About this privacy noticeTerms we may use in our privacy noticesPersonal data we collect and processPersonal data you give to usPersonal data you give us about othersPersonal data we collect automaticallyPersonal data and information about you we receive from other sourcesPurposes of collecting and processing your personal dataLegal bases for personal data processingInformation regarding specific markets and products & servicesGround transportationInsuranceUS InsuranceUS (other than California)How we protect personal dataHow we use cookies & other tracking technologiesHow we use artificial intelligence and make automated decisionsHow we treat personal data belonging to minorsYour rightsOur company and how we further comply with privacy laws
About this privacy notice
We are Booking.com and this privacy notice is intended for travelers using or considering using our products and services.
You place your trust in us by using Booking.com services, and we value that trust.
This privacy notice describes how we collect and otherwise process your personal data when you visit our websites, use our mobile apps, or buy a travel-related product or service through us. It details your rights related to your personal data and how you can contact us.
Booking.com offers online travel-related services through its own websites and mobile apps, as well as through third-party channels, for example, partners' websites.
This privacy notice applies to any kind of traveler information Booking.com processes through all of our services. It isn't the only privacy notice Booking.com maintains to inform you about our processing of personal data. A similar privacy notice is available for Booking.com business partners.
Booking.com amends its privacy notices from time to time and recommends that you visit this privacy notice occasionally to stay informed. If Booking.com makes updates to a privacy notice that could significantly impact persons, it will take steps to inform these persons about such changes before they go into effect.
Terms we may use in our privacy notices
Throughout our privacy notices, Booking.com uses particular terms that have a specific meaning in the context of these notices and the services Booking.com offers. These specific terms are described here.
| Term
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Meaning
| | --- | --- | | Booking.com: | When we refer to "we," "us," or "our," we mean Booking.com group entities and other Booking Holdings Inc. companies as described in the section on Our Company. | | Booking Holdings Inc. (BHI) | This is the parent company of Booking.com. It is also the parent company of other BHI brands such as Agoda and Priceline. Visit https://www.bookingholdings.com/ for more information. | | Platform | Any websites, mobile apps, or other technologies that we provide in order to interact with travelers and other parties for travel-related services. | | Strategic partner | A company (such as an airline, a bank, another BHI brand, or a phone manufacturer) with whom we contract and collaborate to expand reservation opportunities. Through these partnerships, travelers can conveniently book their trip at various touchpoints beyond our direct channels of Booking.com websites and mobile apps. | | Traveler | Anyone who uses or is considering using any of our travel products and services, whether for themselves or for others, through our platform. | | Trip | One or more travel products and services a traveler can select to obtain from one or more trip providers via our platform. | | Trip provider | The third-party provider of an accommodation (e.g. hotel, motel, apartment, bed & breakfast, etc.), an attraction (e.g. amusement park, museum, sightseeing tour, etc.), transportation (e.g. plane, ground transportation including private cars, public transit, car rental, train, coach tour and related transfers) and any other travel or related product (e.g. insurance) or service as from time to time available on the platform for a trip reservation. | | Trip service | The online reservation, order, purchase, and payment services as offered, enabled, and supported by Booking.com for trip providers on the platform. | | Trip reservation | The online reservation, order, purchase, or payment in connection with a trip. |
Personal data we collect and process
Personal data you give to us
When you make a trip reservation, we ask for your name and email address. Depending on the nature of the trip reservation, we may also ask for your home address, telephone number, payment information, date of birth, current location, whether you're traveling for work purposes, the names and dates of birth of the people traveling with you, and any preferences you may indicate (such as dietary or accessibility requirements). For reservations for flights and certain attractions, we may be required to collect additional information from you and your co-travelers, such as passport or national ID information. This may also be necessary for online check-in.
When you contact us, we collect information from those interactions. This includes when you communicate with our customer service team or your trip provider via our platform, or when you reach out to us by phone or social media. The data collected through these channels includes your name and metadata. For telephone calls, this metadata includes details such as your location when calling, the date of the call, and its duration.
