Privacy Policy

WHO WE ARE

Visit Kent is the Destination Management Organisation for Kent (the Garden of England), welcoming over 65 million visitors a year, championing the county’s £3.6 billion tourism industry and supporting more than 72,000 jobs. It is a public/private sector partnership supported by Kent County Council, Medway Council, district and borough councils, and the leading sector tourism businesses in Kent. Visit Kent is delivered by the destination management specialists Go To Places.

ABOUT THIS POLICY

This privacy policy applies if you’re a tourism business or travel industry contact that uses any of our services or has a business relationship with us. This includes member organisations; businesses listed on our website; businesses that take part in our campaigns; businesses that have contacted us for support or advice and any other business that has a working business relationship with us. We have a separate privacy policy for consumers which can be found on the Visit Kent consumer website. Visit Kent is committed to ensuring the privacy and security of our partners’ personal information. We value the relationships we build with other organisations and work closely with them to grow the visitor economy and develop tourism across our partner destinations. This privacy policy explains how we collect, store, disclose, transfer and use your personal information so that you can continue to benefit from our activities. This privacy policy does not cover the links within this site linking to other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit.

As a data controller Visit Kent Ltd fully complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) which came into force on 25 May 2018. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (‘ICO’) under registration number Z1011534.

WHAT INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE COLLECT IT

We only collect personal information that is relevant and necessary for us to continue to communicate effectively with you and to deliver services for your organisation. Information is collected through our interactions with you through email correspondence; face to face meetings; investor agreement forms; business and travel trade newsletter opt in forms; website listing forms; event listing forms; campaign business sign up forms (e.g. Big Weekend, 2FOR1) and surveys you participate in. To deliver these services we collect the following personal data about our business contacts: • Your name • Your job title • Your business contact details including email address and phone number • The function you deliver within your organisation so that you only receive communications that are relevant to the job you do (e.g. marketing, finance, decision maker)

• Dietary and access requirements (if you provide them during event registration they will be used for the purposes of that event only) We may also store the following details about your organisation so that we can manage the relationship with your organisations: • Business address and website • District your business is located in • Type of business • The status of our relationship with your organisation • Any specific campaigns your organisation takes part in (tourism businesses) • Number of bedrooms (accommodation businesses) • The markets that your organisation operates in (travel trade businesses) • Financial information for invoicing and making payments to your organisation (if relevant) • Information about visitor/guest numbers if you provide this information through our monthly business barometer (tourism businesses) • Any other information you provide to us via a survey

If your business or event is listed on our consumer website, we hold the details and images that you provide to us. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have the correct permissions to use any content or images that you submit and to notify us of any changes. We always attempt to keep your information as up to date and accurate as possible. This might mean we get in touch from time to time to check details with you and to remind you to provide updates to your website listings.

HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

As there is an established two-way relationship in place between Visit Kent and you and/or your organisation, we process your information based on a legitimate interest. We have conducted a legitimate interest assessment to determine that the processing of data is reasonably expected based on the relationship and is necessary to achieve shared goals and to deliver services for partner businesses. We have also used a balancing test to ensure that this does not impact on your individual interests, rights and freedoms.

Depending on the nature of our relationship with you and your organisation, we will process your data in order to deliver services you have requested or are entitled to as part of an agreement and to share relevant information, news or opportunities that are available you. The different ways we may process your data or contact you are outlined below:

