information in backup systems to protect our systems from malicious loss. This personal information is inaccessible unless restored, and all unnecessary personal information will be deleted upon restoration.

The factors we consider to determine our retention periods include:

• The duration of our relationship with you, including any open accounts you may have with alternativevoyage companies, or recent bookings or other transactions you have made on our platform
• Whether we have a legal obligation related to your personal information, such as laws requiring us to keep records of your transactions with us
• Whether there are any current and relevant legal obligations affecting how long we will keep your personal information, including contractual obligations, litigation holds, statutes of limitations, and regulatory investigations
• Whether your personal information is needed for secure backups of our systems

Contact Us

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, or wish to inquire about our personal information handling practices, and exercise your rights to access, correct, or inquire about the deletion of personal information, please contact us via the Contact Us Section.

Your principal data controller is the alternativevoyage company responsible for the site or app with which you are interacting, and this data controller may be acting as a joint controller with other members of alternativevoyage of companies.

Updates to Statement

We may revise this Statement to reflect changes in laws, technology, or business practices. If we plan to make significant changes, we will inform you through a notice on this page. You can check the 'last updated' date at the bottom of this Statement to see when it was last modified.

For information on prior updates please get in touch.