Trip items you select to save and reviews. When you search our platform for possible trip reservations, you can select to save specific trip items in a list which we store for you. During or after your trip, we may also invite you to submit reviews that can inform others about your experiences on the trip. When you submit reviews on our platform, we collect the information you've included along with your first name or display name and avatar (if you choose one).
Account Information. If you create an account on our platform, we also store information you include and manage in your account. This can include personal settings, travel preferences, credit card information, uploaded photos, and your reviews. You can also choose to add details from one or more of your identification documents to your account so that you don't have to re-enter this information for future trip reservations.
Identification Information. If you want a verified account badge in those jurisdictions where it is available, we may ask for a copy of your identification (a passport or ID card) and a "selfie" to help us confirm it is you.
Current location and mobile device details. There are other circumstances where you may provide us with personal data. For example, when you use our platform from your mobile device, you can decide to allow Booking.com to use your current location or grant us access to other details. This helps us to give you relevant suggestions, for example the nearest restaurants or attractions to your location, or make other recommendations.
Personal data you give us about others
You may be required to provide information about other travelers when you use our platform to make a trip reservation that involves travelers other than you. If you have a Booking.com for Business account, you can keep an address book in that account to make it easier to plan and manage business travel arrangements for others.
You're responsible for notifying others when you provide their information through our platform. Ensure they understand how Booking.com uses their personal data, as detailed in this privacy notice.
Personal data we collect automatically
We automatically collect certain information when you use our platform, whether or not you make a reservation. This includes:
- IP address
- Usage dates and times
- Clicks and page views on our platform
- Referral information when you are redirected to our platform by a third party
- Device details (OS, browser/app version, language settings)
- Mobile device identifier (when using our mobile apps)
- Mobile app operation (and performance), including crashes
Personal data and information about you we receive from other sources
We may also receive information about you from other sources. This may include one or more of the following:
- Other BHI companies
- Trip providers
- Strategic partners
- Other third-party companies such as marketing partners
Information we receive from these parties may be used together with information you provide to us directly via our platform in order to provide you with services.
We receive personal data about you from these parties in situations such as these:
- Our Strategic Partners. We offer our trip reservation services not only on our platform, but also through strategic partners. If you make a reservation using a partner's service that relies on Booking.com, the partner sends us your reservation details so that we can process and support your booking.
- Trip providers may share additional information with Booking.com. This includes details relating to support inquiries for pending reservations, disputes, significant complaints (including those concerning you), or other issues related to a trip reservation. In addition, we may gather information about you from public sources (such as media or social media). We may combine this with the information we already have if we deem it necessary to verify a complaint or investigate suspected misconduct involving you.
- We integrate with third-party payment service providers such as Adyen and Stripe to facilitate electronic payments between you, Booking.com, and trip providers. These service providers share payment information so we can administer and handle your trip reservation.
- In some cases, we link to other business partners who provide trip reservations that may not be available on our platform. If you select these, you are redirected to other business partners' websites where you can make a reservation. These partners may share certain personal data related to your specific reservation and your interactions on their websites or mobile apps with us in accordance with their privacy policies.
- Our platform includes communication services such as email and chat, allowing you to easily contact the booked trip provider. You may use these services to discuss specifics of your reservation such as available parking at the accommodation. We collect and process data from these communications. Note that we reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to block the delivery of communications that we believe might contain malicious content or spam, or pose a risk to you, trip providers, Booking.com, or others.
- We may also receive information on an aggregated basis from our social media and marketing partners. This helps us measure the effectiveness of advertising and marketing campaigns.
- When you link your Booking.com account to a social media account you control, you may trigger data exchanges between Booking.com and that social media provider. You can always unlink them in your Booking.com account settings.
- We may receive information about you from third parties to confirm or verify your identity or other information. For example, in order to give you a verification badge, we may use a third-party service to verify the accuracy of the information you provide and to confirm it belongs to you.
