Privacy Policy

(Beetleful reviewed and updated its Privacy Policy on 01/06/2025)

Beetleful, owner of the website www.beetleful.com, understands and respects the importance of your privacy and considers the security of its customers' personal information to be vital. This Privacy Policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we acquire from customers, through this website or from them, will be processed and stored by us. We are committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about the information we collect and what we do with it. Therefore, please read the following information carefully.

For the purposes of the new General Data Protection Regulation Act approved by the European Commission (GDPR, Regulation EU 2016/679), we, Icone Viajante Lda, trading as Beetleful, are the Data Controller for this website www.beetleful.com. As our client, you are aware of the rules contained in our Privacy Policy, as well as ensuring that the other members of your party are aware of the same content and that they agree to provide their personal data in order for us to proceed with a booking or other purchase on your behalf.

By making a booking/purchase or submitting your personal data via this website, you agree to the transfer, storage or processing as set out. We will take all legally necessary measures to ensure that your data is processed securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

 

Personal Data Collected and Reasons

Beetleful maintains a database with its customers' records, which it stores for 20 years after the first contact. The data contained in this database is solely the data provided by the customers themselves at the time of their registration or subsequently requested for booking purposes, and is collected under the terms approved by the National Data Protection Commission by Beetleful, the entity responsible for the file, with its head office at Rua Godinho de Faria 472 3º Dto, 4465-110 S. Mamede Infesta, NIF , Portugal. Mamede Infesta, NIF 518655946, Portugal.

When the customer makes a booking or purchase on this site, Beetleful automatically records certain personal data that the customer has agreed to provide. The type of data stored will be information such as "name", "contact", "email address" and "VAT number". In some cases, we may need other more sensitive personal data such as "ID card and/or passport number". All the personal data requested is used solely and exclusively to organise the trip or tourist service requested. All personal data provided will be treated as "sensitive" in nature and therefore deserves the utmost respect and care from Beetleful.

In the case of online bookings, customers can pay by VISA/Mastercard credit card online. In this way, you will be redirected to the Redunicre page, a partner and certified payment processing organisation, where you will be asked to enter your card details. In this sense, Redunicre and our bank are the only entities that process the customer's card details and guarantee the transmission of encrypted data. Beetleful only receives the information with the result of the authorisation and instructions to proceed with the order.

Under no circumstances will information be requested about philosophical or political beliefs, party or trade union membership, religious faith, private life and racial or ethnic origin, as well as data relating to the health or sex life (including genetic data) of customers. When we are preparing your journey, you may provide us with other types of information, such as dietary requirements and food intolerances, medical/health conditions, disabilities or other special information similar to the above, in order to ensure that your specific needs are met.

Therefore, Beetleful guarantees that it has implemented and will continue to implement the security measures of a technical and organisational nature necessary to guarantee the security of the data that is provided, with the aim of preventing its alteration, loss, processing and/or unauthorised access, taking into account the nature of the data stored and the risks to which it is exposed.

If the client wishes to exercise the rights of access, rectification, cancellation or opposition that RGDP grants them, they can do so via the website or by sending an email to info@beetleful.com.

 

Other Ways of Obtaining Personal Data

Beetleful also reserves the right to collect personal data in the following circumstances: if you respond to a promotion through this website, fill in a questionnaire, subscribe to a newsletter or other marketing material, report a problem, among other situations similar to the above. In this case, we may keep a record of your email address, with the possibility of removing it. Alternatively, you can simply send us an email to info@beetleful.com.

Personal data obtained from third-party sources:

In addition to the data provided by the user/customer, we may receive information from other certified suppliers and partners, to whom we entrust the responsibility of ensuring full compliance with the privacy policies required by the GDPR.

- if you book one of our programmes through a third-party travel agency or tour operator, certain personal data (as applicable to your booking) will be passed on to Beetleful in order to provide the services you have requested (even if the booking does not materialise);

- if the customer/user provides us with feedback via a social network or other feedback tool, the feedback (but not the personal data) will be processed by that same company and passed on to Beetleful;

- if someone contacts Beetleful on [+351] 226 191 090, our phone management software partner keeps a record and shares the information exclusively with Beetleful. The data collected is: "phone/mobile number", "date" and "duration" of the call, "network information". If you contact us using one of the telephones/mobile phones available in the company, your number may be associated with your purchase (if there is no commercial relationship, the number will be forgotten);

- if you contact Beetleful through the conversion window on the website (Zendesck Chat), this partner will retain your history of conversations with Beetleful through this software, the number of visits to the website, the page of the website where you are, your browser, computer system, IP location and duration of the visit to our website. This provider undertakes to only share our user's personal data with us.

- we may also record your visits to this website, including (but not limited to) traffic data, location data, IP address, operating system and browser type. This is statistical data about the browsing actions and patterns of our users and does not identify any individual.

