The purpose of processing your data is to keep you informed, via electronic media, such as email, text messages and instant messaging apps, by sending you marketing messages and advertisements.
These messages may occasionally contain information about the leisure and travel services and promotions provided by the hotels in the chain, provided you have given your consent to do so.
As a general rule, when marketing messages and newsletters are referred to, this means sending emails to the address that users have provided. However, within the broader scope of online advertising, there are now other tools that allow us to send messages to our users via other media, such as social media and instant messaging apps (such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Telegram) and text messages.
Catalonia and Catalonia Rewards use these services to ensure that the interaction with our community of users allows us to reach all of them, including on social media.
To use these services we always disclose as little information as possible, but it is highly likely that Catalonia and Catalonia Rewards, as well as social media and other third-party networks or apps, already have this information. Your email address or phone number is normally used to do this. Based on this information, social media and apps verify whether a user has an account on their platforms, thus allowing us to set up what is known as a “custom audience” with those users who have registered with Catalonia or Catalonia Rewards and who in turn have an account with these social media and apps.
A set of users is thus created on the corresponding social media and apps, to which we do not have direct access, that is, we know the number of people in that set and some statistical information, but we are unable to see the identity of the users. These social media and apps allow us to directly display advertising to this set of users, as well as enabling us to directly engage with our users on these social media and apps.
This type of activity can be carried out on different media, the most prominent of which are social media such as Facebook (custom audiences), Twitter (tailored audiences) and Google (Customer Match), and we only target such activities at users who have agreed to receive advertising from Catalonia and Catalonia Rewards.
Furthermore, these social media and apps allow the same user data to be shared to find or identify what is called “similar audiences”, that is, users who have a similar profile to the users of Catalonia and Catalonia Rewards on these social media and apps, but who are not Catalonia or Catalonia Rewards users.
This type of activity is mostly carried out through social media such as Facebook (lookalike audiences), Twitter (tailored audiences) and Google (similar audiences). Based on our legitimate interest, as neither Catalonia nor Catalonia Rewards users are directly impacted by advertising in such cases, nor do they generate databases of their users on social media or third-party platforms, the basic data (email or telephone number) of all users are used, even of those who have not accepted to receive advertising from Catalonia or Catalonia Rewards.
In relation to the data provided to these third parties, as described above, only your email or telephone number will be disclosed. In addition, the data shared is encrypted, thus safeguarding the confidentiality and security of the data. The entire process is protected through the tool provided on the platform, which will allow it to identify you in its database.
In any event, as this advertising is posted on social media and third-party apps, the settings that the user has selected on receiving advertising on these social media and apps will always prevail. Namely, even if users have agreed to receive marketing messages from Catalonia or Catalonia Rewards when they register for any of our services, or have not objected to them, as the case may be, they will never receive them on these social media through the abovementioned services if they did not accept that their personal data could be processed for advertising purposes by these social media and apps. Therefore, we recommend that all users who do not wish to receive advertising through social media or third-party platforms should adjust their user profile settings or use other available tools to restrict it, and that they consult the current terms and conditions in the privacy policies of each of the platforms.
The data required to send you marketing messages or advertising will be processed for as long as you have a subscription to our newsletters or a user account with the Catalonia Rewards Loyalty Programme and, having given your consent for this processing, you had not subsequently withdrawn it or objected to receiving such materials, as the case may be. In any event, if you reject or object to receiving marketing messages this will not mean that any data will be deleted, as they form part of your profile, but it will prevent us from using them for this purpose.
Bear in mind that you may in any event see Catalonia and Catalonia Rewards advertising on social media, as they allow advertising to be shown to their users without us having previously disclosed any personal data to them. In these cases, the display of this advertising will depend solely and exclusively on the settings of your user profile on these social media and apps.
All of our messages may be customised and adapted to your preferences, as described in the section “Profiling” below.
You should also bear in mind that our website has a number of forms that you can use to subscribe to our marketing messages and newsletters. You can also subscribe to them by signing the welcome pack that will be given to you when you check in at hotels or on any other media where consent is requested. You can give your consent to receive messages on any of these media and you can unsubscribe whenever you wish through the link available that you will find in each message that you receive or, whenever applicable, by email to the addresses given in this privacy policy. Therefore, once you have subscribed, you will not be unsubscribed from these messages by not checking the subscription box on subsequent occasions.