Purposes of collecting and processing your personal data
We use your personal data for a number of purposes as outlined here:
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Trip reservations
First and foremost, we process your personal data to complete and administer your trip reservation, which is essential to provide this service. This includes sending you communications that relate to your trip reservation, such as confirmations (including, where applicable, providing you with a proof of purchase and/or payment), modifications, and reminders. In some cases, this may also include processing your personal data to enable online check-in with the trip provider or processing personal data in relation to possible damage deposits.
In addition to your contact details (e.g. email address, phone number), in order to provide you with services, we may also need reservation identifiers and dates to determine the duration of the reservation.
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Customer service
We provide our travelers with customer service in more than 40 languages, and we're here to help 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Sharing reservation information with our global customer service staff is essential to help you when you need us. This includes, for example, helping you to contact the right trip provider and responding to any questions you might have about your trip reservation.
To do this, we use personal data such as your reservation details, including, for example, the price of your reservation as well as how and when you made the reservation.
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User accounts
As a user of our services, you can create an account for your use across our platform. With an account, you can manage your trip reservations, take advantage of special offers, make future trip reservations more easily, and manage your personal settings.
If you have an account, you may also qualify for certain Genius benefits, which will be calculated using personal data such as your account information, your country, and your past bookings.
Managing personal settings gives you the ability to keep and share lists, share photos, easily see trip services you've searched for, and check travel-related information you've provided. You can also see any reviews you've written in connection with your trips.
With your account, you can also create a public profile under your own first name or with another name you choose. In some jurisdictions, we offer an account/guest verification program. It helps to create trust and assurance between partners and guests. In order to receive a verification badge on your account, we cross-check the data you give us with any historical data we may have about you as well as other publicly available data. If you log in to your Booking.com account and you want to create a Booking.com for Business account, we may use your name and email address to pre-fill the sign-up form.
If you're a Booking.com for Business account holder, you can also save contact details in that account, manage business reservations, and link other account holders to the same Booking.com for Business account.
To provide accounts, we use personal data such as login credentials for accessing your account and information about when the account is used; for example in connection with reservations and payments.
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Marketing activities
We use your information for marketing activities, including:
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To send you personalized marketing messages, including promotions, Genius-related benefits and other rewards, travel experiences, surveys, and other updates about Booking.com-related products and services. These can be via push notifications, SMS and other messaging applications, notifications in our app, or emails. You always have the option to unsubscribe from marketing messages. For example, you can unsubscribe from receiving email marketing communications at any time by selecting the "Unsubscribe" link included in each communication, or you can manage your preferences via your account settings.
For personalized marketing messages, we may also use your interactions with our platform, such as previous reservations and behavioral data, including data collected via cookies and similar tracking technologies.
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To show you personalized marketing, including promotions, Genius-related benefits and other rewards, travel experiences, surveys, and other updates about Booking.com products and services on the Booking.com website, mobile apps, or third-party websites and apps. For more information on personalized marketing, see the section How we use artificial intelligence and make automated decisions. These may be offers and recommendations we think you may find interesting that you can book directly on our platform, on sites operated with a strategic partner or on other third-party sites.
For personalized marketing displays, we may also use your interaction with our platform, such as previous reservations and behavioral data, including data collected via cookies and similar tracking technologies.
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To contact you with information about insurance products that you didn't include in your reservation.
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To organize other promotional activities and, based on information already collected, we may invite you and other travelers to participate in such activities.
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To do this, we use personal data such as your contact and account information, browsing data, location data and preferences, searches, and reservations you make from different devices.
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Communicating with you
There may be times when we get in touch with you, including via email, chatbot, mail, phone call, push notification, platform notification, or text message. Which method we choose depends on the contact information you've previously shared.
We process personal data in communications you and other parties send to us. There may be a number of reasons for this, including:
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Responding to and handling any support requests made by you or the trip provider you booked with. We offer travelers and trip providers various ways to exchange information via our platform, such as requests and comments about trip reservations made via Booking.com.
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If you have started but not finished a trip reservation, we might contact you to invite you to continue with your reservation. This convenience allows you to pick up the process where you left off without having to search for a trip provider or fill out your reservation details again.