 

Transfer of Personal Data

When a customer fills in a form on our website and/or finalises a purchase with Beetleful, some personal data provided will need to be transmitted, processed and stored by relevant third parties, such as:

- travel partners, such as airlines, airports, hotels, insurance companies and ground support agents, tour or river operators, among other tourism service providers associated with the order (as applicable to your booking). Some of these third parties may be located outside the European Economic Area, and these organisations may not be subject to the same level of control in relation to the new GDPR law;

- data management and technology partners that allow us to administer the services we provide (external CRM for organising and monitoring leads in order to improve the response and experience of our customers and Optitravel - agency management software and invoicing tool);

- credit card or ATM payment facilitators, which help us process customer payments and assist us in detecting and preventing fraudulent payments or bookings (Redunicre, IfThenPay, EasyPay and Pagtur);

- email marketing platforms, ensuring the encryption of our databases, which include the subscriber's "name" and "email address";

- government bodies or other authorities in Portugal (or other countries), in order to guarantee the safety of themselves and other passengers. This includes immigration, border control, security and anti-terrorism officials. Although we are not obliged to provide information to these authorities, we may exercise our right to help them when we consider it appropriate.

 

Processing and Storage of Personal Data

Some personal data obtained through registration on our website or from customers who have established a business relationship with Beetleful will need to be provided, processed and stored in secure and certified systems, which are the result of a combination of our own systems and those of credible and relevant suppliers.

The personal data we store is treated with the legally required degree of protection to guarantee its security and prevent its alteration, loss, processing or unauthorised access. To this end, we use backups on Google Drive and NAS (Network Attached Storage), a device that stores and shares data from several computers, which can be accessed remotely.

The records on our website are also encrypted, in accordance with GDPR standards, in peripheral control technical infrastructures, namely network firewalls, private circuits and VPNs that respect security requirements. The computer servers are hosted by a datacentre operator, which provides a digital information protection service for the hosted servers. The service includes backing up files, storing them in accordance with the defined policy and restoring them at Beetleful's request.

Beetleful therefore undertakes to:

- to safeguard the personal data granted to it by means of legally required security measures of a technical and organisational nature that guarantee its security, thus preventing its alteration, loss, processing or unauthorised access, in accordance with the state of the technology at any given time, the nature of the data and the possible risks to which it is exposed;

- use or apply the data exclusively for the purposes duly envisaged and for which the client has consented to its transfer;

- ensure that the data is handled only by those employees whose intervention is necessary for the provision of the service, who are bound by the duty of secrecy and confidentiality. If the information may be disclosed to third parties, they are obliged to keep it confidential.

 

Use of Personal Data in Marketing

If you do not make an enquiry or purchase with Beetleful, we will only send you information and offers by email if you subscribe to our newsletter (double opt-in) in order to receive information and/or promotions from us. Therefore, only users who have expressly agreed to receive marketing material will be included in these databases.

This personal data consented to by the user ("name" and "email address") is shared with a secure and certified external platform, from which we manage the database and send Email Marketing. We will not pass on data to third parties with whom we have no protocol, who do not guarantee the security and encryption of the database and who are not Email Marketing and Marketing Automation companies. We hold these partners to strict GDPR standards and confidentiality with regard to the data they store, and their disclosure is clearly prohibited.

If the user chooses not to receive any more marketing information, they can unsubscribe from the newsletter and, in this way, they will be automatically deleted from our databases for marketing purposes.

 

Retention of Personal Data

When you make a purchase from Beetleful, send an availability request or fill in another form on our website, your personal information will be retained to ensure that we offer you the best possible service. We therefore keep personal data for as long as necessary in order to use your information as set out in this Privacy Policy. This means up to 20 years in relation to bookings/purchases or marketing communications (or such other time as may be necessary for our legal and auditing purposes or as may be required by law).

 

Rights of the Individual Regarding the Personal Data Provided

Any user or customer who has provided their personal data has various rights with regard to the information they have provided, in accordance with the GDPR law, such as:

- the right to access your personal information: at any time, you have the right to request access to your personal data held by Beetleful, free of charge. We may require proof of identity and sufficient information about your interactions with us in order to locate your information. If someone makes the request on your behalf, that person must provide written and signed confirmation that they have been given authority. We reserve the right not to provide you with a copy if it includes other people's personal information or if we have lawful reason to withhold it;

- the right to correct and update your personal information: the accuracy and rigour of your information is important to us. Therefore, you can change your name or email address (or other relevant personal information) at any time by emailing us at info@beetleful.com or by contacting us (+351 226 191 095);

- right to withdraw consent: at any time, the customer/user can revoke their consent and prohibit us from using their data. If you wish to withdraw your consent to receive any direct marketing for which you have previously opted in, you can remove your subscription by clicking on the "unsubscribe" button in our newsletters. Alternatively, you can email us at info@beetleful.com or contact us. If you wish to withdraw your consent to the processing of any special category of data, you will need to contact our team (info@beetleful.com or +351 226 191 095). Please be advised that if you ask us to stop processing this information in the middle of your booking or journey, this may mean that we may not be able to provide all or part of the services you have requested. Consequently, if we have to cancel your booking or other purchase, you may have to pay a cancellation fee;

