Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience welcomes you to groupexperience.com.  Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience (“We,” “us” or “our”) is the owner of this Website (the “Website”).  We can be contacted by mail at 301 South Tubb Street, Oakland, Florida 34760 or by email at info@grouptravelodyssey.com, or by phone at (888) 440-5245.

Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience respects your privacy and works diligently to safeguard the privacy of your personal data.  We realize that to many, the Internet raises questions concerning the use and confidentiality of information collected about consumers.  We want you to know that we will constantly apply our commitment to safeguarding your privacy with our Internet activities.  This online privacy notice (the “Privacy Policy”) discloses our information practices for this Website, including what type of personal identifiable information is requested by us, how the information is used and with whom the information is shared.  Please note that links on the Website to other websites, who may be vendors or other affiliates of Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience, may be governed by privacy policies containing different information practices applicable to those sites.

By submitting any personal information to us, you are agreeing to us handling your personal information as set out below. If you do not agree to us using your personal information in these ways, you shouldn’t use our services or our websites. Personal Information

Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience does not share, disclose, or sell any personal information (such as your name, address, telephone number or email address) collected online on the Website with other unaffiliated companies or organizations for non- Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience purposes.  Because your information is a critical part of our business, this would be treated like our other assets in the context of a sale, merger or other corporate reorganization or legal proceeding.

How We Collect Information and the Information We Collect

In order to access subscriber services and/or certain areas within the Website, or, for example, when you register for a trip, order a service, refer another potential client to our services, or respond to a survey or other promotion, we will request you to provide certain personal information, which may include your name, postal address, email address, telephone number(s), school name, school postal address, email address, telephone number(s) and if applicable, a credit card number.  Furthermore, we may request certain additional information necessary for account purposes.

If you’re providing information for others or as an agent of a company, you acknowledge that you are authorized to do so. It is your responsibility to ensure that they are aware that you have done so, and that they accept how we use and process their information as well as yours.

How We Use Information

Without your prior consent, Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience will not use your personal identifiable information for any purpose other than for which it is submitted.  We use the personal information we collect, and you provided to us in the following ways:

  • To Provide Services. Principally to provide you with the services(s) you have ordered. Your information is used to fulfill our contractual obligation to provide you the service.
  • User Accounts. The information that you provide when you set up an account allows us to provide you with additional services including the ability to manage your bookings, personal settings, and access to special offers.
  • To Communicate with You. We may need to communicate with you regarding the services or your account.
  • Customer Service. You can contact us at any time, whether this is a general query, a question about the service, or to report an issue. You can do this through our website, by telephone or email. We’ll use the information that you’ve given us to answer any questions and respond to your query or other queries you might have in the future. If you do contact us by telephone, your call may be recorded and reviewed for quality and training purposes. Recordings are only kept for a limited period and then automatically deleted, unless we have a legitimate interest in keeping them for a longer period.
  • Marketing. If you have opted-in or signed-up, we may contact you with information about other products and services that we offer that are like those that you have already purchased or inquired about, and we think may interest you based on your personal information. Don’t worry, you can opt-out of these emails at any time.

 

When register with us, we will ask you if you would like to receive marketing communications. You can change your marketing preferences online, over the phone, using the “unsubscribe” link in our emails, replying STOP to the short code in our marketing text messages or by writing to us at any time.  Of course, the choice is entirely yours, but if you say you do not want to receive marketing information from us you will miss out on receiving great offers and promotions that may be of interest to you.

 

You may still receive service-related communications from us.

 

  • Improving our services. Sometimes we might use your data to help us improve the quality and functionality of our services. This could include eliminating bugs in our system, data analysis, testing, and statistical and survey purposes, all of which helps us improve the service we offer.
  • Fraudulent Claims. We may use your personal information to prevent, detect, or defend any claims/actions we believe to be potentially fraudulent or detrimental to our legitimate interests.
  • Legal and regulatory compliance. We might need to use your information in relation to any legal disputes, regulatory, compliance or criminal investigations, or if necessary, to enforce our rights.
  • Other Legitimate reasons. We may us your data for internal record-keeping, bill processing and the processing of business requests related to you.

Disclosure of Information

We may release personal information to appropriate governmental authorities where release is required by law.  For example, if a subpoena, regulation, or other legal demand is issued by a government agency conducting investigations or proceedings, we will comply and disclose information.  Also, if we believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against individuals who may be endangering public safety or interfering with our property or services, or with our customers’ or others’ use of them, we will comply and disclose information as well.

