Data & Privacy

This Privacy Policy sets out the types of personal information we receive and collect when you use our services, how we collect it, and what we do with it, as well as some of the steps we take to safeguard information We hope this will help you make an informed decision about sharing personal information with us. If you have any questions or concerns, please Contact Us.

This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time. You are responsible for reviewing this Privacy Policy periodically and informing yourself of any changes to this Privacy Policy.

What Information Do We Collect about You?

Making an Inquiry or Booking a Trip

We will collect certain information from you when you make an inquiry or book a trip with us. We use your information to arrange and provide you with the products and services you have requested and booked. This includes booking any flights, cruises, transportation, accommodation and activities. Depending on your interaction with us and what products and services you use, we may collect the following personal information:

Your full name, date of birth, sex, title, postal address, phone number, email address, next of kin, dietary requirements, height and weight, travel insurance details, passport details (including nationality and city of birth), passport scan, visa application, visa page scan.

We also collect additional information you provide during the booking process to check if a trip is right for you. Your contact details will be used to assist in managing our relationship with you, including updates about your booking, providing relevant information and any applicable tickets, handling feedback and complaints, and to contact you in the event of an emergency.

Your personal information will be used by our leaders to identify you and ensure your safety during the trip. Depending on your destination and services being booked for you, we may be required by the supplier to provide certain types of personal information in order to secure the booking. We may also be legally required by local laws and governments to provide travel documentation such as passport details or a passport scan. If Travel to Africa Tours is offering visa support or assisting you with applying for a visa, in certain countries you may be asked to provide additional information, including for example, your occupation, your father’s personal information, marital status, your spouse’s personal information, your children’s personal information, employment, education history and social media tags.

We may ask for medical information which is considered sensitive under data protection laws, such as if you have any pre-existing medical conditions, have a disability, medication that requires refrigeration etc. We will provide relevant information, which may include sensitive information, to insurance providers, their agents and medical staff in circumstances where we/they need to act on your behalf or in the interest of passengers or in an emergency. Where allowed, your medical information may be shared with any relevant personnel to ensure that we understand any specific needs you may have, before and during your trip. Any pre-existing medical conditions could impact your enjoyment of the trip, and by informing us of any conditions, issues or limitations, we can ensure that Travel to Africa Tours is better prepared to assist if required.

Other than where it is in your vital interests or required by relevant laws, medical information can only be used by Travel to Africa Tours with your consent. This is because medical information is considered sensitive and by consenting, you are showing us that you understand and agree to us processing this information. Providing medical information and consenting to its use by Travel to Africa Tours is optional, however, it is highly recommended that information be provided for your safety and wellbeing.

We may also keep records of the products and services you have inquired about or purchased from us, as well as collect information relevant to your booking such as flights, cruises and accommodation details you have not booked through Travel to Africa Tours.

Financial Information

Any payment information which you provide will not be recorded, stored or retained by Travel to Africa Tours in any way and therefore we ask that you do not email your payment card details. If Travel to Africa Tours needs to provide you with a refund, your bank details may be collected, which are recorded and stored.

Photo & Video

When you are traveling with us, a photo or video may be taken by an employee, professional photographer or another passenger. We ask that any photos or video taken, by Travel to Africa Tours personnel or otherwise, are done so with permission and respect to the individual. On occasion, visual media captured by Travel to Africa Tours may be used in our brochures or on our website for promotional purposes. There may also be a professional photographer scheduled on your trip for the purpose of taking promotional images. If you do not want to be included in photos or video, please let us or the photographer know.

Marketing & Other Interactions

Travel to Africa Tours may use your information for marketing purposes including
To identify and tell you about Travel to Africa Tours products and services we think you may be interested in
To offer you deals on partner products and services
To tell you about trip deals, discounts and promotions
To enroll you in email communication for customers who have travelled with us at least once, which will tell you about discounts, competitions and new trips

If you click on a Travel to Africa Tours advertisement via a third party, some of this information may pre-populate from an account you may have with that third party.

Research

We conduct research and analyze your information, including feedback and comments, to help us improve our products and services and to enhance your customer experience, including customizing online content, and to improve your booking and website experience. We also look for trends and future destinations and itinerary opportunities.

We may use your de-identified data for internal reporting (i.e. if a booking was successful), creating new marketing strategies and to identify trends.

We may contact you to seek your interest in taking part in research projects, surveys and interviews. This may include contacting you with a post-booking or post-trip feedback survey and asking to provide a score and comment on your experience. You may be asked to provide a score and comment on your trip experience. These interactions are designed to help us gain insight and understand certain things such as how to improve the services we provide, help us to understand our customers’ needs and expectations, what media they consume, what their concerns are, why do they travel, etc. Your information and details from our research activities may be stored or kept on file for future reference if relevant and will be de-identified where possible. Where you have provided the relevant details, we may also contact you in response to your feedback to discuss your comments.

