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VISIT TAMPA BAY

PRIVACY POLICY


Effective: 5/25/2018

This Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) applies to the corporate website accessible at https://www.visittampabay.com/   (“Website”, “Site”), all owned and operated by Tampa Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau, D.B.A. Visit Tampa Bay.  This Privacy Policy describes how Visit Tampa Bay collects and uses personal information collected through the Website.  It also describes the choices and options available to you regarding the use of, your access to, and how to contact us about your personal information and privacy.

 

THIS PRIVACY POLICY DESCRIBES:
  • The information we collect about you
  • How we use the information we collect
  • Who we give your information to
  • Control of your information
  • Your access to your information
  • How we protect, store and retain your information
  • Use of Cookies
  • Links or Third-party websites
  • Payment processing
  • Age Restrictions
  • Changes to this Privacy Policy
  • Contact us

Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal information and how we will treat it. By engaging with the Website you acknowledge you have read and understood this Privacy Policy. Data protection laws require companies to describe their role and responsibility when handling personal information. 

When users access our Website and view information about us and our technology, communicate with us and register for events etc, we are the data controller

  • Visit Tampa Bay is the data controller for information provided directly by the individual or as a result of interacting with the website.

 

The information we collect about you

Visit Tampa Bay values your trust.  Visit Tampa Bay adheres to ethical standards in gathering, using, and safeguarding any information you provide.

Personal data includes information such as:

  • Name
  • Address
  • Telephone Number
  • Email address
  • Other data collected that could directly, or indirectly identify you.

 

We collect and process the following personal information from you

Information you give to us:

This is information about you that you give us directly when you interact with us. You may give it to us by filling out a form on our Site, corresponding with us by phone, e-mail, or at an in-person event. It includes information necessary to register for an event, email newsletter, or place an order for other services we provide via our web store.  It also includes information shared when you share on social media via our Site, enter a competition or promotion, submit a query, report feedback about or a problem within our Site, or any of the other Interactive Services.  When you request a visitor guide for example, we request you provide your first name, last name, mailing address and email address.  When you purchase an item, we will need payment and billing information, often including an address and credit card information.

Information we collect about you from your use of our Site:

Data about Usage of Services is automatically collected when you use and interact with our Services, including log files, cookie/device IDs and location information. This information includes specific data about your interactions with the features, content and links (including those of third-parties, such as social media plugins) contained within the Services, Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser type and settings, the date and time the Services were used, information about browser configuration and plugins, language preferences and cookie data, information about devices accessing the Services, including type of device, what operating system is used, device settings, application IDs, unique device identifiers and error data, and some of this data collected might be capable of and be used to approximate your location.

Information we receive from other sources:

This is information we receive about you from third parties that we work closely with to provide, promote, and improve our services. These third parties include business partners, vendors who assist in technical and payment services, advertising networks, analytics providers, and search information providers.

 

How we use the information we collect

Information you give to us:

Visit Tampa Bay uses the personal information you provide in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Policy. We use your personal information to provide our services on our Site.  We strongly believe in both minimizing the data we collect and limiting its use and purpose to only that (1) for which we have been given explicit permission, (2) as necessary to delivery the Services and features you interact with, or (3) as we might be required or permitted for legal compliance or other lawful purposes.

We also use your personal information together with other personally non-identifiable information to help us better understand our users, to personalize and improve your experience with our Site, and to improve the content and functionality of our Site. This may include providing information about our goods and services that we feel may interest you and enhance your interaction with our Site.  We will communicate with you about these goods and services via email, direct mail (via Visitor Guide request for example), or on our Site. These communications may include newsletters, promotional emails, product updates, or market research/survey requests.

Information we collect about you from your use of our Site:

We will use this information in our legitimate interests (where we have considered these are not overridden by your rights), to administer our Site, and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, and statistical survey purposes. We will also use this information to keep our Site safe and secure, for measuring the effectiveness of how we present content and how we market and advertise.  We use non-personally identifiable information in our log files to analyze trends, to administer our Site, to track users’ movements in and around our Site, and to gather demographic information about all users as a whole.

Information we receive from other sources:

We will combine this information with information you give to us and information we collect about you in our legitimate interests (where we have considered that these are not overridden by your rights). We will use this information and the combined information for the purposes set out above (depending on the types of information we receive).

 

Who we give your information to

We consider your personal information to be a vital part of our relationship with you and do not sell your personal information to third parties. There are, however, certain circumstances in which we may share your personal information with certain third parties, as follows:

Sharing with trusted third parties:

We may share your personal data with affiliated companies with which we have partnered to allow you to integrate their services into our own Services, and with trusted third-party partners as necessary for them to perform services on our behalf, such as:

  • Processing credit card payments
  • Serving advertisements
  • Conducting contests or surveys
  • Performing analysis of our Services and customers demographics
  • Communicating with you, such as by way email or survey delivery
  • Customer relationship management.

We only share your personal data as necessary for any third party to provide the services as requested or as needed on our behalf.

We reserve the right to use, disclose and transfer non-personal data to our partners, advertisers and other third parties at our discretion.

Compliance with legal, regulatory and law enforcement requests: 

In certain situations, Visit Tampa Bay may be required to disclose personal information in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements. We reserve the right to disclose your personal information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or similar legal process served on us or our Site.

We will take reasonable steps to ensure that we only collect that personal information that is relevant for the purposes for which it is to be used. Furthermore, we will not process your personal information in a way that is incompatible with these purposes.

 

Control of your information

When you give us personal information, we will not share that information with third parties without your permission, other than for the limited exceptions already listed.  It will only be used for the purposes stated in this Privacy Policy.  When Visit Tampa Bay is acting as a data controller, we will act in accordance with your permission to offer you our services and as otherwise instructed by you.  We will also give you the ability to opt-out before we disclose your personal information to a third party or use your personal information for purposes that are fundamentally different than the purpose for which it was originally created.

