Last Updated: June 3, 2022
Hotels.com, LP, a subsidiary of Expedia, Inc. (“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 data 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.
This is a summary of our Privacy Statement. To review our Privacy Statement in full, please click here, or scroll down.
What does this Privacy Statement cover?
This Privacy Statement is designed to describe:
What personal information do we collect and use, and how do we collect it?
We collect personal information when:
When you create an account on one of our sites, sign up to receive offers or information, or make a booking using our platform, you give us your personal information. We also collect such information through automated technology such as cookies placed on your browser, with your consent where applicable, when you visit our sites or download and use our Apps. We also receive information from affiliated companies within Expedia Group, 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.
How is your personal information shared?
Your personal information may be shared 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 details how personal information is shared below.
What are your rights and choices?
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 rights and choices available to you.
More information about our privacy practices is in our full Privacy Statement. 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.
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Categories of Personal Information We Collect
Sharing of Personal Information
APEC Cross Border Privacy Rules System Participation
When you use our platform, Apps, or associated tools or services, we may collect the following kinds of personal information from you as needed:
When you install any of our apps or use our platform, we automatically collect the following types of information from your device:
Our Cookie Statement, further explains how we use cookies and similar tracking technology.
When you download and use any of our mobile apps, we collect certain technical information from your device to enable the app to work properly and as otherwise described in this Privacy Statement. That technical information includes:
Permissions for Location-Based Services:
Depending on your device’s settings and permissions and your choice to participate in certain programs, we may collect the location of your device by using GPS signals, cell phone towers, Wi-Fi signals, Bluetooth or other technologies. We will collect this information, if you opt in through the app or other program (either during your initial login or later) to enable certain location-based services available within the app (for example, locating available lodging closest to you). To disable location capabilities of the app, you can log off or change your mobile device’s settings.
We use your personal information for various purposes described below, which depend on the site you visit or the app you use.
Your Use of Online Sites, Apps, and Services:
Communications and Marketing:
Other Business Purposes and Compliance
Lawful bases for processing:
We will collect personal information from you only (i) 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), (ii) where the processing is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your rights (as explained below), or (iii) where we have your consent to do so (e.g., sending you marketing communications where consent is required). In some cases, we will have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you such as where it is necessary to use your transaction history to complete our financial and tax obligations under the law.
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).
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.
We may in some cases use automated decision-making, for example, in relation to assessing fraudulent transactions or suspicious activity on our site. As part of this processing, automated decisions may be made by putting your personal information into a system and the decision is calculated using automatic processes. If you pose a fraud risk, this may affect your ability to book on our site. 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 Your Rights and Choices section below.
We share your personal information as described below and in this Privacy Statement, and as permitted by applicable law.
Expedia Group Companies. We share your personal information within the Expedia Group companies, listed at expediagroup.com. Expedia Group companies share, access and use your personal information as described in this Privacy Statement.
Third-party service providers. We share personal information with third-parties in connection with the delivery of services to you and the operation of our business (for example, to provide credit card processing, customer service, business analytics, and fraud prevention and compliance services, and to serve you with advertising tailored to your interests). These third-party service providers are required to protect personal information we share with them and may not use any directly identifying personal information other than to provide services we contracted them for. They are not allowed to use the personal information we share for purposes of their own direct marketing (unless you have separately consented with the third-party under the terms provided by the third-party).
Travel suppliers. We share personal information with travel-related suppliers such as hotels, airlines, car-rental companies, insurance, vacation-rental property owners and managers, and where available, activity providers, rail, or cruise lines who fulfill your booking. Please note that travel suppliers may contact you to obtain additional information if and as required to facilitate your booking or to otherwise provide the travel or associated services.
Business partners and offers. If we promote a program or offer a service or product in conjunction with a third-party business partner, we will share your information with that partner to assist in marketing or to provide the associated product or service. In most of those cases, the program or offer will include the name of the third-party business partner, either alone or with ours, or you will be redirected to the website of that business with notice. An example of such a business-partner relationship would be a third-party loyalty program for which you could earn points by completing a booking on our platform.
Other Third-Parties. When you access certain features like Facebook’s “Like” button or a single sign-on that allows you to login with your social media credentials to our online services, you will share information with the third-party, like a social media company, such as the fact that you have visited or interacted with us. In the European Economic Area (EEA), Switzerland, and United Kingdom (UK) we will not load social media sharing or sign-on buttons on our website unless and until you accept our use of cookies and similar technologies. For more information, see our Cookie Statement. The third-party provider may combine this information with other information they have about you. The personal information shared will be governed by the third-party provider’s privacy policy (including any personal information we may access via the third-party provider). The third-party providers should inform you about how you can modify your privacy settings on their site.