Job Applicants

If you apply for a job with us, we will collect your CV and supporting documents. We will ask for your personal information such as your full name, contact details, home address, date of birth, sex, and ethnicity.

How Do We Collect Your Information?

Your information may come to us in a variety of different ways. You may provide information directly to us when communicating via email, phone, letter, web chat or in person. You may also provide us with your information by filling in an online or printed form, leaving feedback, completing a survey, subscribing to our emails or a loyalty program.

Your information may also be provided to us by an external partner or third party; for example, a travel agent, insurance provider or a friend/family member who is booking on your behalf.

If you are providing us with the personal information of another person, you must ensure that those you represent are aware of the content of our Privacy Policy and consent to your acting on their behalf.

Sharing Your Information

Making an Inquiry or Booking a Trip

In order to handle your inquiry, fulfill your product or service request or manage your booking, we may share your personal information with the following:
Inside the Travel to Africa Tours (including tour leaders)
Partners (i.e. travel agencies, etc.)
Travel providers (i.e. airlines, tour companies, etc.)
Third party operators (i.e. local operators, couriers, mailing houses, payment processors, etc.)
Suppliers and Service providers (i.e. hotels, transfer drivers, etc.)
Government authorities (i.e. border crossings, etc.)

If you book flights or cruises through Travel to Africa Tours, or your trip includes a flight and cruise, the relevant personal information will be provided to the applicable airline or cruise line. Similarly, if your trip is operated by a non-Travel to Africa Tours affiliated tour company, your personal information will be provided to that company for them to confirm you on the trip and provide the relevant services. We also share your personal information with any travel providers or third-party local operators for the purpose of improving services and experiences, and to investigate where necessary.

Please be assured only the relevant people will be provided with access to this information.

Any information shared with travel providers is done so via secure methods and the travel provider is responsible for any information they hold in their system.

Support Services

We share your personal information with third parties that help us operate, provide, improve, integrate, customize, support and market our products and services. This includes the following:

Service providers: We work with third-party service providers to provide website and application development, hosting, maintenance, backup, storage, virtual infrastructure, support and troubleshooting for quality assurance purposes, payment processing, analysis and other services for us, which may require them to access or use information about you.

Marketers: We work with a global network of partners who help us market and promote our products (for example, by providing consulting and sales services), who send marketing material for us, generate leads and resell our services.
Research: We use third parties to assist us with research and analytics, including surveys, interviews and other data gathering. We may share your information with these partners in connection with their services.

With Your Consent

We share information about you with third parties when you give us consent to do so. For example, we often display personal reviews of satisfied customers on our public websites. With your consent, we may post your name alongside the review.

Intracompany Sharing

Your information may be shared within the Travel to Africa Tours in order to identify and market other products or services you may be interested in. This includes sharing your post-trip experience feedback, which is linked to your name and booking details, with our internal teams and entities.

We may share or transfer information in connection with any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business to another company.

Other Sharing

We may share your information with an enforcement body (i.e. police) where disclosure is authorized or required by law, or with insurance providers or medical personnel. This may be for identification of fraud or error, for regulatory reporting and compliance, or if we believe the disclosure is necessary to lessen or prevent a threat to life, health or safety.

Selling Data

We will not sell your personal information.

Transferring Your Information

As discussed above, it is necessary for us to share your information with our partners and third parties, many of which are located overseas. When we transfer your information overseas, we require that appropriate privacy, confidentiality and security measures are in place, and that we comply with those data protection and privacy laws which apply to us.

Also as discussed above, we use service providers. We operate with different service providers in dozens of countries, so it is not possible for us to provide a list of all these countries in this policy. If you have any specific questions about where or to whom your personal information will be sent, please Contact Us.

Your Rights

We want you to feel reassured that you have control of the information you provide to us. Depending on relevant data protection laws, there are certain rights you have over your personal information including:

You can ask us to update any inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date information we hold about you.
You may request that we stop processing or using your information.
You may request that we delete any / all information we hold about you.
You may withdraw consent that you have provided to us.

If you are subscribed to any promotional marketing newsletters, you have the choice to unsubscribe from these communications by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link.

In order to exercise any of these rights at any time, Contact Us.

Retention

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

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

How We Keep Your Information Secure

Travel to Africa Tours is dedicated to keeping your personal information secure. We have implemented various physical, electronic and managerial security procedures in order to protect your information from loss and misuse, and from unauthorized access, modification, disclosure and interference.

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

Third-Party Links

Links to Third-Party Sites

Our website may include links to third-party websites. Clicking on those links 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 policies. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

Third-Party Widgets

Some of our services contain widgets and social media features, such as a Facebook “like” button. These widgets and features collect your IP address, which page you are visiting, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Widgets and social media features are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our site. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.

Cookies & Website Usage

What Are Cookies?

When you visit our websites, we use cookies. Cookies are small text files placed on your computer by us or our partners. Cookies allow us to identify the computer or device you’re using to access our websites. This information is sent back to our systems as you move around our website.

