Privacy Policy

Introduction

HOTELENGINE, an initiative of Winking Brain LLP (hereinafter “HE ”) recognizes the importance of the privacy of its users and also of maintaining the confidentiality of the information provided by its users as a responsible data controller and data processor.
This Privacy Policy provides for the practices for handling and securing users' Personal Information (defined hereunder) by HE and its subsidiaries and affiliates.
This Privacy Policy is applicable to any person (“User ”) who purchases, intend to purchase, or inquire about any product(s) or service(s) made available by HE through any of HE’s customer interface channels including its website, mobile site & offline channels including customer service centers and offices (collectively referred herein as " Sales Channels").
For the purpose of this Privacy Policy, wherever the context so requires "you" or "your" shall mean User, and the term "we", "us", or "our" shall mean HE. For the purpose of this Privacy Policy, Website means the website(s) and mobile site(s).
By using or accessing the Website or other Sales Channels, the User hereby agrees with the terms of this Privacy Policy and the contents herein. If you disagree with this Privacy Policy please do not use or access our Website or other Sales Channels.
This Privacy Policy does not apply to any website(s), mobile sites, and mobile apps of any third parties, even if their websites/products are linked to our Website. Users should take note that the information and privacy practices of HE’s business partners, advertisers, sponsors, or other sites to which HE provides hyperlink(s), may be materially different from this Privacy Policy. Accordingly, it is recommended that you review the privacy statements and policies of any such third parties with whom they interact.
This Privacy Policy is an integral part of your agreement to the Terms & Conditions with HE and all capitalized terms used, but not otherwise defined herein, shall have the respective meanings as ascribed to them in the Terms & Conditions.

Processing of Personal Information

Please note that the data shared with HE shall be primarily processed in India and other jurisdictions where a third party engaged by HE may process the data on HE’s behalf. By agreeing to this Privacy Policy, you are providing HE with your explicit consent to process your information for the purpose(s) defined in this policy. The data protection regulations in India or other jurisdictions mentioned above may differ from those of your country of residence.
If you have any concerns in the processing of your data and wish to withdraw your consent, you may do so by writing to the following email id: [email protected] However, if such processing of data is essential for us to be able to provide service to you, then we may not be able to serve or confirm your bookings after your withdrawal of consent as such withdrawal may severely inhibit our ability to serve you properly and in such case, we may have to refuse the booking, or unreasonably restrict us to service your booking (if a booking is already made) which may further affect your journey or may lead to cancellation your booking.

Information and its Legal Basis

The information as detailed below is collected by us to be able to provide the services and also to fulfill our legal obligations as well as our obligations towards third parties as per our Terms & Conditions.
"Personal Information" of User shall include the information shared by the User and collected by us for the following purposes:
Registration on the Website: Information that you provide while subscribing to or registering on the Website, including but not limited to information about your personal identity such as name, gender, marital status, religion, age, etc., your contact details such as your email address, postal addresses, frequent flier number, telephone (mobile or otherwise) and/or fax numbers. The information may also include information such as your banking details (including credit/debit card) and any other information relating to you; billing information, payment history, etc. (as shared by you).
Other information: We may also collect some other information and documents including but not limited to:

Transactional history (other than banking details) about your e-commerce activities.
Your usernames, passwords, email addresses, and other security-related information used by you in relation to our services.
Data either created by you or by a third party and which you wish to store on our servers such as image files, documents, etc.
Data available in the public domain or received from any third party including social media channels, including but not limited to personal or non-personal information from your linked social media channels (like name, email address, friend list, profile pictures, or any other information that is permitted to be received as per your account settings) as a part of your account information.
Information pertaining to any other traveler(s) for whom you make a booking through your registered HE account. In such a case, you must confirm and represent that each of the other travelers (s) for whom a booking has been made, has agreed to have the information shared by you disclosed to us and further be shared by us with the concerned service provider(s).

End Use of your Personal Information

The Personal Information collected may be used in the following manner:
While making a booking, we may use Personal Information including payment details which include cardholder name, credit/debit card number (in encrypted form) with an expiration date, banking details, wallet details, etc. as shared and allowed to be stored by you. We may also use the information of the traveler's list as available in or linked with your account. This information is presented to you at the time of making a booking to enable you to complete your bookings expeditiously.
We may also use your Personal Information for several reasons including but not limited to:

Confirm your reservations with respective service providers;
keep you informed of the transaction status;
Send booking confirmations either via SMS or Whatsapp or any other messaging service;
Send any updates or changes to your booking(s);
Allow our customer service to contact you, if necessary;
customize the content of our website and mobile site;
request for reviews of products or services or any other improvements;
send verification message(s) or email(s);
validate/authenticate your account and prevent any misuse or abuse;
contact you on your birthday/anniversary to offer a special gift or offer.

