PRIVACY STATEMENT

This Privacy Statement covers this website, which is operated by Hotels.com, L.P. (“we,” “us” or “Hotels.com”). Your data will be maintained by Hotels.com, L.P. in accordance with this Privacy Statement. Your privacy it important to us. We want to make your experience on the Internet enjoyable and to foster your trust in eCommerce as a whole. Because we want to demonstrate our commitment to our users’ privacy, we have agreed to disclose our information practices.

This Privacy Statement is an integral part of our website and the services offered to you and cannot, in any way, be separated from the User Agreement or from the membership, usage or transaction process. If you do not agree to our Privacy Statement in whole, you must not use our website.

1. What information do we collect online about you and how do we use it.

2. What personally identifiable information third parties collect through this website.

3. What organization collects the information.

4. How we use the information.

5. With whom we may share user information.

6. What choices are available to users regarding collection, use and distribution of the information.

7. What types of security procedures are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under our control.

8. How users can correct any inaccuracies in the information.

9. How we notify you of material changes to this Privacy Statement.

10. What is the effective date of this Privacy Statement.

If users have questions or concerns regarding this statement, they should contact our customer service by email here.

Information Collected Online About You

Information that you provide us.

Reservation Orders

When you book a reservation through our site, we ask you to provide personally identifiable information by filling out and submitting an online booking form. This information includes your name, address, home or work telephone number, fax number, email address, and your credit card number, expiration date and billing address. This information is collected on the booking form for several reasons including: (1) personal identification; (2) to process and book your reservation; (3) to allow us to contact you for customer service, if necessary; and (4) to make product improvements to this website. In addition, your email address is collected to send you an email message confirming each reservation you transact online. If you provide a fax number, you may receive faxes confirming each reservation that you transact online as well. When you return to this website and if you use your name and provide other key, personally identifiable information, we use this information to provide you with access to your reservation information.

As a customer you will occasionally receive updates from us about special offers, new services, and other noteworthy news items. However, you may always decline to receive these email and fax messages. Please see our Opt Out policy described below.

We also ask you for personally identifiable information about other people for whom you are booking reservations. We use this information only to reserve the travel product, and, if you request it, to send each person an email notification of the reservation.

Information Use

Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of information stored on your computer tied to information about you. We do not use session ID cookies or persistent cookies to track personally identifiable information about you. For the session ID cookie, once you close the Web browser, the cookie simply terminates. A persistent cookie is a small text file stored on your hard drive for an extended period of time. Persistent cookies can be removed by following the Web browser help file directions.

A cookie file may also be placed on your hard drive by our third-party advertising companies. These companies may use aggregated statistics about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about travel-related goods and services that you may be interested in. The information they collect does not include your personally identifiable information.

The third-party advertising companies may also employ technology that is used to measure the effectiveness of ads. This is primarily accomplished through the use of a Web beacon (a single-pixel GIF), which is placed on our site to collect anonymous information. They may use this anonymous information about your visits to this and other sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of potential interest to you. No personally identifiable information is collected during this process. The information is anonymous and does not link online actions to an identifiable person.

In addition, some of our other business partners also use cookies on our site (for example, advertisers). However, we have no access to or control over these cookies, once we have given permission for them to set cookies for advertising. This Privacy Statement covers the use of cookies by this website only and does not cover the use of cookies by any of our advertisers or business partners.

Log Files

Like most standard website servers we use log files. This includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user's movement in the aggregate, diagnose problems with our servers and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses, etc. are not linked to personally identifiable information.

Please be aware that we have links on our website that may lead to other websites. These sites may collect personally identifiable information about you. This Privacy Statement does not cover the information practices or policies of such other websites.

Communications from the Site

Special Offers and Updates

Users will occasionally receive information on products, services, special deals, and a newsletter. Out of respect for the privacy of our users we present the option to not receive these types of communications. Please see the Choice and Opt-out sections.

If a user wishes to subscribe to our newsletter, we ask for contact information such as name and email address. Out of respect for our users’ privacy we provide a way to opt-out of these communications. Please see the Choice and Opt-out sections.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regards to issues relating to their account we reply via email, fax or phone, in accordance with the users’ wishes.

