BestCities Global Alliance Privacy Policy
BestCities Global Alliance (BCGA) is a network of 13 premier meeting destinations. BCGA’s mission is to deliver exceptional standards in conference, event and association management, helping our clients achieve meaningful impact through a global network of industry experts. BCGA’s Vision and Mission critically depend on accurate, relevant data and on building valuable personal connections between members of our community (BCGA destination partners, suppliers, strategic partners, staff and international meetings community).
The Board and management of BCGA play a crucial role in guaranteeing the privacy of those involved. With this policy BCGA gives a clear direction to privacy and shows that it guarantees, protects and maintains privacy. This policy applies to the entire organisation, all processes, all parts, objects and data collections. This privacy policy is in line with the general policy of BCGA and the relevant national and international laws and regulations.
This privacy policy comes into effect after adoption by the Management of BCGA. The policy will be evaluated every year and revised if necessary. Changes to this policy will be announced via BCGA communication channels/website. The latest version of the policy can be found on the BCGA website.
1 LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR DEALING WITH DATA
BCGA collects and works with personal data of staff, BCGA member partner organisations and the international association community, such as but not limited to associations, press, strategic partners, incentive and exhibition organisers, Professional Conference Organisers and other stakeholders in the international (association) meetings industry.
This privacy policy has been set up for BCGA as to act in accordance with the ‘General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)’, as of 25 May 2018.
2 PRINCIPLES
BCGA will treat personal data in a safe manner and respects the privacy of those involved. BCGA commits to the following principles:
- Lawfulness, fairness and transparency
- Personal data will be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner.
- Foundation and purpose limitation
BCGA ensures that personal data is collected and processed only for specific, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes. Data can only be accessed by the BCGA management team and authorised staff members within destination partners.
2.1 Data minimisation
BCGA processes only data that is adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed.
2.2 Storage period
Personal data will be kept no longer than is necessary. Keeping of personal data can be necessary for BCGA to perform its core duties or to comply with legal obligations.
2.3 Integrity and confidentiality
Personal data is processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures.
2.4 Sharing with third parties
Whenever BCGA cooperates with external parties that involves the processing of personal data, BCGA will make an agreement that clearly states the requirements that must be met for the transfer of this data. These agreements comply with privacy legislation.
2.5 Subsidiarity
While achieving the purpose for which the personal data is processed, the infringement of privacy will be limited as much as possible.
2.6 Proportionality
The breach of the interest of the data subject may not be disproportionate in relation to the purpose to be served.
2.7 The rights of data subjects
BCGA honors all rights of those involved. BCGA ensures that the rights of data subjects are fully respected. These rights are the following:
2.7.1 Right to information: Data subjects have the right to ask BCGA if their personal data is processed.
2.7.2 Right to request access to their personal data: The possibility to check if, and in what way, their personal data is processed.
2.7.3 Right to request rectification/correction: If it becomes clear that the data of the data subject is not correct, the person concerned can submit a request to BCGA to correct this.
2.7.4 Right to request erasure of personal data (‘right to be forgotten’): If the personal data is no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which it was collected or otherwise processed; the data subject withdraws consent on which the processing is based and where there is no other legal ground for the processing;
2.7.5 Right to restriction of processing: There may be certain situations where the data subject can ask to temporarily not process (but ‘lock’) his or her personal data until a certain problem or objection has been resolved. BCGA is not aware of any type of processing/ situations to which this restriction would be applicable.
2.7.6 Right to data portability: Personnel/partner data will be provided to staff/partner on leaving BCGA, on request. Other data is a copy of publicly available data, and portability is not normally relevant. Electronic versions of a person’s records will be made available upon request.
2.7.7 Right to object: The data subject has the right to object, on grounds relating to his or her particular situation, at any time to processing of personal data concerning him or her. BCGA shall no longer process the personal data unless BCGA demonstrates compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override the interests, rights and freedoms of the data subject or for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims.
