General Introduction
Gala Travels Inc. understands the importance of keeping the information about you that you entrust to us confidential and secure (“Customer Information”). The information we collect may include your personal information, in other words information capable of identifying you as a particular individual, such as your name, phone number, email address, credit card information (“Personal Information”). We therefore make it our highest priority to ensure that we look after your Customer Information and use it responsibly. By visiting our website or other channels as they evolve, or by providing your Customer Information to us or our third party service providers over the telephone, by email or other communication method (“Distribution Channels”), you accept and consent to the collection, storage and processing of your Customer Information as described in this Privacy Policy.
Who Controls your Customer Information?
Customer Information collected by us is controlled by Gala Travels Inc. with its registered office at 7780 Woodbine Avenue, Unit #2, Markham, Ontario L3R 2N7, Canada.
Customer Information collected by Gala Travels Inc. is stored on central databases on our website, with Wired Messenger and Sabre, Amadeus and Galileo Global Distribution Systems.
What Personal Information do we collect and how?
Gala Travels Inc. collects Customer Information supplied by you and uses it to provide you with a dynamic, personalised and secure service to offer you a truly rewarding online experience. Although in certain instances, we will require you to provide us with your Personal Information, for example, to enable you to set up an account with us or purchase products or services (and we will make it clear to you at the time what we need from you), you can visit most pages on our website without the need to supply any Personal Information.
Gala Travels Inc. may collect Personal Information about you:
Examples of Personal Information we collect in each case are:
Purchaser Information
You provide us with your name, credit card details, including card number, card type, cardholder name, expiry date, billing address and delivery details when you place an order through our website or other Distribution Channels.
Information from Competitions, Questionnaires and Surveys
When you complete questionnaires, surveys or competition entry forms you provide us with your Personal Information including your name, street address, email address and other information we might request.
Contacting us
When you contact us by email, phone, fax or post, for example dealing with our customer service personnel, you provide us with your Personal Information for example, name, email address etc.
Implicit data capture
In addition to the information which you may volunteer to us, certain Customer Information is automatically collected when you visit the Gala Travels Inc. website via tracking technologies employed by us from time to time such as cookies, flash cookies, web bugs, javascript. These collect Customer Information including technical information from your computer whenever you visit the website such as your Internet protocol (IP) address, your operating system and platform, browser type and version and referrer website as well as providing us with information about your shopping preferences, viewed/searched-for products and on site activity. The information collected by cookies and other tracking methods placed by us is anonymous and does not contain your Personal Information but will simply identify you as a specific number by reference to your hard drive. If you are a wireless user and gain Internet access via a mobile phone you should contact your wireless provider to find out if they collect Personal Information about you.
Cookies
Each website owned and operated by Gala Travels Inc. uses cookies (small text files containing a unique identification number). There are three types of cookies:
Session cookies
These are used to maintain something called session state. If you consider your journey through the website as a conversation with us, this cookie reminds the site where we are in that conversation. Session cookies are required for the website to function but are not used in any way to identify you personally.
Permanent cookies
When you visit our website, we will assign a permanent cookie on the hard drive of your computer. You can view these by looking in the cookies directory of your browser installation. As the name implies, permanent cookies last for a long time and each time you visit our website you send us a copy of them allowing us to identify you from visit to visit. For instance, if you were looking at hotels in Hawaii last time you were on the website and the next time you visit us we have a great hotel deal, this cookie enables us to recognise you, so that we can show you that deal. The aim is to enhance your experience whilst on the website and make sure you don’t miss out on great offers. Cookies do not contain any Personal Information for example, your name, address, email address, or telephone number, but simply a unique identification number that identifies your computer to us.
Third party tracking devices
You will see that we sometimes carry advertising relating to third parties on our website. This advertising is served either directly by third party advertisers or on their behalf by advertising network companies. These advertisers or advertising networks may place cookies, action tags or other tracking devices on your hard drive to assess the effectiveness of their ads. They may aggregate information about your visits to our website and other websites retrieved via such cookies with other information that you may have provided directly to the relevant advertiser or ad network. This Privacy Policy does not cover the use of cookies and other tracking devices by third parties. This will be covered by that third party’s privacy policies and practice and we would recommend that you take a look at these which in most cases will be found on that company’s website.
Opting out
Although you cannot block "session" cookies as they are required for our website to function correctly you can configure your Internet browser so that it can reject both "permanent" and "third party" cookies. How you do this will depend upon the Internet browser you use (for example, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Firefox etc). Please refer to the relevant Internet browser manufacturer's website where you should be able to receive all the information you need.
Information from other sources
We may receive information about you from other sources, for example from credit reference agencies to guard against fraud or address, delivery information from third parties engaged for record correction purposes etc.
How do we use your Customer Information?
Gala Travels Inc. will use your Customer Information for a number of different purposes including:
For fulfilling orders
For responding to your queries
For improving your onsite experience and providing you with information about products and services, special offers and promotions.