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When you use our trip services, we might send you a survey or otherwise invite you to provide a review about your experience with us or the trip provider.
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We send you other material related to your trip reservations, such as how to contact us if you need assistance while you're away and information that we feel might be useful to you to prepare for your trip and get the best experience.
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Even if you don't have an upcoming trip, we may still need to send you other administrative messages, which could include security alerts.
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We may send you a warning or other notice if a trip provider reports misconduct by you.
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To do this, we use personal data such as your first and last name, email address, and reservation details, including reservation IDs and chosen locations.
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Market research
We sometimes invite our customers to participate in market research. Review the information that accompanies this kind of invitation to understand what personal data will be collected and how it's used.
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Improving our services
We use personal data about travelers using our platform for analytical purposes, including for analyzing how you or travelers like you with similar interests use our platform, understanding customer sentiment and satisfaction, measuring our operating performance and improving trip services. We may process your user ID for the purpose of measuring the audience visiting our websites. We may use your personal data to develop and enhance our machine learning models and artificial intelligence systems. This is a necessary part of our ongoing commitment to make our services better and enhance our travelers' experience. For further details, see the section How we use artificial intelligence and make automated decisions.
In addition to the statistics we generate regularly about our business, we use data to perform experiments (such as A/B tests) to try out and troubleshoot platform features. The main goal here is to get insights into how our services perform, how they are used, and ultimately how to optimize and customize our website and mobile apps, in an effort to make them easier and more meaningful to use. In order to achieve this purpose, we may combine personal data we collect from you during different visits to our platform or visits on different devices or different websites of ours, even when you are not logged in.
To do this, we use personal data such as:
- Reservations made by travelers over specific periods of time or for specific products
- Communications between you and our trip providers, or between you and us (for example, for customer service purposes)
- The searches travelers made on our websites and apps
- The reviews travelers shared with us about their trip experience
Our recurring work for analytical purposes includes the use of solutions that pseudonymize personal data or process personal data in encrypted formats. As much as possible, we strive to use anonymized and de-identified personal data for this analytical work.
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Showing the pricing applicable to you
When you search our websites or mobile apps, for example to find an accommodation, a rental car, or a flight, the pricing you see may depend on a number of factors, such as whether you are in the European Economic Area (EEA) or in another region or country outside of the EEA.
To display the pricing applicable to you, we use personal data such as your IP address, the type of device you're using, and which site you came from.
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Customer reviews and other destination-related information
During and after your trip, we might invite you or your traveling companion to submit a review. This invitation asks for information about the trip provider or the destination.
The reviews help to inform other travelers about the quality of the trip service you used, the destination you chose, the ground transportation, or any other experiences you choose to share without disclosing your identity. Reviews submitted by travelers are subject to our Terms of Service and to automated and other content moderation to verify that reviews conform with our Content standards and guidelines. If a review you submit is not accepted in line with our content moderation standards, we may still process the rejected review, for example, for improving our services.
If you have a Booking.com account, you can choose to display a screen name next to your review, instead of your first name.
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Call monitoring
When you make calls to our customer service team, we use an automated telephone number detection system to match the number you call from to the reservation you made. This saves time for you and our customer service staff. However, our customer service staff may still ask for additional identification to ensure it is you calling about the reservation.
When you call our customer service team, we may have one or more authorized persons listen to the call or record the call for training and quality control purposes. This quality control includes the usage of the recordings to handle possible complaints, legal claims, and indications of possible fraud attempts.
We do not record every call made to our customer service team. If a call is recorded, it is kept for a limited amount of time (30 days by default). We then automatically delete the call recording unless we determine before then that it will be necessary to retain it for fraud investigation or legal purposes.
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Promotion of a safe and trustworthy service and the prevention of fraud
We continuously analyze and use certain personal data to prevent and detect online fraud attempts and other illegal or unwanted activities. This is necessary to maintain our platform as a trustworthy environment as well as for the safety of all travelers.
