At Hotel Chocolat we are committed to keeping your personal data safe and secure.
If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, please email Privacy@hotelchocolat.com.
Our Privacy Policy gives you detailed information on when and why we collect your personal information, how we intend to use it and how we keep it secure. This Policy also sets out your right in relation to your personal information. This Policy works in conjunction with our terms and conditions and only applies to the personal information that we obtain, not information that may be collected from your interactions with third parties.
Any changes we make to our Policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you on the website or by e-mail. It was last updated on 18th May 2018.
This Policy relates to the Hotel Chocolat Group, incorporating the Rabot Etsate Rabot Hotel and Rabot Restaurant and Project Chocolat. This Policy is issued on behalf of the Hotel Chocolat Group so when we mention “Hotel Chocolat”, “we”, “us”, or “our” in this Policy we are referring to the relevant company in the Hotel Chocolat Group that is responsible for processing your information. References to “you” and “your” are references to customer or potential customers and users of our website.
Hotel Chocolat Group PLC, a public limited company incorporated in England and Wales with company number 08612206 and registered office at Mint House, Newark Close, Royston, Hertfordshire, SG8 5HL the controller and responsible for this website.
In this Policy the term “Data Protection Legislation” means the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 as may be amended or replaced; together with all other applicable legislation in force from time to time relating to privacy or data protection.
1) How we collect your personal information
We collect your information at the point you decide to interact with us. This could include purchasing online, signing up for our email newsletter, over the telephone, or in person when you sign up in our stores to receive information from Hotel Chocolat.
We collect your data when:
- When you register for an account or use hotelchocolat.com
- When you sign up for information in our stores
- When you register for our loyalty scheme
- When you contact Hotel Chocolat by telephone or email
- When you book a place at one of our events
- When you book a table at our restaurant, Rabot Restaurant, Saint Lucia
- When you book an experience or holiday at our Rabot Hotel or Project Chocolat
- When you enter a prize draw or competition run by Hotel Chocolat
- When you complete a survey from Hotel Chocolat or give us feedback
- When completing any forms for transactional, employment or other purposes
- When you visit our website
2) The Data we collect
We are committed to only collecting information about you that is necessary to carry out our business, provide the particular products or services you’ve requested and to keep you up to date about all the latest news from Hotel Chocolat.
It’s your choice if you want to give us your personal information. However, if you decide not to, we may not be able to fulfil your order, contact you to give you assurance that your delivery is on its way or if we have a query about your delivery. And you may not receive the optimal customer experience.
We collect:
- Title
- Name, Surname
- Email address
- Date of Birth
- Contact phone number
- Purchase and transaction history and information (including details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us)
- Interactions with Hotel Chocolat through our call centre or reservations teams
- Payment details (i.e.your bank name, account number and sort code, and your card’s security/CVV code. Don’t worry,we don’t keep these)
- Address(s)
- Billing address
- Attendance at events, Project Chocolat or at our restaurant
- Bookings at our hotel
- Social media information (i.e. Information collected if you choose to link your social media accounts with us).
- Automatically populated IP address*
- Information from cookies**
- Information about your phone or laptop (including your device type and, if you choose to share it with us, your location data) as well as how you use our website and app
*When you visit www.hotelchocolat.com the Hotel Chocolat web server may automatically record your public internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet.
** Like most websites, we also use cookies to help make the experience of using our website better and to personalise the service you receive from us. For more information please see our Cookie Policy
3) How we use your Data and why
We like to get to know our customers and provide them with the best possible experience. We use information we collect about you in a number of ways, including to provide the products and services that you have requested, offering you a personalized experience and informing you about our special events and exciting news, so that we can offer the best possible experience.
Under the Data Protection Legislation, this allows us to process your data in the following way:
- for the performance of our contract to provide you with products or services you have purchased or in order to take steps at your request prior to you entering into that contract;
- in order to comply with a legal obligation to which we are subject; or
- for the purposes of the legitimate interests that we pursue; which are (i) to give you the best service/products; (ii) to optimise your customer experience and provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customised experience; (iii) to run and administer our business; (iv) to discharge our legal obligations; (v) to prevent and detect fraud; and (vi) to evaluate, develop and improve our products and services
We will make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
Your data is also anonymised and then used to optimise Hotel Chocolat systems and procedures.
