Marmot Tours Privacy Policy

At Marmot Tours we understand and respect the importance of your privacy and we are committed to safeguarding your personal information. This Privacy Policy describes how we work to maintain the trust you have in us and protect that information.

In particular, this Policy details our collection, use, and disclosure of personal and non-personal data when you register for our newsletter, make an enquiry or book a holiday, as well as using our app while on holiday with us, using our website, or following us on social media.

By using our services, you agree to the Terms and Conditions of this Privacy Policy and consent to our collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information in the manner set out below.

Scope & Application

The Data Protection Act 2018 is the UK’s implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Everyone responsible for using personal data has to follow strict ‘data protection principles’. They make sure that personal information is:

used fairly, lawfully, and transparently
used for specified, explicit purposes
used in a way that is adequate, relevant, and limited to only what is necessary
accurate and, where necessary, kept up-to-date
not kept for longer than is necessary
handled in a way that ensures appropriate security, including protection against unlawful or unauthorised processing, access, loss, destruction, or damage

The Data Protection Act 2018 updates previous EU GDPR laws which strengthened the protection of “personal data” in light of rapid technological developments, the increasingly global nature of business, and more complex international flows of personal data. It provides a single set of rules, directly enforceable in the UK. ‘

‘Personal Information’ refers to any information identifying you as a specific individual, such as full name, email address, marketing choices, etc.

We may need to collect and process types of Personal Information to provide our services to you or because we are legally required to do so. If you do not provide the information that we request, we may not be able to provide you with our services. We may use the Personal Information for our legitimate business interests, including those listed below within this Privacy Policy.
We do not knowingly permit children in the EEA under the age of 16 to register for any content, product, or service. We do not knowingly collect, use, or disclose personal information about users under 16, except as permitted by law.
If you would like to receive an electronic copy of your Personal Informatito transmiting it to another company or have any questions regarding our Privacy Policy, you may contact us at: [email protected]
Regarding the section entitled “Data Retention”: We keep your Personal Information for as long as needed or permitted in light of the purpose(s) for which it was obtained. The criteria used to determine our retention periods include (i) for as long as we have an ongoing relationship with you and provide services to you; (ii) as required by a legal obligation to which we are subject; or (iii) as advisable in light of our legal position (such as in regard of applicable statutes of limitations, litigation, or regulatory investigations).
You may lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority competent for your country or region.
This Policy only covers data we collect, not any other data collection practices of an affiliate or third party, including any third-party operators of web pages to which our website links.

Collection of Information

Information you provide us:

You provide different information to us for Marmot Tours Ltd to provide our services, products, and features to you.

Link Account: If you book a holiday with us, you will be asked to create an account on The Link, our online booking portal. You will be asked to provide us with your name, address, email address, telephone number, gender, date of birth, interests, cycling experience, dietary requirements, and height. We will also ask you to provide us with your passport details including your passport number, the country of issue, and the expiry date.
Holiday Enquiry via Customer Services: You may also be asked to provide information by email or phone if you contact the Marmot Tours Ltd office with an enquiry.
App: If you come on holiday with us, you can use our dedicated app for route support and to enable our guides and admin team to support you by tracking your location. All your available location data is viewable only by the guides on your tour and by our admin team. When tracking is configured and enabled, your location data is sent to Marmot Tours servers at intervals. Only your latest location is stored on the servers. This data is secured with appropriate security. As old location data is of little use to us, location data is removed after 12 hours. If you logout of the app or disable tracking at any time, all your tracking data is removed from the Marmot Tours servers.
Newsletter: If you register to receive our newsletter, you will be asked for your name, email address, mailing address, and phone number.
Survey: You may be asked for personal information such as name and email address when you complete a survey or competition.
Merchandise: If you order a product from us or one of our business partners, you may be asked for your name, address, email address, and telephone number.
Gifts: If you are ordering a product as a gift for another person (such as a holiday voucher), you may be asked for that person’s name, postal address, and phone number to enable us to deliver the gift to the recipient.

Sensitive information: we do not ask you to send us or disclose any sensitive personal information relating to racial or ethnic origin, political opinion, religion or other beliefs, criminal background, or trade union membership.

However, we do ask you to disclose your date of birth, your height (should you request to hire a bike), and any dietary information that enables us to ensure your requirements are met during a Marmot Tours holiday. We will also ask you to tell us about current or previous health conditions and any medication you may be taking, including dosage. This is relevant in case you need to go to hospital while you are on holiday with us, when medics may ask for this information. You are under no obligation to provide this information. However, in some cases, we are not able to guarantee to provide you with a suitably personalised service without this information.

