This privacy statement covers the site http://www.hotels.com. Your privacy it important to us. We want to make your experience on the Internet enjoyable and to foster your trust in eCommerce as a whole. Because we want to demonstrate our commitment to our users' privacy, we have agreed to disclose our information practices.
This Privacy policy is an integral part of our website and the services offered to you and cannot, in any way, be separated from the User Agreement or from the membership, usage or transaction process. If you do not agree to our privacy policy in whole, you must not use our website.
1. What information do we collect online about you and how do we use it?
2. What personally identifiable information third parties collect through the Web site.
3. What organization collects the information.
4. How we use the information.
5. With whom we may share user information.
8. How users can correct any inaccuracies in the information.
Information Collected Online About You
/ Information that you provide us / Member Registration
When you become a hotels.com member you provide
your name, address, telephone number, fax number, email address,
a unique login name, password, and password validation. This information
is collected on the registration form for several reasons including:
(1) personal identification; (2) to complete hotel, air and car
reservations; (3) to allow us to contact you for customer service,
if necessary; (4) to customize the content of our site to meet your
specific needs; and (5) to make product improvements to hotels.com.
In addition, your email address is collected to send you an email
message confirming your new member registration and each reservation
you transact online. If you provide a fax number, you may receive
faxes confirming your new member registration and each reservation
that you transact online as well. As a member you will occasionally
receive updates from us about special offers, new http://www.hotels.com/
services, and other noteworthy news items. However, you may always
decline to receive these email and fax messages. Please see our
Opt Out policy described below.
Member Profile
Members can choose to provide hotels.com with
travel preferences, credit card billing information, and other personal
information. This information is primarily used to assist members
in making reservations quickly without having to type in the same
information repeatedly.
Reservation Orders
When you book a reservation through
our site, we ask you to provide personally identifiable information
by filling out and submitting an online customer profile form if
you are not a hotels.com member already. This information includes
your name, home or work telephone number, fax number, email address,
and your credit card number, expiration date and billing address.
We use this information to process and book your reservation and
to notify you of your reservation status by email or fax. When you
return to the site and if you use your name and provide other key,
personally identifiable information, we use this information to
provide you with access to your reservation information.
We also ask you for personally identifiable information about other people for whom you are booking reservations. We use this information only to reserve the room with the hotel or other lodging, and, if you request it, to send each person an email notification of the reservation.
Cookies
Cookies
are small pieces of information stored on your computer tied to
information about you. We use both session ID cookies and persistent
cookies. For the session ID cookie, once you close the browser,
the cookie simply terminates. A persistent cookie is a small text
file stored on your hard drive for an extended period of time. Persistent
cookies can be removed by following the Web browser help file directions.
hotels.com uses cookies in several ways. We use cookies to allow you to login without having to type your login name each time. Instead, only your password is needed to access the system. We also use cookies to track usage of the "Guest" path and to serve advertisements through our advertising networks. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but if you prefer, you can edit your browser options to block them in the future. If you reject the cookie, you may still use our website. The only drawback to this is that you will be limited in some areas of our website. Persistent cookies enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our website. See "Member Profile"
Some of our business partners use cookies on our site (for example, advertisers). However, we have no access to or control over these cookies, once we have given permission for them to set cookies for advertising. This privacy statement covers the use of cookies by hotels.com only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.
Log
Files
Like
most standard Website servers we use log files. This includes internet
protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider
(ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and
number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user's
movement in the aggregate, diagnose problems with our servers and
gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses,
etc. are not linked to personally identifiable information. We use
a tracking utility called ATG Dynamo that uses log files to analyze
user movement.
Please be aware that we have links on our site that may collect personally identifiable information about you. This privacy policy does not cover the information practices or policies of such websites.
Communications from the Site
Special
Offers and Updates
We
send all new members a welcoming email to verify password and username.
Established members will occasionally receive information on products,
services, special deals, and a newsletter. Out of respect for the
privacy of our users we present the option to not receive these
types of communications. Please see the Choice and Opt-out sections.
Newsletter
If a
user wishes to subscribe to our newsletter, we ask for contact information
such as name and email address. Out of respect for our users privacy
we provide a way to opt-out of these communications. Please see
the Choice and Opt-out sections.
Service
Announcements
On
rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related
announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended
for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may
not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate
their account. However, these communications are not promotional
in nature.
Customer
Service
We
communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services
and in regards to issues relating to their account we reply via
email, fax or phone, in accordance with the users wishes.
Sharing
Legal
Disclaimer
Though
we make every effort to preserve user privacy, hotels.com may be
required by law to disclose information you have provided in obtaining
our travel products or services. hotels.com may also disclose information
against someone who poses a threat to hotels.com interests (such
as customer fraud) or whose activities could bring harm to others.
