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Privacy Policy

Introduction

Phil Hoffmann Travel (“PHT”, “we”, “us”, “our”) is committed to protecting your privacy and complying with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), including the latest amendments effective October 2025.

This Privacy Policy explains how we deal with and protect your personal information. We recommend that you review this policy regularly as we may amend it from time to time.

What Personal Information Do We Collect and How?

We will only collect personal information where such information is reasonably necessary for us to undertake our functions and activities.

Generally, we collect personal information when you enquire or make a booking with us.  We may also collect personal information when you email us, write to us, call us or register with us (ie. newsletters, events) or connect via social media with us. The flyer information and any other details that may be relevant to the service we provide to you. 

In certain circumstances, we may collect sensitive information about you such as financial information, ethnic origin, religious beliefs or health information. We will only collect sensitive information with your consent and where it is reasonably necessary or directly related to the provision of our services.

In certain circumstances we may receive personal information about third parties from individuals, when making a booking with us.   An example of this would be where a booking is made on behalf of other individuals (such as for family members) and personal information is required.  It will be deemed that where this occurs, we rely on the authority of the person making the travel booking to act on behalf of any other traveller on the booking and that in providing this information to us, all individuals are consenting to their personal information being collected and used in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

See also the section titled 'COOKIES, PIXEL TAGS AND GEO-LOCATION INFORMATION'.

How Do We Use Your Personal Information?

We may use your personal information to:

  • Provide you with travel products and services.
  • Consider your request for a product or service.
  • Provide you with information about other products and services that may be of interest to you including information about our business partners' products and services. Please see the section titled 'MARKETING AND PRIVACY' for further information.
  • Assist in arrangements and reservations with suppliers (such as airlines, tour operators, car hire operators, hotels and insurance providers) in relation to the provision of a product or service.
  • Collect and process payments, though us or a third party.
  • Perform all other administrative and operational tasks (including risk management, systems development and testing, staff training, and market or customer satisfaction research).
  • To facilitate your participation in loyalty programs.
  • Analyse how our products and services (including any websites) are used.
  • Personalise the service or communication we provide to you, tailor your experience on our website or other websites to your interests and make more appropriate travel recommendations.
  • Investigate, detect and protect us and other third parties against, negligence, breach of contract, fraud, theft and other illegal activities.

See also the section titled 'COOKIES, PIXEL TAGS AND GEO-LOCATION INFORMATION'.

When Do We Disclose Your Personal Information?

We may disclose your personal information to:

  • Suppliers of products or services which you have selected (such as airlines, tour operators, car hire operators, hotels and insurance providers).
  • Third party travel service providers who assist in fulfilling the booking you have made.
  • Our online booking facility operator and host and others who assist in providing these services.
  • Third party sponsors or co-sponsors of promotions on our website. Only information collected during a promotion will be disclosed to these parties.
  • Third parties when we contract out some of our functions and activities, such as our call centre operator and mailing house. In these circumstances, we prohibit third parties from using your personal information, except for the specific purpose for which we supply it.
  • Government authorities in the event of an accident, disaster or emergency.
  • Others where we are authorised or required by law to do so.

Cross-Border Data Flows

Some travel arrangements require us to disclose your personal information to overseas recipients. Before doing so, we will:

  • Clearly inform you that your information may be disclosed to overseas travel providers who may not be subject to Australian privacy laws
  • Identify the countries (if practicable) where your information will be sent
  • Explain that overseas recipients may not be subject to the APPs or similar protections
  • Obtain your express consent for this disclosure, which will not be bundled with other consents

We retain records of your consent for accountability.

Cookies, Pixel Tags and Geo-Location Information

When you access our website, we may place cookies, pixels or other code on your computer to collect information about your usage of our website and information about the device you are using to access our website (Session Data). We use Session Data to help us recognise you when you visit our website again and better understand how our website is navigated to and used, so we can improve our website content and ease of use, personalise and improve your individual viewing experiences on our website and provide information that may be of interest to you.

We may use service providers to collect Session Data on our behalf. Unless you specifically inform us of your identity (e.g. by registering with us or making a booking through us), we will not know who you are. A cookie is a small file on your computer which contains information that will enable us to recognise your browser next time you visit our website.

If you do not wish to use a cookie, you can adjust your browser settings to reject cookies or notify you when they are being used. You may opt-out of certain Session Data being collected while you are using a mobile device by clicking here.

We also use pixel tags to monitor the open rate of our communications. This helps us understand the effectiveness of communications we send. We do not use this information for any other purpose.

When using the Phil Hoffmann Travel mobile site or applications (if applicable), you may search for products and services in the area in which you are located. If you choose to do so, depending on the mobile device or application you are using, we may collect your geo-location information to search for the applicable products and services or to personalise and improve your individual viewing experiences on our website and provide information that may be of interest to you. You may at any time disable our collection and use of your location information by turning location services off at the device level.

