Put simply, your privacy is important to us. We only keep information to manage your bookings and to understand our business. We do not sell or pass on your information to other parties.
From May 2018, every business must have a full privacy policy explaining what data it holds, why it is held, and how it is processed. Here’s ours:
Full Privacy Statement For Wheatland Farm’s Devon Eco Lodges
The information we collect about you
Our booking system is provided by Queensborough Group, and is called QBook. This is a UK based company, and abides by the GDPR.
We usually need the name, address, phone number and email of the person placing the booking. In addition, we ask the number of adults and children/infants coming. Obviously, we need to record which accommodation unit you have chosen, and when you’re arriving and leaving. We may also make a note of any pertinent information, for example, we will take note if you tell us your break is for a special occasion or if someone in your party has particular needs we should be helping you with.
We may also collect information when you complete any customer surveys or provide feedback.
Like most businesses, our website uses cookies and Google analytics to help us track and adjust our marketing efforts. Where we use social media, your privacy is governed by your account settings. For further information visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org. You can set your browser not to accept cookies and the above websites tell you how to remove cookies from your browser. However, in a few cases some of our website features may not function as a result.
Why we need your data, and what we do with it
When you book a holiday at Wheatland Farm, you enter into a contract with us (follow the link for our Terms and Conditions), and we need information so we can manage that contract, for example collecting and recognising your payment to us, and (very rarely) following up any disputes or damage.
We need to be in touch to send you information about your stay, and to let you know useful information, for example when a local road is closed or severe winter weather is expected. We generally send out ‘welcome info’ when you book, and an email or message just before you arrive so you are reassured we’re expecting you.
We need to know about specific needs in your party so we can meet them appropriately.
We hope you will interact with us on social media so you can find out more about what’s going on locally.
Our visitors are very important to us, especially people who come back several times, and many of you like to stay in touch. But if you sign up for our occasional email newsletters and offers, we will not bombard you with marketing. You will never receive more than 4 such emails a year from us (probably fewer) and they will be about major changes we’ve made, ‘early bird’ offers and/or last minute deals.
We do not sell or share your information with third parties other than our booking system provider. For example, we do not pass your email to Tripadvisor so they can target you for a review, and we do not ‘cross market’ with retailers who might want to sell you stuff. We do not buy in databases for marketing purposes.
How we hold your data
We mostly use email to communicate with you – and we hold records of our email correspondence on our office computer. These records are available only to Ian and Maggie.
Sometimes we manage emails from a smartphone or similar device, but records are not retained on these devices.
We may use messenger apps for last minute communications with you.
On our behalf, Queensborough Group (via the QBook bookings software) holds the rest of the data about your booking on a secure server.
Unless you tell us not to, we will keep full information about your booking for 7 years. This is widely considered a reasonable time for small businesses to retain full financial records.
If you have not re-visited for 7 years your emails will be deleted and your booking data will be anonymised: your surname will be replace with a generic data marker, and details specific to the booking will be removed. For example your email, phone number and actual address will be deleted. However, we will retain other anonymised information, such as the date of the stay, the date of the booking, which accommodation unit was chosen, and which major town/region the now-anonymised customer came from. We need this information so we can understand changing booking preferences and spot trends in our business.
You can ask us what information we hold on you at any time, and ask us to update the information if needed.
You can ask to ‘be forgotten’ at any time, and we will anonymise your data.
Permission to use images
We like to use images of people having fun on our website. But we will ask before using any image that could reasonably be expected to identify a guest.
Cameras recording wildlife images
Sometimes we use wildlife ‘camera traps’ around the farm to spot wildlife. They are not intended for people!
Other websites
Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website so when you link to other websites you should read their own privacy policies.
Changes to our privacy policy
We keep our privacy policy under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page. This privacy policy was last updated in April 2020.