Marketing Promotions Programs

Marketing promotions programs help us to identify your preferences, develop programs and improve user experience. Personal Information collected by us for such activities may include contact information and survey questions. As a registered User, you will also occasionally receive updates from us about fare sales in your area, special offers, new HE services, and other noteworthy items (like savings and benefits on airfares, hotel reservations, or any other applicable travel services ), and marketing programs.

In addition, you may look forward to receiving periodic marketing emails, newsletters, and exclusive promotions offering special deals.
From time to time we may add or enhance services available on the Website. To the extent these services are provided and used by you, we will use the Personal Information you provide to facilitate the service(s) requested. For example, if you email us with a question, we will use your email address, name, nature of the question, etc. to respond to your question. We may also store such Personal Information to assist us in making the Website better and easier to use for our Users.
You may however choose to opt-out of such reward programs by writing to us. For various purposes such as fraud detection, offering bookings on credit, etc., we at times may verify the information of customers on a selective basis, including their credit information.
Additionally, HE may share your Personal Information, anonymized and/ or aggregated data to a third party that HE may engage to perform certain tasks on its behalf, including but not limited to payment processing, data hosting, data processing, and assessing creditworthiness for offering bookings on credit.

Use of Cookies

HE uses cookies to personalize your experience on the Website and the advertisements that may be displayed. HE’s use of cookies is similar to that of any other reputable online companies
Cookies are small pieces of information that are stored by your browser on your device's hard drive. Cookies allow us to serve you better and more efficiently. Cookies also allow ease of access, by logging you in without having to type your login name each time (only your HE account password is needed); we may also use such cookies to display any advertisement(s) or promotion to you while you are on the Website or to send you offers (or similar emails – provided you have not opted out of receiving such email focusing on destinations which may be of your interest.
A cookie may also be placed by our advertising servers or any third-party advertising companies. Such cookies are used for purposes of tracking the effectiveness of advertising served by us on any website and are used to collect aggregated statistics about your visits to the Website in order to provide advertisements on the Website or any other website about services that may be of potential interest to you. The third-party advertising companies or advertisement providers may also employ technology that is used to measure the effectiveness of the advertisements. All such information is anonymous. This anonymous information is collected through the use of a pixel tag, which is an industry-standard technology and is used by all major websites. They may use this anonymous information about your visits to the Website in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of potential interest to you. Except for anonymous information, no other information is collected during this process. The information so collected during this process is anonymous and does not link online actions to a User.
Most web browsers automatically accept cookies. Of course, by changing the options on your web browser or using certain software programs, you can control whether cookies will be accepted by your browser. HE supports your right to block any unwanted Internet activity, especially that of unscrupulous websites. However, blocking HE’s cookies may disable certain features on the Website, and may hinder an otherwise seamless experience to purchase or use certain services available on the Website. Please note that it is possible to block cookie activity from certain websites while permitting cookies from websites you trust.

Retention of your Personal Information

HE will retain your Personal Information on its servers for as long as it is reasonably necessary for the purposes defined in this Private Policy. In certain circumstances, we may retain your Personal Information for longer periods of time, for instance where we are required to do so in accordance with any legal, regulatory, tax, or accounting requirements.
Where your personal data is no longer required we will ensure it is either securely deleted or stored in a way that means it will no longer be used by the business.

Sharing of your Personal Information

Your information shall be shared with the end service providers like hotels, sightseeing, activities, ferries and boat tickets, or any other suppliers who are responsible for fulfilling your booking. You may note that while making a booking with HE you authorize us to share your information with the said service providers and suppliers. It is pertinent to note that HE does not authorize the end service provider to use your information for any other purpose(s) except as may be required for fulfilling their part of service. However, how the said service providers/suppliers use the information shared with them is beyond the purview and control of HE as they process Personal Information as independent data controllers, and hence we cannot be made accountable for the same.
HE does not sell or rent individual customer names or other Personal Information of Users to any third parties except for sharing of such information with our business/alliance partners or vendors who are engaged by us for providing various services and for sharing referral, promotional, and other benefits to our customers from time to time basis their booking history with us.

Group Companies

In the interests of improving personalization and service efficiency, we may, under controlled and secure circumstances, share your Personal Information with our affiliate or associate entities. This will enable us to provide you with information about various products and services, both leisure- and travel-related, which might interest you; or help us address your questions and requests in relation to your bookings.
If the assets of HE are acquired, our customer information may also be transferred to the acquirer depending upon the nature of the such acquisition. In addition, as part of business expansion/development/restructuring or for any other reason whatsoever, if we decide to sell/transfer/assign our business, any part thereof, any of our subsidiaries, or any business units, then as part of such restructuring exercise customer information including the Personal Information collected herein shall be transferred accordingly.