We use personal data for safety and security purposes, including when you report a safety concern, when others do so about you, or when we need to identify persons in connection with a user account or reservation. When we do this, we may have to stop or put certain reservations on hold until we finish our assessment. If we have concerns about serious misconduct, we may cancel your upcoming reservations or decline your future reservations via our platform.
In case of safety or security concerns, we may collect, analyze, and combine with other information we hold, and/or information from publicly available sources (such as media reports or social media platforms), to prevent or detect harm (including toward our staff or premises). We cannot prevent that some of that information may contain special categories of personal data.
In order to detect and prevent fraud and limit other abuse of our platform, we may use your personal data and analyze your behavior on our platform to assess the risk of a certain action or transaction you are attempting to make. For example, this may help us determine whether a bot is using our platform rather than a legitimate user, or to determine whether a user is making a fraudulent payment using a stolen credit card.
For these purposes, we use your contact information, other identifiers (such as IP addresses), reservation details including canceled reservations, reviews, account information, browsing data, location data, communications data, or other information that you or another person has provided to us, including images, video, or other media submitted on our platform.
We use artificial intelligence to review activity on our platform for fraud and to detect any other forms of misconduct as described in the section How we use artificial intelligence and make automated decisions.
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Legal purposes
In certain cases, we may need to reuse your information to:
- Handle and resolve legal claims and disputes
- Address possible regulatory investigations
- Enforce our reservation Terms of Service
- Comply with lawful requests from law enforcement
- Comply with laws and regulations that apply to Booking.com
For example, we may be required to process your reservation history, the details of one or more of these reservations and associated payment information.
Legal bases for personal data processing
To process your personal data as previously described, Booking.com relies on several legal bases in applicable privacy regulations. This is summarized as follows:
| Purpose of personal data processing
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Legal basis and comments
| | --- | --- | | A. Trip reservations
B. Customer service
| Here Booking.com relies on the legal basis that the processing of personal data is necessary for the performance of a contract involving you, specifically to finalize and administer your trip reservation.
If the required personal data isn't provided, Booking.com can't finalize the trip reservation with the trip provider, nor can we provide customer service to you about it.
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C. User accounts
D. Marketing activities
E. Communicating with you
F. Market research
G. Improving our services
H. Showing the pricing applicable to you
I. Customer reviews and other destination-related information
J. Call monitoring
K. Promotion of safe and trustworthy service and prevention of fraud
| Unless provided otherwise in this overview, collecting and processing of your personal data for these purposes is based on the legitimate interests of Booking.com or a third party. Before we process personal data to serve the legitimate interests of Booking.com or a third party, Booking.com balances your rights and interests in the protection of personal data with the rights and interests of Booking.com or those of the third party.
The legitimate interests include, for example, under certain circumstances using AI systems to avoid financial harm from online fraud, maintain the safety of our platform, customers, and trip providers and staff, share people's experiences with prospective travelers and keep people informed about offers we think might be of interest, reduce our operating costs, improve the efficiency and quality of our data processing models and privacy-enhancing technologies, and provide better products to our customers.
In the unlikely event Booking.com would process special categories of personal data in the context of purpose K, we rely, where applicable, on the fact that processing relates to personal data which are manifestly made public by the individual or other legal bases as may be assessed at the time.
| | L. Legal purposes | Booking.com also relies, where applicable, on compliance with legal obligations (e.g. lawful law enforcement requests). | | All purpose categories | Finally, where needed under applicable law, Booking.com will obtain your consent prior to processing your personal data, including for direct marketing purposes, for use of AI Systems or technology or where otherwise required by law. |
Our use of AI systems is aligned with data protection laws. The specific legal basis for using AI generally aligns with the overall purpose of data processing outlined in this section.
If you wish to object to the processing set out under C to K and the use of AI systems, and no opt-out mechanism is available to you directly (for example, in your account settings), contact us as described in the section Your rights.
How we share personal data within Booking.com
To support the use of Booking.com services, your details may be shared within Booking.com group entities and the other Booking Holdings Inc. companies described in the section on Our company.