Cookies are unique to the web browser you’re using – so if you’re using a desktop computer as well as a mobile, different data will be collected for each. You can find more information on the About Cookies website www.aboutcookies.org/

Cookies can be set by the owner of the website you’re on. These are known as 1st-Party Cookies. There are also 3rd-Party Cookies that can be set by partner websites. Only the owner of the cookie can see the anonymous information it collects.

You can choose to accept all cookies, reject 3rd-Party Cookies or reject all cookies either by changing your internet browser settings or when provided with the option to do so by us. If you don’t accept cookies, some features of our website won’t work. For example, you may not be able to make a booking.

What Information Do We Collect?

We may collect information about your visits to, browsing of, and use of our website, unless your web browser blocks this. The range of data we collect will depend on how you interact with our website.

This information may include:

Your IP address (a unique identifier allocated to your computer for your connection to the internet)
Your computer device details (PC, tablet, smartphone, watch, make and model, etc.)
The make and version of web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome) you are using
Your operating system (e.g. Windows, Windows Phone, OSX, iOS, Android, Linux etc.)
Your time-zone
Your browser plug-ins
Any webpage you came from, identified as the referrer web page address by your web browser
Cookies
Page response times
Download error
Pages and parts of pages you visit
The usage you make of our website, including enquiries and searches undertaken, and registrations for accounts, forums etc.
Services and products you viewed
Length of visit to website and pages
Page interaction information (such as scrolling, keys pressed, mouse clicks, touches, and mouse-overs)

This will normally be collected and used anonymously, and aggregated for analysis, with your name and any characteristics identifying you remaining anonymous, but our privacy policy will apply, and it will be treated as your personal information, if this information is in any way linked to you personally.

The only time your information will be identifiable will be if you experience an error and we contact you to resolve the issue.

This information may also include:

Data inputted into forms and fields
Registrations for any accounts
Forum
Feedback mechanism
Social functionality
Newsletters or other features of our site
Usernames and passwords
Log-in / out history, and settings
Actions that are taken within any account or other registration, including views, updates and changes to settings
Posts to any forum, feedback, review or other social functionality on our website.

Why Do We Use Cookies and Collect Your Information?

When you’re buying something on our website, we need to use cookies to keep track of what you’re booking as you move through each stage of the booking process. We use cookies to keep track of your searches and preferences.

Recent searches and saved tours may be recorded using cookies. If you’ve saved a tour but you haven’t entered your email address, we’ll store your saved tour using a cookie, so you’ll be able to see it when you visit us again using the same computer or device.

Improving Your Experience

We use cookies and software programs to record, measure and analyze how our customers use our website. We use this information to understand what you want from our website, which helps us when we’re considering future products like flight routes, cruises and tours.

We can find out how you move around our website, so we can investigate any errors stopping you from being able to do what you want. The data we collect from cookies is important for us to improve your experience.

Tailoring and Making Our Marketing Relevant

Cookies allow us to provide you with information, products and services that we think you’ll find interesting. We can personalize and show you relevant offers and promotions on our own websites and through our advertising networks by matching you with any existing profiles.

Advertisements on Other Websites

If you visit one of our partner sites, you might see an advertisement that’s relevant to what you searched for when you last visited our own site. We work with advertising networks who use cookies to collect information on your preferences, meaning we can show advertisements tailored to you.

Types of Cookies We Use

Third-party vendors use cookies to help us evaluate the effectiveness of our marketing and deliver more tailored advertisements to you on other sites. When you visit certain sections of the website, Google Analytics, a website analytics service provided by Google Inc (“Google”), will place cookies on your computer’s browser. The information generated by the cookies about your use of the website is transmitted to Google. This information is then used for the purpose of compiling statistical reports to enable us to measure and analyze the number of visits to the site and its pages, the average time spent on the site and the pages viewed. We will not (and will not allow any third party to) use Google Analytics to track or to collect any personal information of visitors to our website. We will not associate any data gathered via the use of cookies with any personal information from any source as part of our use of Google Analytics. For further information about Google Analytics please visit www.google.com/analytics and for details of Google Analytics’ Privacy Policy, please visit www.google.com/intl/en.

You may choose to opt-out of Google Analytics using the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on which you may access at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/.

Refusing Cookies

You can change your browser settings to accept or refuse all cookies, choose which cookies you want or don’t want, or ask to be notified when a cookie is set. Use the help feature in your browser to see how.

Changing Your Mind after You’ve Accepted Our Cookies

If you change your mind after you’ve accepted our cookies, you’ll find an option within your internet browser to clear cookies that have already been set. Use the help feature in your browser to see how. You’ll then need to change your browser settings to refuse cookies in future.

Just so you know, you won’t be able to benefit from all the features of our website and email newsletters or book online with us if you refuse cookies.

Data & Privacy

What Information Do We Collect about You?

CONSIDERING A VISIT

CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESS