Privacy policy

Who we are

Tigh na Coille is a family-run self-catering holiday cottage at Kingshouse, Glencoe, Argyll, PH49 4HZ. For the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, Daniel Towers, trading as Tigh na Coille, is the data controller for the personal information described in this policy.

If you have any question about this policy or about how your information is handled, email us at holiday@glencoestay.co.uk.

This policy applies to this website, glencoestay.co.uk, and to the information we hold about guests and enquirers. Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo and other platforms through which you may book the cottage have their own privacy policies, which apply to what you do on their sites.

The information we collect

We only collect the information we need to answer your enquiry, take and manage your booking and host your stay. Depending on how you deal with us, that may include:

• Enquiries: your name, email address, telephone number if you give it, and whatever you write in your message.
• Bookings: the lead guest’s name, postal address, email address and telephone number; the names of the other members of your party; your arrival and departure dates; the number of adults and children staying; and any requests or requirements you tell us about.
• Payments: a record of the payments you make for your stay. Direct bookings are paid by bank transfer, so we see the payer name and reference that appear on our bank statement. We do not take card payments through this website.
• Your stay: correspondence with you before, during and after your visit, and any notes we need to keep about the stay, such as a reported breakage or a lost item.
• Reviews: if you leave a review on Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo or Google, that review and the name you published it under.
• Technical information: the servers that host this website record the IP address, browser type and pages requested for each visit, in the ordinary way that web servers do. We do not use this to identify individual visitors.

If you tell us about a health condition, disability, dietary need or other sensitive matter so that we can accommodate you, we treat that as special category data. We use it only to make your stay work and we rely on your explicit consent to hold it, which you can withdraw at any time by asking us to delete it.

If you do not give us the information we need to take a booking, we will not be able to confirm it.

How we collect it

Most of the information we hold comes directly from you: through the enquiry form on our contact page, the online booking form on our booking page, by email, or in person during your stay.

If you book through Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo, that platform passes us the details we need to host you, such as your name, contact details, party size and dates. The platform remains responsible for the information you gave it, under its own policy.

Technical information is collected automatically by the company that hosts this website when your browser requests a page.

Why we use it and our lawful basis

UK data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for each use of your information. We use it as follows:

• To answer your enquiry and to discuss availability, prices and the cottage. Lawful basis: taking steps at your request before entering into a contract, and our legitimate interest in responding to people who contact us.
• To take, confirm and manage your booking, including sending confirmations, directions, key and arrival information, and dealing with changes or cancellations. Lawful basis: performance of our contract with you.
• To take payments and refunds, including deposits and any charge for damage under our booking terms. Lawful basis: performance of our contract with you.
• To keep proper business and tax records, including records of bookings and payments. Lawful basis: our legal obligations under UK tax law.
• To look after the cottage and our guests, for example by keeping a record of who is staying, dealing with an accident, damage or a complaint, or pursuing a debt. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests in running the cottage safely and protecting our property, and where relevant the establishment or defence of legal claims.
• To reply to a review you have published. Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in responding to public feedback about the cottage.
• To keep the website secure and to investigate misuse. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests in operating a safe website.

Who we share it with

We share your information only with the companies that help us run the cottage and the website, and only as far as they need it to do their job for us. Each of them is bound by a contract that prevents them from using your information for their own purposes.

• Our website hosting provider, which serves this website and records the technical information described above.
• Our email provider, through which our correspondence with you passes and is stored.
• Our accountant, who sees booking and payment records in order to prepare our accounts and tax returns.

If you book through Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo, information passes between us and that platform as needed to manage the booking. Their policies are at airbnb.co.uk, booking.com and vrbo.com.

We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or where it is necessary to establish or defend a legal claim.

Transfers outside the UK

We are based in Scotland and hold your information in the United Kingdom. Some of the companies that provide services to us, such as our website hosting provider, operate in the United States or elsewhere and may process your information there.

Where information leaves the UK, it is protected by safeguards recognised under UK law: the receiving country has been found by the UK government to give adequate protection, the receiving company is certified under the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, or the transfer is covered by the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum. You can ask us for more detail about the safeguard that applies to a particular transfer.

Cookies and tracking

This website does not set cookies of its own and does not use analytics, advertising or social media tracking.

The enquiry form and the online booking form are provided by the company that builds and looks after this website for us, and are embedded from its servers. These services may set strictly necessary cookies so that the form you are in the middle of keeps working and to protect against misuse. Cookies of this kind do not need your consent under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.

The map on our location page is an OpenStreetMap frame, which sets no cookie. The directions link takes you to Google Maps, and nothing from Google loads until you choose to follow it. Once you leave this site for Google, Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo or any other site, that site’s own cookie and privacy policy applies.

You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings. Blocking the strictly necessary cookies described above may stop the enquiry form or booking form from working.

How long we keep it

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purpose we collected it, and then delete it.

• Booking and payment records: six years from the end of the tax year of your stay, which is how long UK tax law requires us to keep business records.
• Enquiries that do not lead to a booking, and other correspondence: 12 months from our last exchange with you.
• Anything you tell us about a health condition or other sensitive matter: deleted after your stay unless you ask us to keep it for a future visit.

How we keep it secure

Your information is held in password-protected email and booking systems that only our staff and our processors can access. This website and the booking and enquiry forms are served over an encrypted connection. We do not take card payments through this website, and the only payment information we hold is what appears on our own bank statement.

No method of storing or transmitting information is completely secure. If we become aware of a breach that is likely to put your rights at risk, we will tell you and report it to the Information Commissioner’s Office as the law requires.

Children

Bookings must be made by an adult. We record the number and ages of children in a party only so that we can prepare the cottage appropriately, and we do not knowingly collect any other information from anyone under 18.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you and receive a copy of it.
• Correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Erase your information where we no longer have a good reason to keep it.
• Restrict how we use your information while a query about it is resolved.
• Object to our use of your information where we rely on our legitimate interests.
• Receive the information you gave us in a portable, machine-readable form.
• Withdraw consent at any time where consent is the basis on which we hold information, without affecting anything done before you withdrew it.

To exercise any of these rights, email holiday@glencoestay.co.uk. We do not charge a fee and will reply within one month. We may need to confirm your identity before we act on a request, and in a few cases the law allows us to refuse or limit a request, in which case we will tell you why.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, we would ask you to raise it with us first so that we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time, for example if we change the services we use to run the website or the cottage. The date at the top of the page shows when it was last revised, and the current version will always be published here.