Why we share personal data within the Booking Holdings Inc. group (BHI)
We may receive personal data about you from other companies in the BHI group (e.g. Agoda or OpenTable), or share your personal data with them, for the following purposes:
- To provide customer service
- To detect, prevent, and investigate fraudulent or other illegal activities and data breaches, companies within BHI may need to exchange personal data about certain persons to ensure all platforms' users are protected, for example, from online fraud attempts
- For analytical and product improvement purposes where permitted by applicable law
- To provide personalized offers or send you marketing communications where permitted
- For hosting, technical support, overall maintenance, and maintaining security of such shared data
- To ensure compliance with applicable laws
As applicable and unless indicated otherwise, for purposes A to F, we rely on our legitimate interests to share and receive personal data. For purpose G, we rely, where applicable, on compliance with legal obligations (e.g. lawful law enforcement requests). We also ensure that data flows between companies in the BHI group comply with applicable law, including obtaining your consent where needed prior to sharing your personal data with other BHI companies.
How we share personal data with third parties
In certain circumstances, we'll share your personal data with third parties. These third parties include:
The trip provider you booked with
In order to complete your trip reservation, we need to transfer relevant reservation details to the trip provider you have chosen.
Depending on the trip reservation and the trip provider, the details we share can include your name, contact and payment details, the names of the people accompanying you, and any other relevant information (e.g. check-in/check-out dates), including preferences you specified when you made your trip reservation.
In certain cases, we also provide some summary information about you to the trip provider. This can include:
- Whether your account is verified
- Whether you've booked with the trip provider in the past
- The number of completed reservations you've made with us
- The absence of reports to Booking.com regarding misconduct involving you
- The percentage of reservations you may have canceled in the past on our platform
- Whether you've given reviews about past reservations
If you have a query about your trip, we may contact the trip provider to handle your request. Unless payment is made to Booking.com itself during the reservation process, we need to forward your credit card details to the trip provider you chose for payment processing.
To resolve possible trip-related claims or disputes or any other kind of customer service issue, we may provide the trip provider on an as-needed basis with your contact details and other information about the reservation, claim, or dispute. This can include, for example, your email address and a copy of your reservation confirmation to confirm that the trip reservation was made or the reasons for its cancellation.
Trip providers will further process your personal data outside of the control of Booking.com to prepare for arriving and departing guests, for example. Trip providers may also ask for additional personal data, for instance to provide additional services and to comply with local requirements and restrictions. If available, read the privacy notice of the trip provider to understand how they process your personal data.
Strategic partners
We work with many strategic partners around the world. These strategic partners distribute and advertise Booking.com services, including the services and products of our trip providers. Depending on the strategic partner, you may make your trip reservation through:
- Our website that is operated in partnership with a strategic partner; or
- Strategic partners' websites or mobile apps.
For the former, the strategic partners will receive certain personal data related to your specific reservation and your interactions on these websites. This is for the legitimate interest of Booking.com or our strategic partners.
For the latter, certain personal data that you give them, such as your name and email address, your address, payment details, and other relevant information, will be forwarded to us to finalize and manage your trip reservation. With these strategic partners, we may act as joint controllers for processing of specific personal data. When we do act as joint controllers, you will be informed, including to which joint controller to address your specific request to exercise rights. We may collaborate with our joint controllers to ensure an adequate response to your request.
For fraud detection and prevention purposes, we may also exchange information about our users with strategic partners - but only when strictly necessary.
Connectivity providers
Many trip providers contract with specific third-party companies (often referred to as "connectivity providers") to automate the routing of reservation information from Booking.com and other members of the travel industry to them.
Connectivity providers act on behalf of trip providers (rather than Booking.com) and forward reservation information to them so they can manage their reservations in their systems.
Third-party service providers
We use service providers to support us in providing our trip services. The services these third-party companies provide include:
- Customer support
- Industry/market research
- Fraud detection and prevention (including anti-fraud screening)
- Insurance coverage claims handling
- Payment processing
- We use third parties to electronically process payments, handle chargebacks, or provide billing collection services. The payment service providers may, in some cases, use your personal data for their own purposes, such as to detect and prevent fraud attempts and to comply with legal obligations applicable to them.
