Privacy Policy

 INTRODUCTION  

Welcome to the Epic privacy policy. Epic respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to what personal data we collect and how we collect it (e.g. through this website, when you sign up to our newsletter, enquire or book our travel services, or take part in a competition), what we do with your personal data, how we look after your personal data, what your rights are in relation to your personal data and how the law protects you.

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

This privacy policy is provided in a layered format so you can click through to the specific areas set out below.

1. IMPORTANT INFORMATION AND WHO WE ARE

2. THE DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

3. HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED?

4. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

5. DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA

6. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

7. DATA SECURITY

8. DATA RETENTION

9. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

1.  IMPORTANT INFORMATION AND WHO WE ARE  

CONTROLLER  

Epic Experiences Limited is the data controller (collectively referred to as ”Epic”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy) and is responsible for the personal data that it collects.

CONTACT DETAILS  

We have appointed a Data Privacy Manager who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the Data Privacy Manager by sending an email to info@epic.travel or telephoning this number +44 208 150 6131.

COMPLAINTS

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

CHANGES TO THE PRIVACY POLICY AND YOUR DUTY TO INFORM US OF CHANGES  

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated at the date appearing at the foot of the Policy.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

THIRD-PARTY LINKS  

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

2.  THE DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU  

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

• Identity Data includes first name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.
• Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
• Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.
• Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of services that you have purchased from us.
• Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
• Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, products and services.
• Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy policy.

Special category data:

Health/mobility data: When you make an enquiry for a travel booking with us, we will ask you to disclose whether you have a medical condition or health issue, or have any restrictions on your mobility. This is to enable us (and the operators/suppliers of your holiday) to provide for your health, safety and welfare during your trip which is our legal responsibility.  Any information of this type that you provide to us constitutes special category data under applicable data protection laws and when you provide it to us you are confirming your consent to us using such information for the purpose of making your travel arrangements, including our sharing of your information with the suppliers of your trip for this purpose (see Section 5 Disclosures of your Personal Data).

If you choose not to disclose this information to us or your consent to use it for the outlined purposes, we may not be able to provide the services you have requested due to our legal responsibility to provide you with a safe holiday.

Religious beliefs: We will also ask you to disclose to us any dietary requirements that you have and you may also choose to disclose to us your religious beliefs if this informs your particular travel itinerary choices. Religious beliefs constitute special category data. Accordingly, when you provide this information you confirm your consent to us using such information for the purpose of making your travel arrangements, including our sharing of your information with the suppliers of your trip for this purpose. 

IF YOU FAIL TO PROVIDE PERSONAL DATA  

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you. In this case, we may have to cancel a service you have booked with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

3.  HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED?  

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

• Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact, Financial Data and Special Category Data by filling in our booking form or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
•  enquire about or book one of our tailor-made holidays (or your travel agent or concierge service contacts us on your behalf – see “Third Party Sources” below);
• subscribe to our newsletter;
• request marketing to be sent to you;
• enter a competition, promotion or survey;
• give us feedback or contact us;
• communicating with us via social media or liking our social media pages.
• Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy [LINK] for further details.
• Third parties sources. We will receive personal data about you from various third parties as set out below:
• Technical Data and Usage Data from the following parties:

(a)  analytics providers such as Google based inside and outside the EU;

• Identity, Contact, Financial and Transaction Data from travel agents, concierge companies and similar companies providing travel agency services on behalf of the customer and providers of technical, payment and delivery services  (in each case based inside andoutside the EU).

Note: When you choose to pay for your travel booking by credit card, you will be asked to log into the secure website of a third party payment processor, Stripe (with offices both inside and outside the EU), which will collect your Identity, Contact and Financial Data for the purpose of taking your payment and providing related payment services to you.  Stripe will process your personal data in accordance with its own privacy policy, so please ensure to read that policy before you provide your personal data.

4.  HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA  

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• in order to perform the travel contract that we are about to enter into or have entered into with you;
• where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests;
• where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data although we will get your consent before sending direct marketing communications to you if you have not previously enquired or booked a holiday with us and in order to share your personal data with any third party for their marketing communications. We will also obtain your consent to our use of special category data as outlined in the paragraph “Special Category Data” above.

You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us or in the case of email marketing including our newsletter, if you unsubscribe.

PURPOSES FOR WHICH WE WILL USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA  

We have set out below, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal basis we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one basis has been set out in the table below.

MARKETING  

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising.

PROMOTIONAL OFFERS FROM US  

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, and Usage Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or subscribed to our newsletter, or you have enquired about or purchased holidays from us and have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

If you “like” our Facebook or other social media pages, you will receive details of promotions that we post from time to time on our social media pages. However we will not treat your “like” as a general opt-in to our general marketing material that we make through other means.

THIRD-PARTY MARKETING  

We do not intend to share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes. In any event we would obtain your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes (as we are legally required to do).

OPTING OUT  

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing communications at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us at any time (see section 1 Contact details).

COOKIES  

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our Cookie Policy.

CHANGE OF PURPOSE  

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

5.  DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA  

We may share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table “Purposes for which we will use your personal data” above:

Internal third parties:

• Epic Morocco Travel Sarl, a Moroccan incorporated company within the Epic group of companies, and other companies in the group, acting as joint controllers or processors, and who are currently based in Morocco and Portugal and which, together with Epic Experiences Limited (the main UK company within the group and the registered data controller), arrange the travel services requested by our customers;

External third parties:

• Suppliers of the travel services (both inside and outside the EEA – see section 6 (International Transfers) forming part of your travel booking with us, including hotels and other accommodation providers, transport operators, tours and excursions operators and other travel-related services;
• Service providers acting as processors (both inside and outside the EEA)  who provide marketing services, database management services, payment processing and other financial services, and other services including software support services;
• Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers (both inside and outside the EEA) who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
• UK HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or joint controllers (both inside and outside the EEA) who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
• Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

6.  INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS  

 We share your personal data within the [EPIC] Group. This will involve transferring your data outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

We ensure your personal data is protected by requiring all our group companies to follow the same rules when processing your personal data. These rules are called “binding corporate rules”. For further details, see European Commission: Binding corporate rules.

Many of our external third parties, in particular, suppliers of your travel services, are based outside the EEA so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.  Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission. For further details, see European Commission: Adequacy of the protection of personal data in non-EU countries; or
• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe. For further details, see European Commission: Model contracts for the transfer of personal data to third countries; or
• Where we use providers based in the US, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between Europe and the US. For further details, see European Commission: EU-US Privacy Shield.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA.

7.  DATA SECURITY  

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

8.  DATA RETENTION  

HOW LONG WILL YOU USE MY PERSONAL DATA FOR?  

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

We can provide you with details of our retention periods for your personal data on request (see Section 1 for contact details).

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Section 9: “Your legal rights” below for further information.

In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

9.  YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS  

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.  You have the right to:

• Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

• Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

• Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

• Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:

• If you want us to establish the data’s accuracy.
• Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
• Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
• You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
• Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

• Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us our Data Privacy Manager on Hussein@epic.travel

NO FEE USUALLY REQUIRED  

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

WHAT WE MAY NEED FROM YOU  

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

TIME LIMIT TO RESPOND  

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.