Legal Basis for Processing Personal Data

When we process your information as described above, we will be relying on one or more of the following legal rights:

Performance of a contract: We use your information to carry out the contract that you have with us. We’ll use the information that you provide us to provide the services.

Consent: You may, through your action(s) of providing us your details, consent to us sending you marketing and promotional material. If you do kindly give us this consent, we’ll rely on this consent when contacting you. You can always withdraw your consent at any time by simply unsubscribing.

Legitimate interest: We may use your information for our own legitimate interest, for example to provide you with the most relevant content on our site or to promote new services and for certain administrative and legal purposes.

Business transaction: We may use your data in connection with a business transaction such as the sale of a part or the whole of our business.

To Comply with a legal obligation:  We may share your personal data with regulatory authorities such as security, anti-terrorism, and any other legitimate legal obligation as required.

To protect your vital interests or those of another individual: We may share your information in the case of an emergency.

No Tracking of Personal Information

The Website is not set up to track, collect or distribute personal information not entered by visitors.  Our site logs do generate certain kinds of non-identifying site usage data (herein below), such as the number of hits and visits to the Website. We automatically collect certain information such as the device IP address, the date and time you visited, the hardware, software or browser used and information about your visit, including any pages you viewed and interacted with. We do this automatically, even when you don’t use the service. If you’re using a mobile device to reach us, we keep data that identifies your device, location details and any specific settings.  This information is used for internal purposes by technical support staff to better our website for your usage.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Service. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.

You can opt-out of having made your activity on the Service available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.

For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en.

Collection of Non-Identifiable Information

Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience may collect non-identifiable information from user visits to the Website to provide better customer service to you.  Examples of this type of collection include traffic analysis, such as tracking numbers of visitors; measuring visitor activity on the Website; Website and system administration; user analysis, etc.  Such information is sometimes known as “click stream data.”  Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience may use this data to analyze trends and statistics to update our website and to make it more user-friendly.

For Residents of the European Union

Due to the nature of our business and the arrangements you have chosen, it may be necessary for your data to be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”) and may not be subject to the same level of data protection controls as within the EEA. We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data is handled securely.

When do we share your data with third parties?

In certain circumstances we may share the information you provide to us with organizations outside of Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience. The third parties who we might share your data with include:

Third party support services: These includes anyone who provides support services or functions on our behalf, including payment card processing, business analytics, review agencies, advertising and customer support services. This may be to send you marketing material on our behalf or to collate information that can be analyzed to improve our service. They have access to and may collect information only as required to perform their agreed functions and are not permitted to share or use information for any other purpose.

Payment Processors and other financial institutions: When you make a payment for services, we use a third-party payment processor to take your payment. If you request a chargeback, it may be necessary for us to share certain details with the payment processor and the relevant financial institution, so they can manage the chargeback. This may include a copy of your account number, financial details and the IP address that was used to access the services.

Business Affiliates: We may share your data with our business affiliates with whom we offer relevant joint services. This may include other agencies and advertising networks. We do this to maximize the services that we provide you and so they may contact you directly about their relevant products and services that may interest you. You can unsubscribe from these emails at any time.

Law enforcement authorities: We will disclose personal information insofar as it is required by law or where we believe it is necessary for the prevention, detection or prosecution of potentially criminal acts, including for fraud, security, or anti-terrorism purposes.

Please note that while we have procedures and security features to protect your information from access by unauthorized persons and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction, and damage, we don’t control the privacy practices of any of these third-parties or your Service Providers and we would encourage you to review their own privacy policies where appropriate.

Furthermore, any information that you provide directly to your Service Providers or other suppliers is not covered under this Privacy Policy and we would urge to check their own privacy policies before providing any personal information.

On-Line Privacy

If you participate in commenting on our blog, or post messages to our Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn pages, you should be aware that the information disclosed and shared will be available for anyone to see, both inside of and/or outside of Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience, who have access to these forums.  You are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your passwords and/or any account information.  We ask that you be careful and responsible whenever you are online.  In addition, if you post personal information online that is accessible to the public, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return.  Please also note that a participant’s expressed opinion is his or her own and should not be considered as reflecting the opinion of Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience.

What rights do you have in relation to your personal information?

