Privacy Policy

About this policy:-

When you enquire, make a booking with us or let us manage your holiday home Blakeney Bolt Holes is acting as a Data Controller (an organisation responsible for looking after your data). The policy covers people who have booked with us, enquired about a possible holiday or who are letting their holiday home through us. Guests and owners must be over the age of 18 and as such we do not collect personal information from children.

We are grateful for the trust placed in us and use personal information responsibly. This policy sets out how the data provided will be used. Our privacy policy is under regular review and any updates will be placed on our website.

Data Protection Officer

Our Data Protection Officer is Mrs Frenesi Ewing, who may be contacted via email or via post, to Blakeney Bolt Holes, 35 High Street, Blakeney, NR25 7NA.

Your rights

We generally use your data either on the basis of your consent, or based on a contract between us (e.g. when you book a holiday). You have the right to withdraw your consent and all our marketing communications include an unsubscribe link.

If you withdraw your consent (e.g. by opting out of marketing communications), we will stop processing your data as requested. But, if you have an outstanding holiday with us we will still need to hold on to your details so that we can process this holiday as part of our contract with you to deliver that holiday booking. See the “Legal basis of processing” section below.

If you are concerned about the processing of your data, please contact us. If you are unhappy with our handling of any complaint you also have the right to raise concerns with the Information Commissioner’s Office, which supervises data protection in the UK.

You have the right to receive a copy of your personal data and the right to request that we correct or remove your data, if there remains no legal basis for keeping it. Please note that if these rights are exercised, we will need to conduct identification checks to ensure your privacy is safeguarded so we would need you to contact us by email or post.

What information do we collect?

In order to provide our service we collect the following information:

  • Identification: name, title.
  • Contact details: postal addresses, phone numbers, email addresses.
  • Bookings: whether you have stayed with us before, property booked, holiday start/end dates, cost of holiday, amounts paid, limited details of other people booked on the same holiday (names, ages), whether you have a pet, any special requests made during the booking process.
  • Marketing preferences: whether you wish to receive marketing information from us.
  • Payment: method, amounts due and collected, third party payment service provider payment confirmation. Please note that we do not capture or store your card details: payment is handled by our payment service providers (see below).
  • Browsing: historical searches on our website are logged and can be used to help improve our website and service.
  • Holiday experience: any feedback you leave, responses to customer satisfaction surveys, any problems or damage with the cottage on your departure.
  • Specific to property owners: addresses of your properties, historical and future booking information (see above), photographs/videos of the properties you own.
  • Communication: emails, customer service cases, responses to questionnaires, competition entries, your interaction with our marketing (clicking links in our marketing emails, for example to help us ensure they are relevant and interesting).

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information to:

  • Manage your holiday booking
  • Process your payments
  • Communicate with you, including for example, responding to your emails, messages on social media or telephone calls
  • Handling customer service matters
  • If you have signed up to our e-newsletter, send you relevant marketing information such as updates and special offers on the bolt holes or details of competitions
  • Detect and prevent fraud or abuse of our services
  • Personalise your experience – for example only telling you about dog friendly cottages as we know you have a pet dog
  • Make sure our websites is operating correctly

How we collect personal information

We receive personal information from:

  • You, as you provide it to us (e.g. when booking a holiday, leaving a review or enquiring about a property)
  • Your interaction with our marketing activities (provided you have subscribed to them)
  • Your use of our website
  • Feedback from our property owners or housekeepers
  • Third party review services such as TrustPilot

Legal basis of processing

There are several basis for us to store and use your data:

  • Contract: if you have booked a bolt hole with us then much of the use of your data will be because of the contract between us in relation to your holiday booking. We will usually retain relevant data for up to eight years from the date the contract completes – e.g. the last day of your holiday.
  • Consent: for certain types of processing (e.g. marketing activities), we rely on your consent to use your data. You may withdraw your consent at any time.
  • Legal obligations: we are under certain binding legal obligations, such as accounting to the government for tax and making financial records available for audit. In such cases, we are typically obliged to retain data for up to eight years from the date of the transaction.
  • Legitimate interests: we use data to review operations and to help us improvement our service. But our legitimate interests will never override your right to privacy.

How we share your personal information

We share your data as little as is practically possible. Our property owners and housekeepers only have access to guest surname and number of guests, plus any special requests (bed configuration, travelling with a dog etc.).

If you permit us to send you marketing information your name and email will be uploaded to our e-newsletter partner MailChip.

Security of your data

We protect your data with various technological measures. We also regularly test and evaluate the security of our systems, updating safeguards as appropriate. We treat breaches of confidentiality and privacy very seriously. We do not transfer your data outside the UK or the European Union. While we store your data in certain cloud services provided by third parties those third parties do not have access to your data.

Payment service providers

In order to ensure your transactions are as secure as possible, we hand over payment card processing to the following suppliers:

  • PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A. Attention: Legal Department, 22-24 Boulevard Royal L-2449, Luxembourg
  • WorldPay

Blakeney Bolt Holes Ltd is registered as a Limited Company in England and Wales, registration address at Eagle House C/O Ramon Lee & Partners, 167 City Road, London, England, EC1V 1AW. Company Registration Number 05117144