- When a chargeback is requested for your trip reservation, either by you or by the holder of the credit card used to make your reservation, we need to share certain reservation details with the payment service provider and the relevant financial service organization so they can handle the chargeback. This may also include a copy of your reservation confirmation or the IP address used to make your reservation.
- We may also share information with relevant financial institutions, if we consider it strictly necessary for fraud prevention purposes, for example, to prevent the fraudulent use of a stolen credit card.
- Marketing services
- We may share some of your personal data (such as identifiers) with advertising partners, as part of the marketing of our trip services through third parties (to ensure that relevant advertisements are shown to the right audience and to measure the effectiveness of different marketing activities).
- We use techniques such as hashing specific personal data (e.g. email address, telephone number) to enable matching with data in one or more of their databases. Such techniques limit what the receiving third-party company can do with the personal data we selectively share with them.
- When sharing audience insights with advertising partners and other third parties, we ensure that your personal data is aggregated and pseudonymized so the advertising partners and other parties cannot directly identify you (e.g. through the use of data clean rooms). These pseudonymized insights are used to develop customized media proposals and pitches for our partners.
- As part of the account verification process, we may share some of your account data (such as your name, email address, phone number, passport number, physical address), linked social media account, passport, or other identification document(s) with a third party. A third party may use a detection system to verify that you are a real person and not a bot. This process is automated, and the data is not retained beyond what is necessary for verification.
Other professional third parties
In some cases (e.g. disputes, legal claims, or as part of auditing activities), we may need to share your personal data with representatives of professional service organizations. These representatives can include legal counsels at law firms as well as auditors. We only share your personal data to the extent that is necessary and in line with contractual and other obligations applicable to them.
Competent authorities
We follow specific protocols when law enforcement agencies and other government bodies request that we disclose personal data about one or more travelers in connection with a possible criminal matter. We may also disclose personal data to law enforcement agencies in connection with possible cases of fraud.
We follow similar protocols where, for example, EU and local laws additionally require us to share personal data with a competent authority, such as a tax authority. We may be required to disclose personal data to:
- Comply with a legal obligation, for instance, under applicable short-term rental laws
- Protect and defend our rights or the rights and interests of our business partners.
Other business partners
We may share personal data in other instances with other business partners. These include:
- Insurance companies: If an insurance claim is made, concerning you and a trip provider, we may provide the necessary data (including personal data) to the insurance company and their appointed representatives for further processing.
- Other trip providers: We may present you with a "Partner offer." When you book an accommodation marked "Partner offer," your reservation will be facilitated by a trip provider who is separate from the accommodation you're booking. As part of the reservation process, we'll need to share some relevant personal data with this trip provider. If you book a "Partner offer," review the information provided in the reservation process or check your reservation confirmation for more information about the trip provider and how your personal data will be further processed by them.
Safeguards for international transfers of personal data
Booking.com is a business that connects travelers and partners around the world. The data that we collect from you, as described in this privacy notice, could be accessible from, transferred to, or stored in countries that may not have the same data protection laws as those of the country in which you initially provided the information. In any case, we apply appropriate safeguards to make sure that cross-border transfers of personal data comply with applicable law and seek to ensure that your data continues to receive a comparable level of protection.
In particular, if you're in the European Economic Area (EEA) and your personal data is transferred to third-party service providers in countries not considered adequate by the European Commission (EC), we establish and implement appropriate contractual, organizational, and technical measures with these third-party companies. This is done by using Standard Contractual Clauses as approved by the EC, by examining the countries to which the data may be transferred, and by imposing specific technical and organizational measures.
In certain cases, we transfer your data outside the EEA because it's necessary to conclude or perform the contract we have with you. For example, if you make a trip reservation involving a trip provider or strategic partner operating outside the EEA, it's likely to require that we transfer data about your specific reservation outside the EEA.
