Privacy Policy

1. Who we are and how to contact us

Holiday House France operates this website. For the personal information described in this policy, Holiday House France is the data controller unless we explain otherwise.

You can contact us about privacy or data-protection matters at admin@holidayhousefrance.com or through our Contact page.

If the legal entity operating Holiday House France changes, for example following incorporation of a company, this policy will be updated to identify the new controller before that entity begins processing personal information as controller.

2. The information we collect

Depending on how you use Holiday House France, we may process:

• Account and identity information, such as your name, email address, password credentials in protected form, account role and verification information.
• Owner and property information, including contact details, property details, photographs, descriptions, facilities, rates, availability, registration information and other material you choose to provide for a listing.
• Guest enquiry information, such as name, email address, requested dates, party details and the message submitted to a property owner or manager.
• Communications and support information, including messages sent to Holiday House France and records needed to respond to or manage a request.
• Calendar information where an owner connects an iCal/ICS feed, including calendar URLs and availability or booking-block information supplied by the connected calendar.
• Technical, security and usage information, such as IP address, browser/device information, session and security records, page activity and analytics information where analytics consent has been given.
• Prospect and business-contact information used for owner outreach, which may include a property/business name, owner or manager name, public business email address, website, location and notes about the source or status of the contact.
• Commercial and payment information if paid HHF services are introduced or used, such as the selected plan, transaction amount and status, invoice/receipt records and payment-provider identifiers. Holiday House France does not need to store full payment-card numbers or CVCs.

3. Where information comes from

Most personal information is provided directly by you when you create an account, build or manage a listing, submit an enquiry, contact us, change settings or use another feature of the website.

We may also receive information from services that an owner deliberately connects to Holiday House France, such as an iCal/ICS calendar feed.

For owner outreach, we may obtain professional or business contact information from publicly available sources, including an accommodation provider's own website, public business pages, social-media business pages or other public directories. We use this information only where we have a lawful reason to contact the business and keep a record of outreach, responses and opt-outs.

4. Why we use personal information and our lawful bases

We process personal information only where we have a lawful basis. The main purposes and bases relevant to Holiday House France are:

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we consider whether the processing is necessary and proportionate and whether an individual's rights and interests override our interests. We do not use consent as a condition of a service where another lawful basis is more appropriate.

5. Guest enquiries and communication with owners

When a visitor sends an enquiry through Holiday House France, the enquiry is stored by HHF and made available to the owner or manager of the property concerned so that they can respond and manage the enquiry.

Once contact has been established, the owner and guest may communicate directly. If they use their own email, telephone or another external service, that later communication is controlled by the parties and service providers involved; Holiday House France does not automatically receive or store a copy of those external conversations.

Property owners and managers receive the personal information contained in enquiries as independent recipients and are responsible for how they use information once they receive it outside the HHF service.

6. Owner listings, calendars and public information

Information that an owner deliberately supplies for publication may appear on the public property listing and may be indexed by search engines. Private account details are not intended to be published merely because they are held in an owner account.

If an owner connects an external iCal/ICS calendar, Holiday House France retrieves the calendar information needed to synchronise or display availability. Calendar feeds can contain booking references or guest names depending on what the external provider includes, so owners should only connect feeds they are authorised to use.

7. Who we share information with

We do not sell personal information. We may disclose or make information available where necessary to:

• the relevant property owner or manager when a guest submits an enquiry;
• website hosting, infrastructure, email, security, backup and technical-support providers that help us operate Holiday House France;
• Google, where a visitor has consented to Google Analytics;
• payment, accounting or professional-service providers where required for a paid HHF service or our legal/accounting obligations;
• law-enforcement bodies, regulators, courts, advisers or other parties where disclosure is required by law or reasonably necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal rights; and
• a purchaser, successor or new operator if the Holiday House France business is reorganised, incorporated, sold or transferred, subject to appropriate safeguards.

Service providers acting for us are expected to process personal information only for the relevant service and subject to appropriate data-protection obligations.