Business Associates and Third Party Suppliers

We may also share certain filtered Personal Information to our corporate affiliates or business partners who may contact the customers to offer certain products or services, which may include free or paid products/services, which will enable the customer to have a better travel experience or to avail certain benefits specially made for HE customers. Examples of such partners are entities offering co-branded credit cards, travel insurance, insurance cover against loss of wallet, banking cards or similar sensitive information, etc. If you choose to avail of any such services offered by our business partners, the services so availed will be governed by the privacy policy of the respective service provider.
HE may share your Personal Information with third parties that HE may engage to perform certain tasks on its behalf, including but not limited to payment processing, data hosting, and data processing platforms.
Any Personal Information which we collect and which we may use in an aggregated format is our property. We may use it, in our sole discretion and without any compensation to you, for any legitimate purpose including without limitation the commercial sale thereof to third parties. The information we provide to such third parties, alliance partners, or vendors/suppliers is protected by confidentiality agreements and such information is to be used solely for completing the specific activity, and in compliance with the applicable regulations.

Permitted Disclosure

In addition to the circumstances described above, HE may disclose the User's Personal Information if required to do so:

by law, required by any enforcement authority for investigation, by court order, or in reference to any legal process;
to conduct our business;
for regulatory, internal compliance, and audit exercise(s)
to secure our systems; or
to enforce or protect our rights or properties of HE or any or all of its affiliates, associates, employees, directors, or officers or when we have valid reasons to believe that disclosing Personal Information of User(s) is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing interference with our rights or properties, whether intentionally or otherwise, or when anyone else could be harmed by any such activities.

Such disclosure and storage may take place without your knowledge. In that case, we shall not be liable to you or any third party for any damages however or whatsoever arising from such disclosure and storage.

Opt-Out the receipt of E-Mails

You will occasionally receive email updates from us about fare sales in your area, special offers, new HE services, and other notable items. We hope you will find these updates interesting and informative. If you wish not to receive them, please click on the "unsubscribe" link or follow the instructions in each email message.

Protection of your Personal Information

Our website has stringent security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control. All payments on the Website are secured. Whenever you change or access your account information, we offer the use of a secure server. Once your information is in our possession we adhere to strict security guidelines, protecting it against unauthorized access.

Accessibility rights of your Personal Information

You may access your Personal Information from your user account with HE. You may also correct your Personal Information or delete such information (except some mandatory fields) from your user account directly. If you don’t have such a user account, then you write to [email protected].
We reserve the right to revise the Privacy Policy from time to time to suit various legal, business, and customer requirements . We will duly notify the users as it is necessary. You may submit your concerns in relation to this Privacy Policy via email to us at [email protected] and HE shall use all reasonable efforts to respond to your concerns and inquiries.

Copyright

All material contained within this website is the sole property of HE and cannot be used, reproduced, copied, or modified, in its entiretyor in part, without prior consent by an authorized agent of HE.

CONTENT DISCLAIMER

All content on this website including but not limited to the images, videos, content, blogs, icons, website banner, logos, and designs are created, owned, and controlled by Winking Brain LLP. This content may only be downloaded with no modification or further reproduction. It is meant only for personal use and for non-commercial purposes. The content may otherwise not be copied or used in any manner.

The owners of this site have made considerable efforts to include accurate and up-to-date information on this website. However, we make no representations, warranties, or assurances about the accuracy or currency of the information The owners shall not be liable for any damages or injury resulting from your access to, or inability to access this Internet site, as well as your reliance on any information provided here.

Any identifiable information on this website is governed by the site’s Privacy Policy. The owners of this site shall be free to use or copy any information in any of their communications, including ideas, inventions, media concepts, or techniques, for any purposes. Such purposes may include disclosure to third parties and/or developing, manufacturing, and/or marketing goods or services.

Shipping & Delivery Policy:

At HotelEngine.in, we specialize in facilitating hotel room bookings and collecting payments on behalf of our partner hotels. Since our services are primarily digital and involve the reservation of accommodations, traditional shipping and delivery do not apply. Instead, we provide a streamlined booking process to ensure a seamless experience for our users.

1. Booking Confirmation:
- Once a user completes a booking and the payment is successfully processed, a confirmation email will be sent to the provided email address.
- This confirmation will include booking reference number, hotel information, room type, check-in and check-out dates, and payment details.

2. Instant Booking Voucher:
- Users will receive an instant booking voucher upon completing the reservation. This voucher can be presented at the hotel during check-in.

3. Cancellation Policy:
- Users can cancel their bookings based on the cancellation policy associated with the selected room type.
- Cancellation terms and conditions will be communicated during the booking process.

4. Refunds:
- Refunds will be processed under the cancellation policy and the terms agreed upon during the booking.
- Refunds will be issued to the original payment method and may take a few business days to reflect in the user's account.

5. Change of Booking:
- Users can request changes to their bookings, such as modifying check-in or check-out dates, subject to availability and the hotel's policies.
- Any additional charges or refunds due to changes will be communicated during the modification process.

6. Customer Support:
- Our customer support team is available 24/7 to assist with any queries related to bookings, cancellations, refunds, or modifications.
- Users can contact our support team through the provided contact details in the confirmation email.