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To choose your travel advisor
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We appreciate and value your patronage. At International Travel,
privacy is not a privilege, it’s a right.
Privacy
of personal information is an important principle to International
Travel. We are committed to collecting, using and disclosing personal
information responsibly and only to the extent necessary for the
travel products and services we provide. We also try to be open
and transparent as to how we handle personal information. This document
describes our privacy policies.
What is personal information?
Personal information is information about an identifiable individual.
Personal information includes information that relates to their
personal characteristics (e.g., gender, age, income, home address
or phone number, ethnic background, family status), their health
(e.g., health history, health conditions, health services received
by them) their activities and views (e.g., religion, politics, opinions
expressed by an individual, an opinion or evaluation of an individual).
Personal information is to be contrasted with business information
(e.g., an individual’s business address and telephone number),
which is not protected by privacy legislation. In addition, due
to the nature of the travel agency business, we also include in
our policies and staunchly protect therein an individual’s
financial information including checking account information and
credit card information.
Who we are?
Our International Travel, is a full service agency business, and
we arrange travel products and services for our clients with a wide
spectrum of industry suppliers. Accordingly, we deal with a number
of consultants and third parties that may, in the course of their
duties, have limited access to personal information we hold. These
include airlines, railroads, cruise lines, tour operators, computer
reservations system providers, and other travel-related vendors.
We restrict their access to any personal information we hold as
much as is reasonably possible. We also have their assurance that
they follow appropriate privacy principles in accordance with their
own policies under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic
Documents Act (PIPEDA).
We collect personal information for the following purposes:
Like all travel agencies, we collect,
use and disclose personal information in order to serve our clients.
For our clients, the primary purposes for collecting personal
information are as follows: to make and secure reservations, to
issue transportation documents and vouchers, and to provide travel
suppliers with information to complete the necessary purchasing
arrangements for a wide array of travel and tourism products,
and reporting procedures. We reserve the right to marketing of
this material in a variety of ways, for the purpose of obtaining
group and individual sales. We limit access to personal information
about you to the consultants, who we believe reasonably need to
access this information to do their jobs. Examples of the type
of personal information we collect for those purposes include
the following: name, address, telephone, age, credit card information,
passport or visa information.
Protecting personal information:
We understand the importance of protecting personal information.
For that reason, we have taken the following steps:
Paper information is either under supervision or secured in a
locked • or restricted area.
Electronic hardware is either under supervision or secured in
a locked • or restricted area at all times. In addition,
passwords are used on computers. All of our cell phones are digital,
which signals are more difficult to intercept.
Paper information is transmitted through sealed, addressed envelopes
• or boxes by reputable companies.
Electronic information is transmitted either through a direct
line or • is anonymized or encrypted.
Staff are trained to collect, use and disclose personal information
• only as necessary to fulfill their duties and in accordance
with our privacy policy.
External consultants and agencies with access to personal information
• must enter into Privacy agreements with us or acknowledge
that they abide by PIPEDA.
Retention and destruction of personal information:
We need to retain personal information for some time to ensure
that we can answer any questions you might have about the services
provided and for our own accountability to external regulatory
bodies. However, we do not want to keep personal information too
long in order to protect your privacy. We keep our client files
for about seven years. Our client and contact directories are
much more difficult to systematically destroy, so we remove such
information when we can if it does not appear that we will be
contacting you again. However, if you ask, we will remove such
contact information right away. We keep any personal information
relating to our general correspondence with people who are not
our clients, newsletters, seminars and marketing activities for
about twelve months after the newsletter, seminar or marketing
activity is over. We destroy paper files containing personal information
by shredding. We destroy electronic information by deleting it
and, when the hardware is discarded, we ensure that the hard drive
is physically destroyed. Alternatively, we may send some or the
entire client file to our client. We do not rent, sell, or share
personal information about you with non-affiliations.
You can look at your information:
With only a few exceptions, you
have the right to see what personal information we hold about
you.
Often all you have to do is ask. We can help you identify what
records we might have about you.
We will also try to help you with any information you do not understand
(e.g., various industry forms, technical language, etc.).
We
will need to confirm your identity, if we do not know you, before
providing you with this access. We reserve the right to charge a
nominal fee for such requests. If there is a problem, we may ask
you to put your request in writing. If we cannot give you access,
we will tell you within 30 days if at all possible and tell you
the reason, as best we can, as to why we cannot give you access.
If you believe there is a mistake in the information, you have the
right to ask for it to be corrected. This applies to factual information
and not to any professional opinions we may have formed. We may
ask you to provide documentation that our files are wrong. Where
we agree that we made a mistake, we will make the correction and
notify anyone to whom we sent this information. If we do not agree
that we have made a mistake, we will still agree to include in our
file a brief statement from you on the point, and we will forward
that statement to anyone else who received the earlier information.
Do you have a concern?
Our Privacy Policy Manager, Agatha Rondzik, can be reached at International
Travel, tel. (416)922-7775, toll-free: 1-877-922-8775 or agatha@intertravel.ca,
to address any questions or concerns you might have. If you wish
to make a formal complaint about our privacy practices, you may
make it in writing to our Privacy Policy Manager. She will acknowledge
receipt of your complaint; ensure that it is investigated promptly
and that you are provided with a formal decision and reasons in
writing.
For more general inquiries, the Information and Privacy Commissioner
of Canada oversees the administration of the privacy legislation
in the private sector. The Commissioner also acts as a kind of ombudsman
for privacy disputes. The Information and Privacy Commissioner can
be reached at:112 Kent Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1H3 as well as
by:
Phone: (613) 995-8210
Toll-free: 1-800-282-1376
Fax: (613) 947-6850
TTY: (613) 992-9190
E-mail: info@privcom.gc.ca
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