We have set out in more detail below the specific purposes for using your information and the legal basis we are relying on to process your information.
How we use your name & contact details | Why? |
To deliver purchases to you | We want to ensure we can send your delivery to you. It’s part of our contract with you. |
To send you services messages by text, e-mail, such as order updates about your latest delivery. | This is part of our contract with you (so we can tell you when your order is coming). |
To allow third party providers to update you about your delivery | This is part of our contract with you (so we can tell you when your order is coming). |
To allow our third party providers to send you emails to review your order and let us know if you are happy with the service we’ve provided. | This allows us to monitor the quality of our products and service to optimise your customer experience and develop new products. |
To send you marketing and communication information by email, SMS, or post, about our new products and services; or sending you catalogue and direct mail in the post with our latest products and news. If you’ve placed an order on our website, in our call centre, or booked at table at our restaurant, stayed in our hotel or been to one of our events, we want to make sure you keep up to date, so we’ll send you email newsletter and the occasional SMS messages if we have your permission. | We have a legitimate interest in keeping you up to date and letting you know about products or services that you may like. If at any time you decide you don’t want to receive this information by one or all communication methods, you can opt out here |
If we have the required consent from you for email marketing, we may use your email address to identify and target you in digital channels such as social networks, search providers and other targeted digital channels. | To ensure you are able to see relevant adverts related to products we believe are of interest, offers for which you are eligible and, where possible, generally personalising your experience. The process of opting out of email marketing will stop this process of digital marketing. |
For fraud prevention and detection. | To prevent and detect fraud against either you or Hotel Chocolat – unfortunate, but absolutely essential. |
To show you Hotel Chocolat adverts as you browse the web. | We want you to be able to see our latest products and deals. |
To find out what you, and other customers, like. | To ensure we are giving you the products you want and to ensure we keep innovating. |
How we use your payment and transaction information | Why? |
To take payment and give refunds. | We’ve got to do this to perform our contract with you. |
To provide the products that you order to you. | We’ve got to do this to fulfil our contract with you. |
For fraud prevention and detection. | To prevent and detect fraud against either you or Hotel Chocolat. |
How we use your contact history | Why? |
To provide customer service and support. | We’ve got to do this to perform our contract with you. |
Anonymised data will be used to train our staff. | So that, when you contact us, you get the best possible customer service. |
How we use your purchase history and saved items | Why? |
To sell you our products. | If you can’t put products in your basket, we can’t sell it to you! |
To send you a reminder of what products you’ve left in your basket but not yet bought. | We want to ensure you have the best customer experience and don’t want you to miss out on purchasing our products! |
To provide customer service and support, and handle returns. | We’ve got to do this to perform our contract with you. |
Finding out what you, and other customers, like. | To ensure we are giving you what you want, and to stay ahead of the competition. It also helps us to make suggestions and recommendations to you about products or services that may be of interest to you. |
To reward for loyalty | If you’ve signed up to our loyalty scheme we want to make sure we can send you offers and communications that relate to the products you’ve bought. Similarly if you’re a frequent shopper we may look to reward you as well. |
To understand more about our customers | By segmenting our customers based on purchases and behaviours we can offer more personalised experiences and also analyse our business performance. |
How we use information about your phone or laptop, and how you use our website, email and app | Why? |
To improve our website and set default options for you | To give you the best possible experience. |
To protect our website | To prevent and detect fraud against either you or Hotel Chocolat – unfortunate, but absolutely essential — and to meet our legal obligations about looking after your data. |
To look at how our customers use our website. | To ensure that the content on our website is presented in the most effective manner for you. |
To improve our use of email and thereby improving your experience interaction with Hotel Chocolat. | To ensure that we’re optimising our emails to the devices our customers use and also monitor that our email messages have been received and actioned upon where relevant. You can opt out of email marketing at any time. |
To look at how our customers use email. | To ensure that the content on our emails is presented in the most effective manner for you. |
How we use your responses to surveys, competitions and promotions | Why? |
To run the survey, competition or promotion. | We want you to have a chance of winning. If we can’t use your entry, you’ve no chance of winning. |
To review and rate products you’ve reviewed. | We’ll listen to what you’ve told us in your review and use it to improve our services and products. |
4) Sharing Your Information
Except as expressly set out in this Policy we will not sell, personal information to third parties, we will not sell any of your personal data to a third party unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. You can opt out of 3rd party data permission for marketing purposes at any time through “Contact Preferences” in your online account or by contacting us at help@hotelchocolat.com.