Google Analytics

When you visit certain sections of our website, Google Analytics, a website analytics service provided by Google, Inc (“Google”), will place cookies on your computer’s browser. The information generated by the cookies about your use of our website is transmitted to Google. This information is then used for the purpose of compiling statistical reports to enable us to measure and analyse the number of visits to our website and its pages, the average time spent on the site and the pages viewed.

We will not (and will not allow any third party to) use Google Analytics to track or to collect any personal data of visitors to our website. We will not associate any data gathered via use of cookies with any personal data from any source as part of our use of Google Analytics. For further information about Google Analytics please click here  and for details of Google Analytics’ Privacy Policy, please click here.

You may choose to opt-out of Google Analytics using the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on which you may access here.

Storage and Security of Personal Information

We store personal information in a combination of secure computer storage facilities, paper-based facilities and other records. If you have registered on our website, we store your personal information (and any personal information of individuals for whom you have made reservations) in databases, and email servers. This includes storage of information (such as billing information) so that you do not need to re-enter it each time you book a product or service unless you tell us not to store it.

We will endeavour to take all reasonable precautions to maintain the security of the information in our systems. We use a combination of security measures to prevent the unauthorised access of our servers and regularly review our security policies. Your personal information will be stored in secured locations and on servers controlled by Phil Hoffmann Travel, located either at our offices or at the offices of our service providers.

The payment pages on the Phil Hoffmann Travel website are encrypted using the internationally accepted security system SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to encrypt all credit card payments over the web. This means that the information from these pages are sent back to our server in a secure fashion and cannot be intercepted.

Accessing and Updating Your Personal Information

Subject to some exceptions contained in the Privacy Act, you can find out what personal information we hold about you. You can contact our Customer Service Manager to find out about the personal information we hold about you. We will need to verify your identity before giving you access. Depending on the complexity of your request, we may charge a reasonable fee for processing the request. However, we will not charge for the making of the request.

If you would like to correct or update any information we hold about you, please contact your travel consultant or the Customer Experience Manager customerservice@pht.com.au . 

Your personal information may be accessible to you via PHT referred apps (opt in required), we encourage you to visit any PHT referred apps you are using to review your personal information

What About Sensitive Information?

We will only collect your sensitive information with your consent and where it is desirable for your travel arrangements. We will only use and disclose your sensitive information for the primary purpose for which it was collected or a purpose that is directly related to this primary purpose and reasonably expected. Otherwise, we will not collect, use or disclose sensitive information about you unless required to do so by law.

Sensitive information, as defined by law, is any information about a person’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinion, membership of a political association, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, membership of a professional or trade association, membership of a trade union, sexual orientation or practices, criminal record, health information, biometric information that is to be used for the purpose of automated biometric verification or biometric identification or biometric templates.

Marketing and Privacy

Serving customers well is very important to us. As part of this service, we may use your personal information to identify a product or service that you may be interested in. We may contact you from time to time to let you know about new or exciting products or services and special offers that may be of interest to you, including information about our business partners' products and services.

Opting-Out

If you wish to opt-out of receiving marketing communications from us, including communications from us on behalf of our business partners, please contact your travel consultant or email customerservice@pht.com.au, or for emails, use the unsubscribe facility.

Third Party Advertisers

We work with third parties to serve ads on our website and to serve ads on sites owned or operated by other companies. Our ad servers, and those of our partners, use cookies and pixel tags in order to anonymously identify your browser. Some ad companies, such as ad networks, may combine anonymous information obtained in connection with activity on our website with information obtained from other sources and/or sites. We do not use or share your personal information with our ad servers, media partners or ad networks without your authorisation.

We may use Session Data, such as the destination of your search, in order to advertise to you on our website and on other sites. We do not sell your Session Data to any other party in connection with our ad programs but we may use it in order to run ads on behalf of others, such as travel suppliers.

Monitoring

We may from time to time monitor and review any information transmitted or received through our website, or through telephone or e-mail communications, for quality assurance and other purposes. We reserve the right to censor, edit, remove or prohibit the transmission or receipt of any information that we deem inappropriate or in violation of our terms and conditions. During monitoring the information may be examined, recorded or copied.

Links and Social Plug-Ins

When you click on a third party's link from our website, or from an ad for a third party served by one of our service providers, you will enter that third party’s site, over which we have no control. We are not responsible for third party sites. You should carefully review the privacy statements of any other sites you visit, because those privacy statements will apply to your visit to such other sites and may be different from this Privacy Policy.

Our website includes social plug-ins, such as the Facebook or Twitter button, and gives you the option to post information about your activities on our Site to your social media accounts. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our website, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social plug-ins are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our website. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing them.

Privacy Complaints

If you wish to complain about our handling of your personal information, please contact your Consultant the relevant Branch Manager or email customerservice@pht.com.au .

We will investigate all complaints and respond to you as soon as practicable. If we find a complaint justified, we will resolve it. If necessary, we will make changes to our policies and procedures to maintain our high standards of performance, service and customer care.

If your complaint is not satisfactorily resolved, you may lodge a complaint with the Federal Privacy Commissioner. For more information on privacy, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s (OAIC's) hotline service on 1300 363 992 or visit the OAIC's website at www.oaic.gov.au.