8. International transfers

Holiday House France is aimed at users and properties in France while being operated from the United Kingdom. Some of our service providers may also process information in the UK, European Economic Area or other countries.

Where personal information is transferred internationally and data-protection law requires a transfer safeguard, we will rely on an applicable adequacy decision or another lawful safeguard, such as approved contractual protections. You can contact us if you would like further information about the safeguards relevant to your information.

9. How long we keep information

We keep personal information only for as long as it is reasonably needed for the purpose for which it was collected, and then delete or anonymise it unless we need to retain it for a legal, accounting, fraud-prevention, dispute or security reason.

• Owner account and listing records: normally for as long as the account or listing remains active, followed by a reasonable period needed to deal with closure, disputes, security and legal obligations.
• Guest enquiries: retained for the period reasonably needed for owners and HHF to manage the enquiry history, support and disputes, then deleted or anonymised when no longer needed.
• Prospect/outreach records: retained while the contact remains a relevant potential owner and as necessary to record previous contact, responses and opt-outs. Suppression information may be retained longer so that we can respect a request not to be contacted again.
• Accounting, payment and transaction records: retained for the period required by applicable tax, accounting and company-law obligations.
• Security and technical records: retained for a proportionate period based on their purpose, sensitivity and the need to investigate faults, abuse or security incidents.

When deciding a retention period, we consider the amount and sensitivity of the information, why it is needed, the risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, whether the purpose can be achieved another way, and any legal retention requirement.

10. Cookies and analytics

Holiday House France uses essential browser technologies needed for functions such as secure sessions, forms and saved choices. Google Analytics is not loaded unless analytics consent is given through our cookie controls.

You can reject analytics when first asked, and you can change your analytics choice later from our Cookies page.

11. Your data-protection rights

Depending on the circumstances and the law that applies, you may have the right to:

• ask for access to the personal information we hold about you;
• ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete information;
• ask us to erase personal information in certain circumstances;
• ask us to restrict processing in certain circumstances;
• object to processing based on legitimate interests or to direct marketing;
• receive certain information in a portable format where the right to data portability applies; and
• withdraw consent at any time where processing is based on consent, without affecting processing that was lawful before withdrawal.

You have the right to object at any time to the use of your personal information for direct marketing. If you ask us not to contact you for marketing or owner outreach, we may keep the minimum information necessary on a suppression record so that we can honour that request.

These rights are not absolute and can depend on the lawful basis and circumstances. We may need to confirm your identity before completing a request. To exercise a right, email admin@holidayhousefrance.com or use our Contact page.

12. Complaints and supervisory authorities

If you have a concern about how we use your personal information, please contact us first so that we can try to resolve it.

You also have the right to complain to a data-protection supervisory authority. In the United Kingdom, this is the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). In France, this is the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL). If EU GDPR applies, you may also be entitled to complain to the supervisory authority in the EU/EEA country where you live or work, or where you believe an infringement occurred.

Official information is available from the ICO at ico.org.uk and from the CNIL at cnil.fr.

13. Security

We use technical and organisational measures intended to protect personal information against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure or loss. These include access controls for administrative areas, secure sessions, protected credentials, server-side secrets and security checks appropriate to the functions provided.

No internet service can guarantee absolute security. If we become aware of a personal-data breach, we will assess it and make any notifications required by applicable law.

14. Automated decision-making

Holiday House France does not currently make decisions about individuals based solely on automated processing that produce legal or similarly significant effects. If this changes, this policy will be updated before such processing is introduced where required.

15. Providing information and changes of purpose

Some information is necessary to create an owner account, operate a listing, submit an enquiry or provide another requested service. If required information is not supplied, we may be unable to provide that part of Holiday House France.

If we intend to use personal information for a materially different purpose, we will consider whether the new use is compatible with the original purpose and provide additional privacy information or obtain consent where required.

16. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when Holiday House France, our service providers, our business structure or applicable legal requirements change. Material changes will be brought to affected users' attention where appropriate.