However we may share your data with some companies as an essential part of being able to provide our products and services to you.
When we share any of your data we ensure that only the data required is shared and that it remains secure. We also ensure that your data is removed by the partner as soon as it’s no longer required.
Where we share data, we have a contractually binding agreement with each and every external company that clearly:
- Describes how they use any such customer data
- Sets out why they need it
- Sets out their obligations regarding the way they keep it secure
- How they are accountable for upholding the agreement
We are required to co-operate with regulators like HRMC or ICO as well as law enforcement like the Police or Fraud Office. They can require us to share data, including your personal data, with them as part of investigations. We would only share the required data to comply with their demands when we believe the disclosure is essential.
The following categories of recipients may receive your personal information and process it for the purposes outlined in this Policy:
- Other companies in the Hotel Chocolat Group.
- Companies that are linked to when you make a purchase with us, like our payment service providers, delivery companies, credit reference agencies and third party call centres who provide IT and system administration services or other assistance to help us fulfil our orders.
- Third parties we have engaged to help use collect information from you to rate our products and develop new products. The third party we use is called Bazarvoice.
- Information updates – From time to time we may screen our database against recognised data files such as National Change of Address file, so that we keep our database up to date.
- Professional service providers, such as marketing agencies, advertising and website hosting businesses that help us to run our business.
- Credit reference agencies, law enforcement and fraud prevention agencies, so that we can help tackle fraud.
- Other business entities if we plan to merge with or be acquired by that business entity, or if we undergo a re-organisation with that entity; or if they become a successor in interest, in the event of a liquidation or administration of the Hotel Chocolat Group.
- Social media companies that you’ve signed up with. Depending on your settings or the privacy Policy for social media and messaging services, like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, you may have given us permission to access information from those account or services. To change this you need to update your settings on the social media platform. The data we provide is always aggregated and anonymised so it will not identify you. Note that when your personal information is completely anonymized the information will no longer constitute personal information that is regulated under Data Protection Legislation.
- In order to offer you Klarna’s payment methods, we might in the checkout pass your personal data in the form of contact and order details to Klarna, in order for Klarna to assess whether you qualify for their payment methods and to tailor those payment methods for you. Your personal data transferred is processed in line with Klarna’s own privacy notice.
5) Will We Transfer Your Information Overseas?
The information that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. Such staff may be engaged in, among other things, the fulfilment of your order, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services.
When we, or our permitted third parties, transfer your information outside the EEA, we or they will impose obligations on the recipients of that data to protect your information to the standard required in the EEA or otherwise require the recipient to subscribe to international frameworks intended to enable secure data sharing. In the case of transfers by us, we will put in place appropriate safeguards to ensure that your information remains adequately protected. If you would like more details about the safe guards that we rely on, please contact us Privacy@hotelchocolat.com.
6) Marketing Messages and How To Un-Subscribe
We like to get to know our customers and provide them with the best possible experience. We may use your information to form a view on the products or services we think you would like, or that may be of interest to you.
You will receive marketing messages from us if you have requested information from us or purchased products or services from us and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing. We may also market to you if we have received your express consent to do so including where we have collected your details in connection with a competition or other promotion and you have agreed to receive marketing from us. More details about the types of marketing communications we might send you are included in Section 3 above.
You can stop receiving marketing messages from us at any time. Once you do this, we will update profile to ensure that you don’t receive further marketing messages. Note that stopping marketing messages will not prevent us from sending you service communications; so you will still receive order updates and delivery information. Similarly opting out of marketing does not stop us processing your data for analysis and profiling. You can request we stop using your data for processing too but submitting a right to be forgotten request to Privacy@hotelchocolat.com.
You can unsubscribe in a number of ways.