Information we collect automatically:

Through our website and app, we also collect information from your computer or mobile device and actions you have taken on the site including:

Basic user information about you that includes your IP(Internet Protocol) address which identifies the computer or service provider that you use to access our services or information about your browser type, and other software/hardware information. Also, ISP’s (Internet Service Provider’s) domain, the time you accessed our website or app, and the pages within our website or appthat you visit.

Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies: We may also use cookies, which are small pieces of information that a website can store in a designated file on your computer. Cookies allow a web application to respond to you as an individual. The basic user information collected is used to help us analyse web traffic and to improve the content of our website. Cookies may be used to simplify your interaction with us or allow us to personalize your return visits to our site and save you time during certain activities such as filling out a booking form as a return booker.

It is up to you whether to allow us to send you cookies. Please note that by blocking any or all cookies you may not have access to certain features, content, or personalisation available through our website.

Mobile Devices: If you access our website or app through a mobile or other device, we may collect your mobile device identifier, geolocation data, or other transactional information for that device.
Social Media: If you access or log into our website through a social media platform, the information we collect may also include your user ID and or / user name, associated with that social media platform, any information or content that you have permitted them to share with us (like your profile picture, email address) and any information you have made public in connection with that social media platform.
Web beacons and other tracking technologies. We may use other tracking tools, including so-called “pixel tags,” “web beacons,” “web bugs,” “clear GIFs,” etc. (collectively “Web Beacons”) to collect user activity information about your activities on our website. Like Cookies, Web Beacons enable us to track pages and content (including ads) accessed and viewed by users. Also, when we send HTML-formatted (as opposed to plain text) emails to you, Web Beacons may be embedded in such emails to allow us to monitor readership levels so that we can identify trends and individual usage to provide our audiences with more relevant content or offers. Web Beacons in emails may recognize activities such as when an email was opened, how many times an email was forwarded, which links in the email were clicked on, etc. Web Beacons cannot be declined when delivered via a regular web page. However, Web Beacons can be refused when delivered via email. If you do not wish to receive Web Beacons via email, you will need to disable HTML images or refuse HTML (select Text only) emails via your email software.
Information Contained in User Content: The Link allows users to post and transmit messages, comments, screen names, and other materials. You should be careful what personal information you choose to make public. Within your Link Account profile, you have the option to choose whether to have an ‘Open’ or ‘Closed’ profile (to other riders on your booked holiday(s)).
Please note we will not collect or store any of your passwords or other highly sensitive data.

What will we do with this information?

Marmot Tours uses information that we collect from and about you, for a variety of business purposes, as follows:

To complete your purchase with us
To look after your holiday arrangements, send you notifications, and communicate with you generally
To communicate with you about your holiday or service that we are providing to you (e.g. bike hire, merchandise purchase, etc)
In managing your holiday, we may have to disclose some of your information to the providers of the services making up your arrangements (such as hotels). We may also have to disclose some information to third parties concerning customer services, credit card processing, or other services.
To support you while on holiday. When using the app, you have access to detailed daily route notes, ride and climb profiles, support and safety notes. If tracking is enabled, your tour guides and our admin team can support you by seeing your location on the road.
To perform marketing practices. We will keep you up to date with our latest offers, partnerships, sales, promotions, and/or competitions that we think might be of interest/relevance to you. We will only contact you in this way if:
- You have signed up to receive marketing communications from us and have not later told us that you don’t want to hear from us
- You have made a booking with us and have not told us that you do not want to hear from us.
If you do not wish to have your details passed on in this way, you may ask us in writing (including email) not to do so.
We do not pass your information to other parties for marketing purposes unless you agree to us doing so. We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any other company for marketing purposes.
To allow social sharing functionality. We may share your username, picture, and comments. By logging in with or connecting with us via a social media platform, you are consenting to share information we collect from and about you with the social media service provider and other users. If you do not want your personal information shared in this way, please do not connect your social media service account with our account, and do not participate in social sharing on our social media accounts.
To perform business analysis or for other purposes to improve the quality of our business and the products and services we offer.
To protect the rights of Marmot Tours Ltd and others. There may be instances when we may use or disclose your information, including situations where we have a good faith belief that such use or disclosure is necessary to: (i) protect, enforce, or defend the legal rights, privacy, safety, or property of Marmot Tours Ltd, our company affiliates or their employees, agents, and contractors (including enforcement of our agreements and our terms of use); (ii) protect the safety, privacy, and security of users of our services or members of the public; (iii) protect against fraud or for risk management purposes; (iv) comply with the law or legal process; or (v) respond to requests from public and government authorities;
Asset Management. We may need to disclose our customer database (including any personal information relating to you) to a third party who acquires or attempts to acquire all or substantially all of the assets/stock in our company or our website.
Payment Services. In some cases, we may use an unaffiliated payment service to enable you to purchase a product. If you wish to purchase a product or make a payment using a payment service, you will be directed to a page operated by that payment service. Any information that you provide to a payment service will be subject to the applicable payment service’s privacy policy, rather than this Privacy Policy. We have no control over and are not responsible for, any payment service’s use of information collected through any payment service.
Data Processing and Support in Business Functions. We may also disclose information to organisations that act as data processors on our behalf, or to other organisations that perform business functions on our behalf, some of whom are outside the UK. These functions include (but are not limited to) administration providing services, customer care, business management and operation, risk assessment, security and crime prevention/detection, research and analysis, marketing, monitoring, measuring and assessing customer purchasing preferences and trends, dispute resolution, credit checking, and debt collection.
In the event of our insolvency we, or any appointed insolvency practitioner, may disclose your personal information to the CAA, and/or ABTA so that they can assess the status of your booking and advise you on the appropriate course of action under any scheme of financial protection. The CAA’s General Privacy Notice is at https://www.caa.co.uk/Our-work/About-us/General-privacy-notice/ ABTA’s Privacy Notice is at https://www.abta.com/privacy-notice.
Third-party sites. We may from time to time disclose to third parties impersonal information on our website’s traffic profile. For example, internet advertising companies may require this data to help us better target advertisements on our website and/or other websites. Please note that our website provides links to products and services offered by other companies; the company’s website that you link to will be able to determine that you linked from our website.