For transfers of your personal data outside of the United Kingdom (UK), we apply the equivalent mechanisms and appropriate safeguards for the UK.
For transfers within Booking.com group entities, we've implemented Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs) as a further safeguard to help ensure your data remains appropriately protected when transferred outside of the EEA. You can find information about our BCRs here.
You can ask us for more information on our implemented safeguards by contacting us as described in the section Your rights.
Information regarding specific markets and products & services
Depending on the type of product or service you use and other factors such as where you live, we may have additional information to provide you which supplements or even replaces the information elsewhere in this notice. Review those following sections which apply to you in order to have the full picture.
Ground transportation
If you use our ground transportation services, the information in this section applies to you. It adds to, or replaces, the information in other parts of this privacy notice.
In addition to what we list in Personal data you give to us, for a car rental reservation we might also ask for your home address, billing address, phone number, date and place of birth, passport and driver's license info, government-issued ID (where required by law), and the names of any additional drivers. For a private or public transportation reservation, we might ask for your pick-up and drop-off address (if you book a journey such as a car or an airport transfer). We might also ask for your date of birth or age range for some public transportation tickets (e.g. child or senior tickets) and the names of any additional passengers.
In addition to what's described in the section Personal data we receive from other sources, car rental, private, or public transportation companies may also share information about you with us. This could happen if you need support with or have questions about a pending reservation, or if disputes or other issues arise about a reservation.
In addition to what is described in the section , if the car rental company you select on our platform participates in our pre-registration scheme, the details we share can also include your email address, home address, phone number, date and place of birth, passport, and driver's license information if you have provided this information to us. Providing further pre-registration information will enhance your pick-up experience, but it's optional and you'll still be able to pick up your rental car even if you don't provide any pre-registration information.
Note that, sometimes, at the direction of the ground transportation provider, we'll need to share your personal data with parties related to the provider in order to finalize and administer your reservation. These parties might include other entities of the provider's corporate group or service providers, drivers, or end fleets who are handling the data on the provider's behalf.
Car rental companies may also ask for additional personal data, for example, to provide additional services or to comply with local restrictions. Be aware that any information you provide directly to the company/companies supplying your car and/or related products will be stored and used in accordance with their own privacy notice(s) and terms and conditions.
Insurance
If you purchase an insurance product while using our platform, the information in this section applies to you. It adds to, or replaces, the information in other parts of this privacy notice. If you live in the US and purchase an insurance product, then our section on US insurance applies to you instead.
The offering of insurance can involve multiple parties, such as intermediaries, underwriters, and other agents. Where Booking.com Distribution B.V. is involved, it will act as the intermediary and authorized agent or appointed representative (depending on the jurisdiction) on behalf of the insurer, by offering insurance products and services to Booking.com customers.
Review the information provided during the reservation process for more information about us and the parties who work together with us to offer you these products and services. The details of the insurer will be visible in the insurance policy and related documentation provided to you.
When offering insurance, we may have to use and share personal data that is relevant to the insurance product. This data relates to you as a potential or actual policyholder, the beneficiaries under a policy, family members, claimants, and other parties involved in a claim:
- To provide offers, arrange insurance cover and handle insurance claims, some personal data, provided to us during the reservation process ("General Order Data"), may have to be shared within other Booking.com entities. You may also be asked to provide additional information, such as names of family members or other beneficiaries or details about a claim ("Insurance-Specific Data").
- If you make a claim under an insurance policy, this claim may be directly handled by the insurer. This means that you may be asked to provide personal data in order to submit the claim directly to them. The insurer will inform you accordingly at the point of collection of your information. When your claim is handled by the insurer, we may receive information about the status of your claim in order to provide you with customer support services.
For further information about the relationship between Booking.com and Booking.com Distribution B.V., and to exercise your rights regarding personal data that is collected through the Booking.com platform, contact us as described in the section Your rights.
Insurance-related call recordings may be kept for up to 12 months to comply with specific provisions from insurance-related laws and regulations. If you purchase an insurance product over the phone, we can verify and confirm your insurance purchase in the event of disputes.