Hong Kong Tourism Board

Use of your Personal Information

The Hong Kong Tourism Board collects certain information from you when you use our Website. This includes: 

• Contact details and basic user information including your name, age range, email address, telephone number, country of residence, travel history;
• Your marketing preferences including interests and market list assignments, marketing objections, preferred language, website data;
• Usage information including how you use our Website such as clicks and pages which have been shown to you, referring webpage address;
• Device data and log information including IP addresses, device ID and type, and details about your use of our Website, browsing history, search queries, browser type, session frequency, geolocation information, wireless and mobile network connection information;
• Cookies and tracking technologies including technologies cookies and web beacons and advertising IDs (Please see our separate Cookie Policy for further details on cookies). 

This information is used by us to further our statutory objectives. In particular, the Hong Kong Tourism Board may use the data collected and provided by you for one or more of the following purposes: 

1. To create customer profiles, maintain customer records and to communicate with you, fulfil your requests and respond to your enquiries, bookings and feedback;
2. To send you important notices or personalised messages;
3. To administer the operation of our Website to allow you to use the services and functions of our Website, to conduct Website maintenance, trouble shoot problems and to continually improve your Website experience and improve our products and services;
4. To provide services in connection with bookings or registration with our events and programmes;
5. To identify you for entry into lucky draws or any other promotional activities or events;
6. To facilitate lucky draws, promotional activities or events and notify you of the results of the lucky draws, promotional activities or events, announce winners and arrange for the subsequent presentation or redemption of prizes;
7. To tailor and personalise content and make recommendations (including by sending you push notifications) to suit your tastes, interests and preferences;
8. To suggest nearby places of interest, give you point-to-point navigation through Google Map and to send you location based push notifications via GPS technology when you are in Hong Kong;
9. To develop, display and track content for the purposes of customising or personalising advertising, offers and content made available to you based on your usage of websites, mobile applications or services, and analysing the performance of those advertisements, offers and content, as well as your interaction with them. We may also recommend content to you based on information we have collected about you and your viewing habits;
10. To send you marketing materials, news and information which we think will be of interest to you such as our latest promotional activities and upcoming events;
11. To assist with identification of visitors, and to determine appropriate services;
12. To monitor, evaluate and analyse trends, data, usage and activities in connection with our Website and services;
13. To keep internal records, decision making and facilitate internal purposes such as auditing, data analysis, and research to improve our products and services, in addition, such internal records will be used to maintain opt-in and opt-out lists; 
14. To detect, investigate and prevent fraud and other illegal activities and protect our rights and property; and
15. To use your personal information for purposes associated with our legal or regulatory obligations.

When you come to our Website, our server software records the domain name of your computer. We may also track the pages you visit. We do these things so that we can measure traffic, gauge the popularity of various parts of the Website, gain some general knowledge about our audience and compile aggregated statistics.

Direct marketing

We may use your personal information such as your name, e-mail address, address, telephone number and geolocation to send you direct marketing communications about products and services in the travel industry or related services including our latest e-newsletter and upcoming events and offers. This may be in the form of email, post, SMS, telephone or targeted online advertisements or in-app notifications. We limit direct marketing to a reasonable and proportionate level, and to send you communications and otherwise share content with you which we think will be interesting and relevant to you, based on the information we have about you.

We may share your personal information with third party sponsors or co-operation partners on a specific campaign or promotional basis for direct marketing by such sponsors and partners. We will only do so upon providing you with a clear notice and upon obtaining your explicit consent.

From the effective date of this Policy onwards, where you register for our events, programmes or offers, sign-up for our e-newsletter or entered a lucky draw and have elected to receive direct marketing information by email or SMS or other means, then for the purposes of the PDPO and the relevant orders and regulations, we will ask you for your consent for our processing of your personal information for direct marketing purposes.

In particular, subject to your consent, we will use location tracking function on your device settings to suggest nearby places of interest, give you point-to-point navigation through Google Map and enable us to send you location based push notifications via GPS technology to send you content and make recommendations that suit your tastes, interests and preferences when you are in Hong Kong.

You have a right to stop receiving direct marketing at any time. You can do this by following the opt-out links in electronic communications (such as emails), or by contacting us using the details set out under "Contacting Us" below.

Who we share your personal information with

Data collected by the Hong Kong Tourism Board is used only for the purposes indicated above. Personal information will not be disclosed to any third party except that we may share your personal information with our worldwide offices and representatives and third parties on a confidential basis to help manage our business and deliver services. These third parties may from time to time need to have access to your personal information. These third parties may include:

• Our partners,  such as hotels, restaurants, airlines, retailers, travel agents, government departments and public bodies and other companies involved in providing services to you or fulfilling your requests;
• Service providers, who provide administrative, marketing and research, e-marketing, distribution, data processing and management, advertising delivery, computer system, web development, payment gateway and other functions on our behalf to help us operate our business, such as sending postal mail and e-mails, help manage our IT and back office systems, analysing data, providing marketing and targeted advertising services assistance, providing search results and links (including paid listings and links). If you share your data through our Website with a third party account such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, your personal information will be managed respectively by one of those third parties. Please review the third party's privacy policy, as their data processing will not be covered by this Policy;
• Event sponsors or authorised managers, agents or contractors, who facilitate the event or programmes registrations, lucky draws, presentation, redemption or delivery (as appropriate) of prizes in connection with the associated events or activities organised or promoted by us;
• Government or non-government authorities and/or regulators;
• Other third parties, for the purposes of detecting, preventing or otherwise addressing fraud, security or technical issues, protecting against harm to the rights, property or safety of our users or the public;
• Professional advisors (including our lawyers and auditors).

We may also disclose your personal data to the extent we may be required to do so by laws and when you indicate your choice to receive promotional materials from third parties as described in the "Direct Marketing" section above.

Hong Kong Tourism Board is a statutory body of the Hong Kong Government established under the Hong Kong Tourism Board Ordinance. All HKTB offices are branches of the Hong Kong statutory body, accordingly any personal information which you provide to us via our offices or otherwise may be accessed or used by staff in HKTB offices or representatives outside Hong Kong. We may transfer your personal information to HKTB offices and representatives or service providers that are located outside of Hong Kong.  We will always take steps to ensure that any international transfer of information is carefully managed to protect your rights and interests and is undertaken in accordance with any rules governing such transfers.

We may also share with our advertisers information on an aggregate basis.

Data Security

The Hong Kong Tourism Board will take reasonable steps to ensure that all information we collect, use or disclose is accurate, complete, up-to-date and stored in a secure environment accessed only by authorized persons. However, we give no warranty against third parties hacking into the data or any unauthorised access to the data by anyone.

Your rights

You have the right to request access to and correction of information held by us about you. To do so, please contact us via the contact information below.

"Opt-Out"

You can opt-out from receiving information from the Hong Kong Tourism Board or to delete your information from our records at any time should you no longer wish to receive updates of Hong Kong Tourism Board developments, activities and promotions. To opt out, please enter your e-mail address below and click the submit button.