2.7.8 Additional rights
Where personal data is processed for direct marketing purposes, the data subject shall have the right to object at any time to processing of personal data concerning him or her for such marketing, which includes profiling to the extent that it is related to such direct marketing.
Data subjects have the right for their contact details to be suppressed within the BCGA CRM system (SimpleView), but the data on the subject itself cannot be deleted. Data subjects have the right to request that BCGA provides detailed information on the data held on them. BCGA will provide detailed data in response to any such request no later than 30 days after the request is made. BCGA will correct any inaccurate personal data no later than 14 days after being notified of the inaccuracy.
2.8 Data Processing
The processing of personal data is any action or set of actions with personal data, whether or not carried out via automated processes.
BCGA processes information for the following categories of data subjects:
2.8.1 BCGA Destination Partners
ordinary personal data: i.e name, business address/billing details, business phone number, email address + job title of contact persons;
special category of data: photo
2.8.2 Association Clients, Corporate & Incentive Organisers, Professional Conference Organisers
ordinary personal data: i.e name, business address details, business phone number, email address + job title of contact persons;
special category of data: business intelligence (i.e. event information, history of BestCities’ event attendance, RFP’s)
2.8.3 Trade Media
ordinary personal data: i.e name, business address details, business phone number, email address + job title of contact persons;
2.8.4 Third party suppliers
ordinary personal data: i.e name, business address details, business phone number, email address + job title of contact persons;
special category of data: contracts, bank details
2.8.5 BestCities Event Registration
ordinary personal data: i.e name, business address/billing details, business phone number, email address + job title of contact persons;
special category of data: photo, diets and special medical needs, information on conferences organised for qualifying purposes.
2.8.6 BCGA Staff Records
ordinary personal data:Name, address, phone number, email;
special category of data: salary, bank account information
2.9 Purpose/Goal/Rationale
In general, for BCGA’s relationship with destination partners, third party suppliers and staff, the primary rationale is “contract”. For others, the primary rationale is “legitimate interest”.
2.10 Automated Processing
BCGA does not currently carry out any automated processing of personal data or automated profiling of data subjects.
2.11 Third Party Service Providers
BCGA utilises the following third party service providers to store data
CRM – SimpleView
To view a copy SimpleView’s privacy policy please click here.
Newsletter distribution – MailChimp
To view a copy of MailChimp’s privacy policy please click here.
3 TRANSPARENCY AND COMMUNICATION
3.1 Obligation to provide information
BCGA informs data subjects about the processing of their personal data whenever the data is directly obtained from the data subject itself. As an example, whenever people fill in a form on our website a privacy statement will inform them as to what data is processed and with what purpose. Where a destination partner provides BCGA with personal data on their staff, this is governed by the contract between BCGA and the partner, and the partner is responsible for informing their staff that their personal data has been provided to BCGA. When the personal data has been obtained indirectly from public records or other sources, contacts will normally be contacted during the regular data verification processes that BCGA undertakes.
3.2 Deletion of data
BCGA only holds personal data for as long as is needed for the execution of its
activities and tasks. If personal data is no longer needed for the appropriate function for which it is collected, it will be deleted in accordance with the relevant published timeframe.
5 DATA BREACH
BCGA will report to the relevant authorities whenever it becomes aware of a breach that involves personal data, in accordance with the statutory timing of such reports. In addition, BCGA will take any other action that it deems necessary to resolve the issue and fulfil its legal obligations.
6 WEBSITE USAGE & COOKIES
Your use of our web site indicates your consent to the cookies described in this policy.