For internal operations and analysis
Fulfilling orders
When you place an order for products or services via the website or other Distribution Channels, we will use your purchase information to process the requested transaction, fulfil your order and provide you with the products and services you expect.
Responding to communications
We may use your Customer Information to respond to your queries for example, about an order or problems making a purchase or navigating the website. In order to address your query, you may be contacted by email, over the telephone, or other communication method by a member of one of our reservations and support teams. We may also use your contact details to send you follow up information about a booking (for example, regarding changes to booked travel or unavoidable travel disruptions affecting your journey in order to help you make alternative travel arrangements). We may contact you via email, phone or other communication channel to respond to suggestions you may send to us (for example about our website, products and services) and to assess and announce the results of surveys, competitions and other contests you may have participated in. For quality assurance and training reasons we record most of our telephone calls with our customers. Some information including customer e-mails received by Gala Travels Inc. may be used by us for testimonials though your Personal Information, such as e-mail address or contact details, will never be displayed publicly by us.
Improving your shopping experience
We use the information gathered from your permanent cookie file (see Cookies above) in conjunction with other Customer Information provided by you, so that we can create a more effective website by assessing content and traffic flows on the site. We use this information to provide you with a more personalised experience on the website, help you to navigate the site effortlessly and to display particular products and services that we believe may be of interest to you.
When place an order via our website or other Distribution Channel, we may use your Customer Information to contact you with details of special offers, promotions and other information and to send you our newsletters where we think these will be of interest. You can unsubscribe for such communications at any time by using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of emails you receive from us.
Internal administration and fraud prevention
We may also use your Customer Information for internal administration, analysis and quality assurance purposes, including fraud prevention.
We use your Customer Information to help us guard against fraud. When you make a booking or purchase products or services offered on our website, we will automatically pass certain Customer Information which you provide to us (for example, your name, credit card, billing address details) to third party credit reference agencies, payment processors or other third parties for the specific purpose of verifying that information. If your Customer Information cannot be satisfactorily verified (for example, your stated billing address does not match your credit card details), we will contact you to notify you that your purchase request has not been confirmed and to request corrected details, if they can be provided, before we can process your order.
Who do we share your information with and why?
We are happy to say that we are not in the business of selling or renting your Customer Information to third parties. Gala Travels Inc. does however share your Customer Information with its group companies or carefully selected third party partners and providers as necessary for business administration, customer delivery, marketing and operational, analytical or other purposes as set out below. Except with your expressly given consent, we will only share your Customer Information as described in this Privacy Policy.
Third party suppliers and group companies
Gala Travels Inc. engages other group companies and/or carefully selected third party partners, including service providers, joint venture partners and outsource providers to perform various functions on our behalf. To the extent required to perform such functions on our behalf, these companies may process your Customer Information. Such functions include, processing bookings and confirming reservations for products and services and providing associated information, delivering products and services, processing credit card payments, providing search results, communicating with you, including providing customer service, via telephone, email, fax, post or otherwise and for promotional activities.
We may also share your Customer Information with third parties for the purpose of data analysis, quality assurance (including fraud prevention) and, though this will not include your Personal Information, for marketing assistance (for example, to explore consumer trends).
Various pages on our website contain links (including via ads) to third party websites. Once you have exited our website via such a link, any further data you provide will be collected by or on behalf of the third party responsible for that website and therefore subject to the privacy policy and practices of that third party rather than to this Privacy Policy. We cannot be responsible for any third party’s use of your Customer Information and recommend that you check the specific terms on the relevant third party’s websites relating to the use and disclosure of your Customer Information.
To the extent that any third party has access to your Personal Information to provide functions on our behalf, their use of this information will be limited solely to providing those functions and for no other purpose. Any Personal Information processed by our group companies will be in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy or similarly stringent conditions and as permitted under applicable data protection laws. We place contractual restrictions on our non-group third party partners who receive your Personal Information, to ensure that they use this in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable data protection laws.
Compliance with laws and regulations
We may disclose your Personal Information to third parties, such as official bodies and our professional advisers, as far as we believe necessary (i) to comply with relevant laws, orders or regulations, (ii) to enforce our customer terms and conditions of use or other contractual agreements and (iii) to protect the property and other rights of Gala Travels Inc., its group companies, customers and others (for example, in any way relating to protection against fraudulent activities in respect of Gala Travels Inc.).
How do we keep your Customer Information secure?
We operate and are registered in accordance with applicable Canadian data protection legislation.
We use leading technological and security measures (both electronic, physical and procedural) to ensure the safety and confidentiality of your Customer Information through collection, storage and disclosure. Such measures include maintaining a secure encryption based transmission system, intrusion detection and prevention software and virus protection software in respect of Customer Information.
How can you control your Customer Information?
Gala Travels Inc. understands that it is important that you have control over your Customer Information. In particular, if you do not want to receive special offers and promotional communications from Gala Travels Inc. you can opt out by using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of emails you receive from us.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
Gala Travels Inc. may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time and will notify you of any material changes by displaying the revised Privacy Policy on our website