- If you do not wish to receive any further posted mailings from us, please email:Â help@hotelchocolat.com. Please ensure you include your full name and address as well as account number if applicable. As catalogues are printed in advance, it may take up to 8 weeks for the process to be complete, for emails it may take up to 4 weeks.
- You can unsubscribe from email and SMS messages, including our newsletters and alerts, at any time by clicking the un-subscribe link that comes within every communication we have sent to you.
- The action of unsubscribing from email will also opt you out of any digital marketing custom audience targeting which requires a match via your email address. This includes social media, search providers and targetable content. However, you may still see our promoted social network posts where you fall into audiences we’re targeting from social media’s proprietary data or if you follow Hotel Chocolate or wider estate accounts (including international and other brands) social media accounts. You can choose to manage who you follow and what data your social network uses of yours in each platform.
- Alternatively, just email help@hotelchocolat.com with “UNSUBSCRIBE REQUEST” in the subject line, a reference to the communications you received and the email address that you wish to be removed within the email. We will action any unsubscribe request from you as promptly as possible.
7) Hotel Chocolat adverts online
Like most companies selling products and services online, we engage in online advertising that appears on third party websites to keep you aware of what we’re up to and to help you see and find our products and access our services. We target Hotel Chocolat banners and ads to you when you are on other websites and apps. We do this using a variety of digital marketing networks and a variety of advertising technologies like pixels, ad tags, cookies and mobile identifiers, as well as specific services offered by some sites and social networks, such as Facebook Custom Audience Service.
The banners and ads you see will be based on information we hold about you, from what you’ve bought in the past or browsed on our website.
As stated in how to unsubscribe, above in section 6, the act of unsubscribing from email marketing will stop our use of identifying you through the match of your email address in custom audiences in other digital marketing including social media networks and search providers. However you may still see Hotel Chocolat’s digital adverts including social posts and paid search adverts if you fall into the platform provider’s audiences we’re also targeting or follow our social media accounts. You can manage your privacy through each provider’s platforms individually.
We would always encourage you to become familiar with the privacy policy of the other websites as our Policy applies solely to the personal information collected by us through our service and does not apply to these third party websites.
8) Keeping your information
We’ll hold on to your information in line with our customer retention policy. We only retain information for as long as it is required for the purposes set out above or as may be required to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation to which we are subject. If it is reasonably necessary or required to resolve a dispute, prevent fraud and abuse, or enforce our terms and conditions, we may keep hold of some of your information, even after it is no longer needed to provide products or services to you.
9) Data security
We are committed to keeping your information safe and we take your online security seriously. We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to us or provided though the website and any transmission is at your own risk.
10) Your legal rights
You have a lot of rights relating to your personal information: And it is important to us that you understand what these rights are and how you can exercise them.
- The right to be informed about how your personal information is being used (like the information contained in this Policy!)
- The right to access the personal information we hold about you.
- The right to request the correction of inaccurate personal information we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us. You can update your information in the My Account Section of the Hotel Chocolat website or email us at DSARRequests@hotelchocolat.com
- The right to request that we delete your data, or stop processing it or collecting it, where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it or where we may have processed your information unlawfully or we are otherwise required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
- The right to ask us to stop or start sending you direct marketing messages, which for electronic communications you can do through via the My Account Section of our website, or for postal mailings please email: help@hotelchocolat.com. Please ensure you include your full name and address as well as account number if applicable… See Section 6 for more information about your right to un-subscribe from receiving marketing communications.
- The right to withdraw consent to our processing of your personal data (to the extent we are relying on consent to process your personal data). If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you.
- The right to request that we transfer or port elements of your data either to you or another service provider in certain circumstances.
- The right to complain to your data protection regulator — in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office regulates and supervises the use of personal data-via their helpline on 03031231113.
If you want to exercise your rights, have a complaint, or just have questions, please contact us:
Email:Â Privacy@hotelchocolat.com
Telephone: 03444 93 23 23
Write to: Hotel Chocolat Customer Service, Mint House, Newark Close, Royston, Herts, SG8 5HL
What we may need from you- We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request in order to speed up our response.
Time limit to respond – Any request for access to a copy of your personal data must be in writing. We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month in compliance with Data Protection Legislation. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
Updated 5th April 2024