6.1 What are cookies?
A web cookie, a commonly used data collection technology, is simply a piece of text which can be placed on the browser of your personal computer or mobile device and subsequently read as you visit a web site. A cookie may be a session cookie, that is, a cookie that remains on your browser while you are logged on to a particular web site and then disappears when you close your browser, or it may be a persistent cookie, a cookie that remains on your browser over a period of time. Information from a cookie may be collected and used in aggregate form. Or data may be collected into an individual profile or record. That individual record may either be unique but anonymous, or the profile can be linked with information that identifies you as an individual. You can learn more about cookies, generally, at www.allaboutcookies.org
6.2 How do we use cookies?
The following types of third party cookies are used in the operation of our website:
The following cookies are not strictly necessary for using our website:
- Analytical cookies to track the pages you visit via Google Analytics, in order to allow us to improve the performance of our website. These analyses will be performed through the use of IP addresses and cookies.
- Tracking cookies to embed YouTube videos and share content from other social media websites
- Tracking cookies to allow you to share pages with social networks and email via Add This. To view the ‘Add This’ Privacy Policy or to opt out of any online behavioural advertising, please visit Add This and click on the ‘Opt Out’ button
We will not publicly share your personal information nor sell it to third parties.
Most browsers accept cookies automatically. You can disable cookies in your browser, but these may stop our website from functioning properly.
We may use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, or to administer our website.
6.3 How you can control cookies
The cookies we us are an accepted part of ecommerce and important to your use of our websites. Performance cookies allow us to understand our audiences as a whole and improve how our sites meet your needs and expectations. Many of the functional cookies are basic to how our sites and services work. The cookies we use for registration allow us to conduct our business online. Our sites and services, or parts of them, may not work properly without these cookies.
If you should wish to revoke your consent, or any part of it, at any time you may control cookies and third party ad targeting.
6.4 Browser controls
Most modern browsers offer you ways to control or block cookies. These browser controls will usually be found in the “options’ or “preferences” menu. For more help, you may take a look at the “Help” settings or review this website for more details: http://www.allaboutcookies.org/
6.5 Changes to cookie use
If our use of cookies changes, we will post the changes to this policy. Please check frequently as online data collection practices and our use of them continue to evolve. To contact us about this policy, you may email [email protected].
7 SOCIAL MEDIA PROTOCOL
BCGA uses social media to engage and interact with its target groups (Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube). Consent and data use of personal information shared on social media is covered by the terms and conditions and privacy notices of the social media software tools. BCGA does not store social media-derived personal data out of the tools in its CRM system.
7.1 How to deal with personal data
BCGA does not process personal data derived from social media profiles; only links to profiles are processed, where these are shared by contacts.
7.2. Photography and video material
Pictures and videos taken at BCGA Events (including BCGA activities at tradeshows) are published on social media and could be reproduced in BCGA educational, news or promotional material, whether in print, electronic or other media, including the BCGA website.
BCGA reserves the right to crop, splice, treat and edit any imagery or photographs taken at BCGA events. The Participant waives the right to inspect or approve the finished product, including written or electronic copy. Additionally, all rights to royalties or other compensation arising or related to use of the name, photograph or biography are waived by the Participant, Participant’s agents or employees. All photographs and video materials taken at BCGA events become the property of BCGA. BCGA related material may not be photographed, drawn, copied or reproduced without BCGA’s written permission.
7.3. Separation of business and private data
BCGA only processes business-related personal data. There is no private data collected, so no requirement for separation of the two categories.
8 CONTACT US
BestCities Global Alliance
14 Robinson Road #08-01A
Far East Finance Building
Singapore 048545
If you have any questions about this privacy policy, please contact us at [email protected]
9 CHANGES TO PRIVACY POLICY
We reserve the right to add to or amend this privacy policy at our sole discretion, without prior notice to you. Please review our privacy policy on a regular basis to make sure you have read the latest version and you understand what we do with your personal information. Your continued use of our services or our web sites following the posting of changes to these terms means that you consent to those changes.
10 TERMS OF USE
The BCGA terms of use are given on the BCGA website www.bestcities.net under the following link: http://www.bestcities.net/terms-of-use/
This version of the privacy policy is effective as of 25 May 2018