• Communicating with you about activities you’ve signed up for: If you’re a Visit Kent member, have signed up to take part in a campaign, registered for an event, listed your business on the website or take advantage of any other service we offer, we will process your data to send updates about this activity, request additional information from you about this activity, send feedback surveys about this activity and send information about benefits or further opportunities you’re entitled to as part of this relationship.
• Event invitations: Members of Visit Kent will receive invitations to our networking events which are a benefit of membership. Other tourism businesses or industry contacts we work with may receive invitations to events or training sessions that we have identified as relevant for them based on location and business type. We use Eventbrite to process these invitations and manage registrations.
• Sharing relevant news and insights: We share relevant information about our activities, industry trends and tourism news with partner businesses. This is one of the services we deliver for our members, wider tourism businesses and travel trade contacts. We tailor these messages to different groups of partners to ensure that you receive the most relevant information.
• Sharing relevant opportunities: We contact tourism businesses with opportunities to get involved with our campaigns and activities and also selected opportunities available through other relevant organisations. Visit Kent members are entitled to take advantage of a wide range of opportunities as part of their annual fee. Selected activities and campaigns are open to all tourism businesses in Kent and are shared with a wider selection of businesses. We tailor these messages to ensure that we only send you opportunities that are available to you.
• Research and surveys: We may also use your information for survey purposes, either for legitimate interest purposes or where consent has been given. If you have signed up to take part in our monthly business barometer, you will receive a survey to complete every month through a secure survey platform. The data you provide about your visitor numbers/occupancy is collected confidentially and used to create a monthly report on tourism performance for the benefit of our partners. To ensure that we are focussing on the priorities of our partners, Visit Kent members will receive an annual satisfaction survey. From time to time we may also contact you for feedback on other activities you’re involved in, information about your business performance or your opinions on the destination or wider tourism industry. All data collected through surveys will be treated with the upmost sensitivity and will be stored securely and confidentially.
• Sending invoices or making payments to you: We hold financial information necessary to raise invoices for organisations that we provide chargeable services to and payment details for organisations we need to make payments to. These details are held and processed through secure accounting software.
• Sending annual reviews by post: We will send an annual report by post to all Visit Kent members and other key partners. This is to ensure that our partner organisations are aware of the activities we deliver for them as part of their membership.

You can opt out of certain communications or ask us to stop all communication with you but this will mean that you may miss out on news and opportunities that are relevant to you and we may no longer be able to include you in campaigns or activities that you’ve signed up for. For example, if your business is listed on our consumer website we need to be able to contact you to ensure that this is up to date so we may have to remove your listing or if you are a Visit Kent member we won’t be able to tell you about about opportunities and benefits that you’ve paid for in your annual membership fee.

HOW WE STORE AND SECURE YOUR INFORMATION

Your information will be only be accessible to our staff and contractors if they are trained and it is appropriate in order for them to carry out their role in line with this Privacy Policy. We also work with trusted suppliers who carry out services on our behalf which sometimes requires them to process data. We ensure that all suppliers agree to the terms of our Data Processor Agreement and have systems in place to treat your information as respectfully as we do in accordance with the requirements of the GDPR. We will never sell your personal information, or let other organisations use it for their own purposes. We employ security measures to protect your information from access by unauthorised persons and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage.

HOW LONG WE WILL HOLD YOUR INFORMATION

When we become aware that you no longer work for a partner organisation or if you inform us that your organisation no longer wish to receive communications from Visit Kent or benefit from our services, we will remove your personal data as soon as practically possible. If we dispose of your information it will always be done securely. Personal data you provide through surveys will be held securely for no longer than necessary, will be anonymised where possible and will be deleted in line with the data retention policy. In some cases we may be required to hold some data for longer for legal, financial or taxation reasons.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Under the GDPR, you have rights as an individual which you can exercise in relation to the information we hold about you. Read more about your individual rights on the ICO’s website. Individuals can find out if we hold any personal information by making a 'right of access' request under the General Data Protection Regulations. If we do hold information about you, we will:

• Give you a description

• Tell you why we are holding it

• Tell you who it could be disclosed to

• Let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

You also have a right to be informed within 30 days, on request, what information we hold about you, how we obtained it, and to whom we may pass it on. If a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, or involves requests for copies of the same information already supplied, we reserve the right as allowed under the act to levy a fee for this service. This privacy notice was drafted with brevity and clarity in mind. It does not provide exhaustive detail of all aspects of our collection and use of personal information, but we are happy to provide any additional information or explanation needed.

Any requests for this should be sent to the address below: Email: enquiries@visitkent.co.uk Telephone: 01227 812900

Post: Visit Kent, 10 Best Lane, Canterbury, Kent, CT1 2JB

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE

We will need to make changes to this policy from time to time to make sure that we are always providing you the latest information about what is happening to your personal information. Any changes to our privacy policy in the future will be posted to the site and, where appropriate, through email notification This policy was last updated on 16/4/19.