Privacy of personal information is an important principle to Travel Masters. We are committed to collecting, using and disclosing personal information responsibly and only to the extent necessary for the travel products and services we provide. We also try to be open and transparent as to how we handle personal information. This document describes our privacy policies.

What is personal information?

Personal information means information about an identifiable individual. While we do not collect many of the following pieces of information as it not necessary to service your travel needs, under the law, personal information may include your:

• Name, age, weight, height;
• Home address and phone number;
• Race, ethnic origin, sexual orientation;
• Medical information;
• Income, purchases and spending habits;
• Blood type, DNA code, fingerprints;
• Marital status and religion;
• Employment information.

Personal information does not include the name, job title, business address, telephone number or other contact information of an individual at a place of business.nce.

Who we are

Our travel agency, Travel Masters, is a full service agency business, and we arrange travel products and services for our clients with a wide spectrum of industry suppliers. Accordingly, we deal with a number of consultants and third parties that may, in the course of their duties, have limited access to personal information we hold. These include airlines, railroads, cruise lines, tour operators, computer reservations system providers, and other travel-related vendors. We restrict their access to any personal information we hold as much as is reasonably possible. We also have their assurance that they follow appropriate privacy principles in accordance with their own policies under the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA).

Why do we collect personal information?

We collect personal information for the following purposes:
Like all travel agencies, we collect, use and disclose personal information in order to serve our clients. For our clients, the primary purposes for collecting personal information are as follows: to make and secure reservations, to issue transportation documents and vouchers, and to provide travel suppliers with information to complete the necessary purchasing arrangements for a wide array of travel and tourism products. Examples of the type of personal information we collect for those purposes include the following: name, address, telephone number, age, credit card information, passport or visa information, Social Insurance Number, web site cookies, and similar personal information necessary to properly identify our clients and their entitlement to the services we arrange. We may also use personal data for marketing purposes with your permission; however, we will gladly remove you from our marketing distribution lists at your request. We also collect personal information from our employees and contractors to assure our proper compliance with employment laws, remuneration, tax payments, and other employee/contractor functions. We do not sell, rent, or trade for other considerations, personal information to outside third parties not directly related to the services we provide.

Protecting personal information

We understand the importance of protecting personal information. For that reason, we have taken the following steps:

• Paper information is either under supervision or secured in a locked or restricted area.
• Electronic hardware is either under supervision or secured in a locked or restricted area at all times. In addition, passwords are used on computers.
• All of our cell phones are digital because their signals are more difficult to intercept.
• Paper information is transmitted through sealed, addressed envelopes or boxes by reputable companies.
• Electronic information is transmitted either through a direct line or is anonymized or encrypted.
• Staff are trained to collect, use and disclose personal information only as necessary to fulfill their duties and in accordance with our privacy policy.
• External consultants and agencies with access to personal information must enter into privacy agreements with us or acknowledge that they abide  by PIPA.

Retention and destruction of personal information

We need to retain personal information for some time to ensure that we can answer any questions you might have about the services provided and for our own accountability to external regulatory bodies. However, we do not want to keep personal information too long in order to protect your privacy. We keep our client files for about two years. Our client and contact directories are much more difficult to systematically destroy, so we remove such information when we can if it does not appear that we will be contacting you again. However, if you ask, we will remove such contact information right away. We keep any personal information relating to our general correspondence with people who are not our clients, newsletters, seminars and marketing activities for about two months after the newsletter, seminar or marketing activity is over. We destroy paper files containing personal information by confidential shredding. We destroy electronic information by deleting it and, when the hardware is discarded, we ensure that the hard drive is physically destroyed. Alternatively, we may send some or all of the client files to our clients.

You can look at your information

With only a few exceptions, you have the right to see what personal information we hold about you. Often all you have to do is ask. We can help you identify what records we might have about you. We will also try to help you understand any information you do not understand (e.g., various industry forms, technical language, etc.).

We will need to confirm your identity, if we do not know you, before providing you with this access. We reserve the right to charge a nominal fee for such requests. If there is a problem, we may ask you to put your request in writing. If we cannot give you access, we will tell you within 30 days if at all possible and tell you the reason, as best we can, as to why we cannot give you access. If you believe there is a mistake in the information, you have the right to ask for it to be corrected. This applies to factual information and not to any professional opinions we may have formed. We may ask you to provide documentation that our files are wrong. Where we agree that we made a mistake, we will make the correction and notify anyone to whom we sent this information. If we do not agree that we have made a mistake, we will still agree to include in our file a brief statement from you on the point and we will forward that statement to anyone else who received the earlier information.