Other important information

Non-Personal Data: When information we collect is anonymized or otherwise does not identify you, we may use that information for any purpose or share it with third parties, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
Location of Data: Marmot Tours Ltd is based in the UK. If you are a user located outside of the UK, you understand and consent to having any personal information processed in the UK, or in any other country in which we have facilities or in which we engage service providers. UK Data Protection laws may not be the same as those in your jurisdiction.
Data Retention. We will retain your information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or allowed by law.

Even after you cancel your account, or if you ask us to delete your personal information, copies of some information from your account may remain viewable in some circumstances where, for example, you have shared information with social media or other services. Because of the nature of caching technology, your account may not be instantly inaccessible to others. We may also retain backup information related to your account on our servers for some time after cancellation or your deletion request, for fraud detection or to comply with applicable law or our internal security or recordkeeping policies. It may not always be possible to completely remove or delete all of your information due to technical constraints or, contractual, financial, or legal requirements.

Third-Party Sites. If you click on a hyperlink or advertisement that you find within our Marmot Tours website, you may leave our website or send information to a different website or application. Our Privacy Policy does not apply to your interactions with third-party websites or mobile apps, even if you find a link to them or access them through our website, so you should read the privacy policy of the third-party provider to see how your personal information will be treated on its site.
Protecting your Information: We take website and app security very seriously and we are committed to safeguarding your personal information. We take several administrative and technical steps to ensure the security of the information you provide to us.

Opt-out policy – What can I do?

If you would like to access, review, correct, update, suppress, delete, or otherwise limit our use of the personal information you have previously provided directly to us, you may contact us and we will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable.

We are meeting the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018 and under this, you may ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you and to correct any inaccuracies in your information. We aim to respond to you within 21 days from the date we receive your request.
If you no longer want to receive marketing-related emails and our occasional email newsletter on a going-forward basis, you may opt out of receiving these emails by clicking “Unsubscribe” or “Update my Preferences” at the bottom of any marketing email you receive or by sending a request to [email protected].
If you would prefer to keep your profile anonymous on The Link, you can view and adjust your personal details and the visibility of your profile to the Marmot Tours community.
From time to time we may contact you with information about special offers, brochures, new products, forthcoming events, or competitions. If you do not wish to receive such information, you may ask us in writing (including email) not to receive it.
If you continue to receive our communications in error after expressing an opt-out preference, please let us know so that we can investigate the situation.
You are also entitled to choose not to provide us with some of the information we request. However, as a result, this may mean we are unable to complete some of your holiday arrangements.

Updates & Changes

As our privacy statement may change due to developments in the law, we encourage you to review this policy from time to time so you are aware of any changes in how we gather and use your personal information. Any changes to this policy will be either posted on our website or made available on request. Changes will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Policy on the Marmot Tours Ltd Website.