- the right to erase your personal information or restrict its processing: you may request that your personal information be removed from our systems by email or in writing. Provided we have no legitimate reason (legal and commercial basis) to continue to process or hold your personal information, we will use reasonable endeavours to comply with your request as soon as possible. As long as we do not permanently remove your information (due to software delays or another similar problem), you can ask us to restrict the processing of your data. Thus, while processing is restricted, we can only use it if we have your prior consent or if we are legally authorised to do so. And in order to make it easier for you to remove your personal data, if you so wish, we are developing a tool that allows it to be removed automatically;

- the right to transfer your personal information to a structured data archive: at any time you can ask us to send your personal data directly to another service provider. We will do so if it is technically possible for us to do so. We reserve the right not to provide you with a copy of your personal information if it contains personal data about other people or if we have another lawful reason for retaining that information;

- right to make a complaint: at any time, and if you so wish, you can lodge a complaint with the data protection regulator if you believe that your legal rights have been violated or if you have reason to believe that your personal information is being used in a way that does not comply with the law. If you wish to contact us about this Privacy Policy, you can send an email to info@beetleful.com. We will follow up on this as best we can.

 

Our Approach to Personal Data Security

Although we do our best to protect your personal data, and always act in accordance with strict GDPR standards, the transmission of information over the Internet is not completely secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee the total security of your data transmitted to our website. When we receive your information, we take all reasonable and lawful steps to keep your personal data secure and try to prevent any unauthorised access, use or loss of your data by implementing appropriate security measures and limiting access, including internal access. All the information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers and any payment transaction will be encrypted using TLS technology. We do not store customer card data internally and, when we give you a password (personal and non-transferable) to access a reserved area of our website, you must keep it and you will be responsible for keeping this password confidential.

Furthermore, if we detect any breach of personal data, we will immediately notify the competent authorities, as required by law.

 

Links from Our Website to other Websites

Our website's blog (or other supporting pages) contains hyperlinks to other relevant sites that are in line with the subject matter covered. If you choose to follow an external link to any other website outside the Beetleful group, you should understand that these companies have their own Privacy Policy which may not be the same as ours. In this sense, we do not accept any responsibility for these policies or for third-party websites. We advise you to check and accept their policies before sending them any personal data.

 

Cookies

Due to the way Internet communication standards work, access to websites may involve the use of cookies. A cookie is a small file sent to the client's computer that is stored on the user's disc. Some of these cookies are essential for this website to function correctly, to allow a user to make a booking on the website, so that we can fulfil your requests and to improve the user experience on our platforms.

No cookie used by us can extract information from the user's computer hard drive, steal personal information or read cookie files created by other providers.

If you do not accept the use of cookies, you will not be able to use the website www.beetleful.com. Alternatively, you can delete all cookies at any time after using our website by accessing your browser preferences.

 

Cookie Policy

The Beetleful website uses cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience.

Strictly Necessary:

(Available soon)
Cookies that are essential for the website to function correctly and that allow the customer to make a reservation or an availability request, allowing us to access the purchase requests.

Third-party cookies:

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Statistical cookies: these store anonymous data on the use of our website in order to analyse and improve the service provided.

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Statistics cookies: store details of visitor behaviour patterns, anonymously and randomly.

SID, LOGIN_INFO, PREF, SSID, HSID, VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
Cookies used by Youtube to store user preferences and some contain enough information to be tracked.

Google Ads and Remarketing by Google
Cookies used in online campaigns.

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Conversation cookies: cookies to store "Zopim Live Chat" (zendesk), used to provide a live service window on our websites. Requires the use of two types of cookies: to identify the device during visits and to store user preferences.

 

Purpose of the data

Personal data is obtained for the following purposes:

- activity linked to a travel agency or tour operator;

- supply to those involved in the services requested by the user in order to finalise the booking;

- sending SMS messages with intentions exclusively related to the booking;

- management, administration, provision, extension and improvement of the services to which the user decides to subscribe and register;

- study of the utilisation of services by users;

- checking, updating and developing systems and statistical analyses;

- advertising, promotion and commercial prospecting activities if duly accepted by the user.

 

The user/customer of the www.beetleful.com website thus consents to Beetleful processing their personal data. Furthermore, the user expressly consents to personal data being transferred to:

- national and international authorities competent in the field of tourism, terrorism or offences against human rights, for the purposes of their own security;

- any legal entity affiliated or participated by Beetleful or the tourist companies that have provided the contracted service, so that they may use them for the purpose of correctly providing each service requested by the user;

- any certified third-party company that complies with GDPR standards, in order to guarantee data security, the management and organisation of the booking and customer process and platforms associated with marketing activities.

Changes to the Privacy Policy

Beetleful reserves the right to update or change this Privacy Policy. You may, however, request a copy of a previous version of our Privacy Policy.