You have the following rights in relation to the personal information that we hold about you:

At any time, you may review or update the available personal information that we received from you by contacting us at our email address, info@grouptravelodyssey.com   Please note that in order to better protect you and safeguard your information, we will take multiple steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections to your information.  For questions regarding this policy, contact us by email at info@grouptravelodyssey.com or by phone at (888) 440-5245.You may ask that we correct any inaccuracies in the data, ask us to transfer it to another party or provide it to you for transfer it to another party yourself.

You can ask us not to process your personal information for marketing purposes at any time by sending a request to the below address or clicking ‘unsubscribe’ on any of the emails that we send to you. Alternatively, you can also email info@grouptravelodyssey.com and it will be done for you. We will let you know if we intend to use your data for marketing purposes.

You have the right to request that we delete all personal information that we hold about you. If there is no other reason beside you providing your consent for us to hold your data, we will delete it upon receiving your request.

We may not delete your personal information if one of the following exceptions exists:

  • Information is necessary to complete the transaction.
  • Information is necessary to detect security incidents.
  • Information is necessary to protect against deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity.
  • Information is necessary to identify and repair errors.
  • Information is necessary to promote free speech.
  • Information is necessary for scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest.
  • Information is necessary for internal uses of the company if consumers expect those uses.
  • Information is necessary to comply with a legal obligation; or
  • Information is used internally in a manner that is compatible with the context of the collection.

If you would like to exercise any of your above rights, please contact us at info@grouptravelodyssey.com writing ‘Data Subject Access Request’ in the subject line. We will deal with any requests we receive in accordance with the relevant Data Protection laws.

What about data that is collected through a mobile device?

Mobile devices can be used to access our services, as well as versions of our regular website.  These mobile sites work in a similar way to our main website. Sometimes we make use of something known as cross-device tracking, which allows us to track user behavior across different devices. We use this to improve the service that we provide you and for marketing activities, so advertisements shown to you on other websites may be offered based on your activities on linked devices.

Our Policy on “Do Not Track” Signals under the California Online Protection Act (CalOPPA)

We do not support Do Not Track (“DNT”). Do Not Track is a preference you can set in your web browser to inform websites that you do not want to be tracked.

You can enable or disable Do Not Track by visiting the Preferences or Settings page of your web browser.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act

Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience does not sell products or services for purchase by children and will not collect or post information from a child under the age of eighteen (18) without the involvement of a parent or guardian.  Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience will notify the child’s parent or guardian at the email address provided by the prospective customer, alerting the parent or guardian to the child’s use of the Website and providing instructions as to how the parent or guardian can delete the child’s registration from the Website.  Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience does not use personal identifying information collected from children for marketing or promotional purposes and does not disclose such information to any third party for any purpose whatsoever.

Customer/Information Security

It is the intention of Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience to protect the personal information of our customers and to maintain information quality.  To achieve this, we use encryption, firewalls, security socket layers (SSL) and other technology and security procedures to help protect the accuracy and security of your personal information and prevent unauthorized access or improper use.  As an example, you will note that while using some features of our website and online services, you will need to submit a password or some other type of authenticating information.  We will exercise all reasonable efforts to safeguard the confidentiality of customer personal information.  However, transmissions protected by industry standard security technology and implemented by human beings cannot be made 100% secure.  Therefore, Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience will not be liable for unauthorized disclosure of personal information due to no fault of ours, including, but not limited to, errors in transmission and unauthorized acts of our staff, employees, subcontractors, etc.  We strongly suggest that in the event information such as your credit card or password is lost or stolen, then you should quickly notify us to enable us to cancel the lost or stolen information and to update our records with a changed credit card and/or password.

Credit Card Information

Keeping your personal financial information private is vitally important to us.  As with all personal information, we will never rent or sell your personal financial information.  Any time you are asked for a credit card number to complete a payment transaction or for verification purposes, that credit card number will be transferred in an encrypted format.  When a customer makes a payment, the information is sent to an outside authorization service for processing.  This process is outside of the Website and is used for security purposes.  This service is performed on the secure servers of Stripe, which has its own privacy policy statement located at http://www.stripe.com We suggest you read the Stripe privacy policy when using our online payment service.

Privacy Policy Changes

This Privacy Policy was written in September 2023.  We reserve the right to change or update this Privacy Policy at any time.

Who exactly is responsible for processing personal information that is collected under the policy?

We control the processing of data over our sites – in legal terms, this means that Group Travel Odyssey dba Group Experience is the Data Controller for the purposes of EU Data Protection laws.