Sharing

Legal Disclaimer

Though we make every effort to preserve user privacy, we may be required by law to disclose information you have provided in obtaining our travel products or services. We may also disclose information against someone who poses a threat to our interests (such as customer fraud) or whose activities could bring harm to others. In addition, it may be necessary for us to provide customer information to third parties, such as credit card companies, for the purpose of resolving disputes that arise in the normal course of business.

Aggregate Information (non-personally identifiable information)

We share aggregated demographic information with our partners and advertisers. This is not linked to any personally identifiable information.

Third Party Intermediaries

We use an outside a credit card processing company and bank check processing company to bill users for goods and services. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.

We use an outside tracking company to track aggregate user movements on this website and to report this information to the website owner only. No personal or personally identifiable information is gathered or used for this process.

Suppliers

We provide information about travel either reserved or purchased on this website to the suppliers whose will fulfill your travel reservation. Although we offers travel products from hotel, airline, car rental and other suppliers that are reputable companies, we have not placed limitations on these suppliers from using or disclosing your information without your permission. Therefore, we encourage you to review the information privacy practices of any travel suppliers whose products you purchase on this website. In addition, these travel suppliers may also contact you as necessary to obtain additional information about your confirmed reservation.

We will occasionally share aggregated information with our service providers. This information does not contain any personally identifiable information and is used to develop featured programs and content that will be of interest to our website visitors.

We may contract with a reputable third-party to facilitate the distribution of survey, promotion, or sweepstakes programs. Upon completion of these projects, all information is returned to us.

Affiliated Websites

If you were referred to this website from another website, we may share personally identifiable information about you to the referring website. Although we believe that the website companies from which you were referred to us are reputable companies, we have not placed limitations on the referring websites companies from using or disclosing your information without your permission. Therefore, we encourage you to review the information privacy practices of any website that referred you to this website.

Choice/Opt-out

Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications may opt-out of receiving these communications by replying to unsubscribe in the subject line in the email or by email here.

Links

This website contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we, Hotels.com, L.P., are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other websites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our website and to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This Privacy Statement applies solely to information collected by this website.

Surveys & Contests

From time-to-time our website requests information from users via surveys or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. The requested information typically includes contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as zip code). Contact information will be used to notify the winners and award prizes. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this website. Though we may use an intermediary to conduct these surveys or contests, they may not use users’ personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.

Security

We take precaution to protect our users’ information. When users submit sensitive information via the website, their information is protected both online and off-line.

When our reservation order form asks users to enter sensitive information (such as credit card number), that information is encrypted and is protected with the best encryption software in the industry – Secure Socket Layer (SSL). While on a secure page, such as our order form, the lock icon on the bottom of Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer becomes locked, as opposed to un-locked, or open, when users are just surfing.

While we use SSL encryption to protect sensitive information online, we also protect user-information off-line. All of our users’ information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, our billing clerk or a customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Finally, the servers that store personally identifiable information are in a secure environment, in a locked facility.

If users have any questions about the security at our website, users can send an email to Customer Care.

Supplementation of Information

In order for this website to properly fulfill its obligation to users, it is necessary for us to supplement the information we receive with information from third party sources.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information

If a user's personally identifiable information (such as zip code, phone, email or postal address) changes or if a user no longer desires our service, we provide a way to correct or update a user's personally identifiable information. Users can all email our Customer Support at Customer Care or by contact us by telephone or postal mail at the contact information listed below.

Notification of Material Changes

If we decide to make any material change to our Privacy Statement, we will post those changes to this Privacy Statement and other places we deem appropriate so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We will use information in accordance with the Privacy Statement under which the information was collected.

If, however, we are going to use users’ personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection we will notify users via email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their information in this different manner. However, if users have opted out of all communication with the site, then they will not be contacted, nor will their personal information be used in this new manner. In addition, if we make any material changes in our privacy practices that do not affect user information already stored in our database, we will post a prominent notice on this website notifying users of the change. In some cases where we post a notice, we will also email users, who have opted to receive communications from us, notifying them of the changes in our privacy practices.

Contact Information

If users have any questions or suggestions regarding our Privacy Statement, please contact us at:

Email Customer Care

Postal Address Hotels.com, L.P.
10440 North Central Expressway
Suite 400
Dallas, Texas 75231
USA

This Privacy Statement is effective as of August 31, 2004.