Legal rights and obligations. We may disclose your personal information to enforce our policies, or where we are permitted (or believe in good faith that we are required) to do so by applicable law, such as in response to a request by a law enforcement or governmental authority, in connection with actual or proposed litigation, or to protect and defend our property, people and other rights or interests. We may also share your personal information pursuant to a subpoena or other legal request, or as necessary to remit certain taxes in the course of processing payments as required by law or legal process.
Corporate transactions. We may share your personal information in connection with a corporate transaction, such as a divestiture, merger, consolidation, assignments or asset sale, or in the unlikely event of bankruptcy. In the case of any acquisition, we will inform the buyer it must use your personal information only for the purposes disclosed in this Privacy Statement.
You have certain rights and choices with respect to your personal information, as described below:
Certain countries and regions provide their residents with additional rights relating to personal information. These additional rights vary by country and region and may include the ability to:
For more information on what data subject rights may be available to you, please click here.
For questions about privacy, your rights and choices, and in order to make a request to amend or update your information, or to inquire about deletion, please contact us here.
In addition to the above rights, you may have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information. However, we encourage you to contact us first so we can do our best to resolve your concern. You may submit your request to us using the information in the Contact Us 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.
The personal information we process may be transmitted 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.
The servers for our platform are located in the United States, and the Expedia Group companies and third-party service providers operate in many countries around the world. When we collect your personal information, we may process it in any of those countries.
We have taken appropriate steps and put safeguards in place to help ensure that your personal information remains protected in accordance with this Privacy Statement. For example, any data transfers between our group companies are governed by our intragroup agreements which incorporate strict data transfer terms (including the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, for transfers from the EEA) and require all group companies to protect the personal information they process in accordance with applicable data protection law. In addition, certain Expedia Group U.S. affiliates have certified with the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield, as explained below in the "Privacy Shield" section.
We also require that third-party service providers to whom a data transfer is made has appropriate safeguards in place to protect your personal information, in compliance with applicable data protection law. The particular measures used will depend on the service provider, and our agreements with them may include European Commission approved Standard Contractual Clauses, the service provider's certification under the EU-U.S. and/or Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield certification, or reliance on the service provider's Binding Corporate Rules, as defined by the European Commission.
Certain Expedia Group U.S. affiliates have certified to the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield frameworks and that we adhere to the Privacy Shield Principles of Notice, Choice, accountability for Onward Transfers, Security, Data Integrity and Purpose Limitation, Access, and Recourse, Enforcement, and Liability for personal information from the EU, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Such Expedia Group U.S. affiliates will continue to adhere to the Privacy Shield frameworks and Principles even though the CJEU determined in July 2020 that the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework is no longer an adequate transfer mechanism for the transfer of EU personal information to the U.S. In addition, Expedia Group maintains intra-group Standard Contractual Clauses where applicable to cover the transfer of EU personal information to the U.S. Our certifications can be found here. For more information about the Privacy Shield principles, please visit: www.privacyshield.gov. For more on our adherence to the Privacy Shield Frameworks, please see information posted here.
Hotels.com LP’s privacy practices, described in this Privacy Statement, comply with the APEC Cross Border Privacy Rules System. The APEC CBPR system provides a framework for organizations to ensure protection of personal information transferred among participating APEC economies. More information about the APEC framework can be found here.
We want you to feel confident about using our platform and all associated tools and services, and we are committed to taking appropriate steps to protect the information we collect. While no company can guarantee absolute security, we do take reasonable steps to implement appropriate physical, technical, and organizational measures to protect the personal information that we collect and process.
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 deidentify, aggregate, or otherwise anonymize your personal information if we intend to use it for analytical purposes or trend analysis over longer periods of time.
The criteria we use to determine our retention periods include:
If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, or wish to inquire about our personal handling practices, please contact us via the Privacy Section on our Customer Services Portal here. For a list of the Expedia Group companies, click here.
For more information about the data controller and/or Representative for personal information we process, please click here.
If you have an unresolved privacy or data use concern that we have not addressed satisfactorily, please contact our U.S.-based third party dispute resolution provider (free of charge) at https://feedback-form.truste.com/watchdog/request.
We may update this Privacy Statement in response to changing laws or technical or business developments. If we propose to make any material changes, we will notify you by means of a notice on this page. You can see when this Privacy Statement was last updated by checking the last updated date displayed at the top of this Statement.