Aggregate
Information (non-personally identifiable)
We
share aggregated demographic information with our partners and advertisers.
This is not linked to any personally identifiable information.
Third
Party Intermediaries
We
use an outside a credit card processing company and bank check processing
company to bill users for goods and services. These companies do
not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information
for any secondary purposes.
Suppliers
We
provide information about travel either reserved or purchased on
hotels.com to the suppliers whose will fulfill your travel reservation.
Although hotels.com offers travel products from hotel, airline and
car rental suppliers that are reputable companies, we have not placed
limitations on these suppliers from using or disclosing your information
without your permission. Therefore, we encourage you to review the
information privacy practices of any travel suppliers whose products
you purchase on hotels.com . In addition, these travel suppliers
may also contact you as necessary to obtain additional information
about your confirmed reservation.
hotels.com will occasionally share aggregated information with our service providers. This information does not contain any personally identifiable information and is used to develop featured programs and content that will be of interest to our members and website visitors.
hotels.com may contract a reputable third-party to facilitate the distribution of survey, promotion, or sweepstakes programs. Upon completion of these projects, all information is returned to hotels.com.
Affiliated
Websites
If
you were referred to hotels.com from another website, we may personally
indentifiable information about you to the referring website. Although
hotels.com believes that the website companies from which you were
referred to us are reputable companies, we have not placed limitations
on the referring websites companies from using or disclosing your
information without your permission. Therefore, we encourage you
to review the information privacy practices of any website that
referred you to hotels.com.
Choice/Opt-out
Our
users are given the opportunity to 'opt-out' of having their information
used for purposes not directly related to our site at the point
where we ask for information. For example, our order form has an
'opt-out' mechanism so users who buy a product from us, but don't
want any marketing material, can keep their email address and fax
number off of our lists.
Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications may opt-out of receiving these communications by replying to unsubscribe in the subject line in the email. We also offer an opt-out mechanism on the member profile page.
Users of our site are always notified when their information is being collected by any outside parties. We do this so our users can make an informed choice as to whether or not they should proceed with services that require an outside party.
Links
This
website contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we,
Hotels.com, L.P., are not responsible for the privacy practices
of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they
leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every
website that collects personally identifiable information. This
privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this
website.
Surveys
& Contests
From
time-to-time our site requests information from users via surveys
or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely
voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to
disclose this information. The requested information typically includes
contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic
information (such as zip code). Contact information will be used
to notify the winners and award prizes. Survey information will
be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction
of this website. Users' personally identifiable information is not
shared with third parties unless we give prior notice and choice.
Though we may use an intermediary to conduct these surveys or contests,
they may not use users' personally identifiable information for
any secondary purposes.
Security
Hotels.com takes every precaution to protect our users'
information. When users submit sensitive information via the website,
their information is protected both online and off-line.
When our reservation order form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as credit card number), that information is encrypted and is protected with the best encryption software in the industry - SSL. While on a secure page, such as our order form, the lock icon on the bottom of web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when users are just 'surfing'.
While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line. All of our users' information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, our billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Furthermore, all employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Every time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our users' information is protected. Finally, the servers that store personally identifiable information are in a secure environment, in a locked facility.
Supplementation
of Information
In
order for this Web site to properly fulfill its obligation to users
it is necessary for us to supplement the information we receive
with information from third party sources.
Correcting/Updating/Deleting/Deactivating
Personal Information
If
a user's personally identifiable information (such as zip code,
phone, email or postal address) changes or if a user no longer desires
our service, we provide a way to correct, update or delete/deactivate
users' personally identifiable information. Members can change their
personal information on the member profile page of our website.
Notification
of Changes
If
we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes
to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we deem
appropriate so our users are always aware of what information we
collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we
disclose it. We will use information in accordance with the privacy
policy under which the information was collected.
If, however, we are going to use users' personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection we will notify users via email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. However, if users have opted out of all communication with the site, or deleted/deactivated their account, then they will not be contacted, nor will their personal information be used in this new manner. In addition, if we make any material changes in our privacy practices that do not affect user information already stored in our database, we will post a prominent notice on our Web site notifying users of the change. In some cases where we post a notice we will also email users, who have opted to receive communications from us, notifying them of the changes in our privacy practices.
Contact
Information
If
users have any questions or suggestions regarding our privacy policy,
please contact us at:
Phone
(469) 335-1376
Fax (469) 335-1834
Postal
Address:
10440 N. Central Expwy., Suite 400
Dallas,
Texas 75231
USA