 

Your access to your information

Upon request, Visit Tampa Bay will provide you with information about whether we hold, or process on behalf of a third party, any of your personal information. To request this information please see the contact information at the end of this policy.   

We will provide you with a copy of the personal information to view we have collected, or also completely delete your personal information, via written request.  To request this information please see the contact information at the end of this policy.   We will respond to your request within a reasonable timeframe. Requesting deletion of your account means your personal information is permanently deleted and cannot be retrieved.  Requesting copies of the personal information we collect about you will be sent in a standard universal format.

 

How we secure, store and retain your data

We follow generally accepted standards to secure and store the personal data we collect, both during transmission and once received.  When you enter sensitive information (such as a credit card number) on our checkout page, your information is sent over an authenticated and encrypted connection using Transport Layer Security (TLS).

We store your personal information only on servers with limited access that are located in controlled facilities and use a variety of technologies and procedures intended to protect your personal information from loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction.  Nonetheless, no communication via the Internet can ever be 100% secure, and no security measures can ever be assured to be effective. Accordingly, you are advised to use caution and discretion when determining what personal information to disclose to us.

We retain personal data only for as long as necessary to provide services you have requested for a variety of legitimate legal or business purposes.  We may also retain aggregate information for research purposes and to help us develop and improve our Site and services.

These retention periods might include:

  • those mandated by law, contract or similar obligations applicable to our business operations;
  • for preserving, resolving, defending or enforcing our legal/contractual rights; or
  • needed to maintain adequate and accurate business and financial records.

 

Use of Cookies

The Site uses cookies to collect and store certain information. These typically involve pieces of information or code that a website transfers to or accesses from your computer hard drive or mobile device to store and sometimes track information about you. Cookies allow us to create a unique device ID, enable you to be remembered when using that computer or device to interact with websites and online services, and can be used to manage a range of features and content, including storing searches and presenting personalized content.  The Site uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our Site. This helps us to provide you with a good and personalized user experience when you interact with our Site and also allows us to improve our Site. 

By continuing to use and navigate our site(s), you are agreeing to our use of cookies and similar technologies in our Privacy Policy.

Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but if you prefer, you can change your browser to prevent that. We also give you information about how to disable cookies in the table below. However, you may not be able to take full advantage of our Site if you do so. 

A number of cookies we use last only while you are on our Site and expire when you close your browser or exit our Site Others are used to remember you when you return to our Site and will last for longer. We use these cookies on the basis that they are necessary for the performance of a contract with you, or because using them is in our legitimate interests (where we have considered that these are not overridden by your rights), and, in some cases, where required by law, where you have consented to their use.

 

Cookies

Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website and under our terms with you. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services. 

Analytical/performance cookies. They allow us to recognize and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us for our legitimate interests of improving the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. 

Functionality cookies. These are used to recognize you when you return to our website. This enables us, subject to your choices and preferences, to personalize our content, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).

Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information subject to your choices and preferences to make our Site and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

We may also work with advertising networks that gather information about the content on our Site you visit and on information on other websites and services you visit. This may result in you seeing advertisements on our Site or our advertisements when you visit other websites and services of third parties.  

 

Disabling cookies

The effect of disabling cookies depends on which cookies you disable but, in general, our Site may not operate properly if all cookies are switched off. If you only disable third party cookies, you will not be prevented from making purchases on our Site. If you disable all cookies, you will be unable to complete a purchase on our Site.

If you want to disable cookies on our Site, you need to change your website browser settings to reject cookies. How you can do this will depend on the browser you use. Further details on how to disable cookies for the most popular browsers are set out below:

Browsers: The links below take you to the help sections for each of the major browsers that will tell you how you can manage your cookies:

 

Links or Third-party websites

This Privacy Policy applies only to our Site. Our website and our mobile applications contain third-party website links.  The policies described here do not apply to web sites or other services.  We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of third-party sites.  Please contact and read the privacy policy of any website you visit.

 

Payment processing

When you make purchase directly from Visit Tampa Bay, payment details you provide in the designated checkout page on our Site will be encrypted using the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol before they are submitted to the payment provider.  Payments made on our Site are made through one of our payment gateway providers, PayPal and etc (“Payment Processors”), which may be changed from time to time. You will be providing credit or debit card information directly to the Payment Processor which operates a secure server to process payment details, encrypting your credit/debit card information and authorizing payment.  Information which you supply to the Payment Processor is not within our control and is subject to the Payment Processor’s own privacy policy and terms and conditions.

 

Age restrictions

Our Website is designed for those 18 years of age and older. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under the age of 18 (or such other age as may be restricted under local law). If we are made aware that we have received such information, or any information in violation of our policy, we will use reasonable efforts to locate and remove that information from our records.  If a child under the age of 18 has provided Visit Tampa Bay with Personal Data, the parent or guardian of that child should contact Visit Tampa Bay immediately at privacy@visittampabay.com to delete this Personal Data. 

 

Changes to this Privacy Policy

As our Site evolves, this Privacy Policy will need to evolve as well to cover new situations. To ensure that you are kept informed of changes, check this Privacy Policy periodically as we will update the date at the top of the document any time we make a change. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will post the revised policy on this page. Your continued use of our Site after any such changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to abide by these or any future version of the Privacy Policy, you do not have permission to use or access (or continue to use or access) our Site.

 

Contact us

Questions or comments regarding this Privacy Policy should be submitted to Visit Tampa Bay by e-mail:

Email: privacy@visittampabay.com

Physical Address: 201 N Franklin St, Ste 2900, Tampa, FL 33602 

 

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