Privacy Information (Archive page)

(including the information content required by law)

 

Part 1: Information on data protection concerning our data processing pursuant to Art. 13, 14 and 21 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Part 2: Supplementary privacy policy for our website

 

 

1. Controller responsible for data processing and contact data
 

Contact data of our Data Protection Officer

HEC Harald Eul Consulting GmbH
Data Protection Officer KölnTourismus
KölnTourismus GmbH
Kardinal-Höffner-Platz 1, 50667 Cologne
datenschutz(at)koelntourismus.de

controller as defined under data protection law

KölnTourismus GmbH
Kardinal-Höffner-Platz 1, 50667 Cologne
Telephone: +49-221-34643-0
Fax: +49-221-34643-429
info(at)koelntourismus.de
 

2. Purposes and legal basis of our processing of your data

We process personal data in compliance with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) as well as other applicable data protection regulations (details below). Which data are processed in detail and the manner of their use is based authoritatively on the respective services applied for or agreed. Further details or extensions of the purposes of the data processing can be seen from the respective contract documentation, forms, from a declaration of consent and/or other information provided to you (e.g. within the scope of use of our website or in our terms and conditions of business). This data protection information may also be updated from time to time.

2.1 Purposes for fulfilment of a contract or of contractual measures (Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR)

The processing of personal data is carried out for the purpose of executing our contracts with you, for the execution of your orders as well as for the performance of measures and activities in the context of pre-contractual relationships, e.g. with interested parties. The processing is therefore in particular for the purpose of providing tourist services and deliveries of products in accordance with your orders and wishes, and covers the services, measures and activities necessary for this. This includes essentially the contract-related communication with you, the verifiability of transactions, orders and other agreements, also for quality control through corresponding documentation, goodwill measures, measures for managing and optimising business processes as well as for the fulfilment of the general duties of care, management and control through affiliated companies (e.g. parent company), statistical evaluations for corporate management, cost recording and controlling, reporting, internal and external communication, emergency management, settlement and fiscal evaluation of operating performances, risk management, assertion of legal entitlements and defence in legal disputes, ensuring IT security (among other things system or plausibility tests) and general safety, including building and system safety, ensuring and safeguarding domestic authority (e.g. through access controls), ensuring the integrity, authenticity and availability of the data, prevention and clarification of criminal offences, control through supervisory bodies or control instances (e.g. internal audit).

2.2 Purposes in the context of a justified interest of us or third parties (Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR)

In addition to the actual fulfilment of the contract or pre-contract, we may possibly process your data if this is necessary in order to safeguard justified interests of us or third parties, in particular for purposes:

• of advertising or market and opinion research, if you have not objected to the use of your data
• of obtaining credit information as well as the exchange of data with credit agencies, insofar as this goes beyond our economic risk,
• of checking and optimising requirements-analysis procedures,
• of further development of products and services as well as of existing systems and processes,
• of disclosing personal data within the scope of due diligence measures in negotiations concerning the sale of a company,
• of comparing European and international anti-terror lists, insofar as this goes beyond the statutory obligations,
• of enriching our data, among other things through the use or research of publicly accessible data,
• of statistical evaluations or market analysis,
• of benchmarking,
• of asserting legal claims and defence in legal disputes that cannot be assigned directly to the contractual relationship,
• of restricted storage of the data, if erasure is not possible due to the particular form of storage, or is possible only at disproportionately high expense,
• of developing scoring systems or automated decision-making processes,
• of preventing and clarifying criminal offences, insofar as not exclusively for the fulfilment of statutory requirements,
• of building and system safety (e.g. through access controls and video surveillance) insofar as this goes beyond the general duties of care,
• of internal and external investigations, security checks,
• of possible listening in on or recording of telephone conversations for quality-control and training purposes,
• of obtaining and maintaining certifications of a private-law or official nature,
• of ensuring and exercising domestic authority through corresponding measures, as well as through video surveillance, for the purpose of protecting our customers and employees as well as for securing evidence related to criminal offences and their prevention.

2.3 Purposes within the scope of your consent (Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR)

The processing of your personal data for specific purposes (e.g. use of your email address for marketing purposes) is only possible on the basis of your consent. As a rule, you can revoke your consent at any time. This also applies to the revocation of declarations of consent issued to us before application of the GDPR, i.e. before 25 May 2018. You will be informed separately of the purposes, the consequences of revocation or of failure to issue consent in the corresponding consent text.
As a general rule, the revocation of consent is effective only for the future. Processing carried out prior to the revocation is not affected and shall remain lawful.

2.4 Purposes for the fulfilment of statutory requirements (Art. 6 (1) (c) GDPR) or in the public interest (Art. 6 (1) (e) GDPR)

As is the case with all parties involved in economic life, we are also subject to a number of legal obligations. These are primarily statutory requirements (e.g. commercial and tax laws, but possibly also supervisory-law or other official requirements). The purposes of the processing can include the verification of identity and age, the prevention of fraud and money laundering, the prevention, combating and clarification of terrorism financing and asset-threatening criminal offences, comparisons with European and international anti-terror lists, the fulfilment of fiscal-law control and reporting obligations as well as the archiving of data for data-protection and data-security purposes, and also auditing by tax and other authorities. The disclosure of personal data can also be necessary in the context of official/judicial measures for the purpose of taking evidence, criminal prosecution or the assertion of civil-law claims.
 

3. The data categories processed by us – insofar as we do not receive the data directly from you – and their origin

If necessary for the provision of our services, we process personal data received legally from other companies or other third parties (e.g. credit agencies, address providers). We also process personal data lawfully taken, received or acquired from publicly accessible sources (e.g. telephone directories, commercial register, register of associations, register of residents, debtor registers, land registers, press, Internet and other media) and that we are entitled to process.
Relevant categories of personal data can be in particular:

• data on persons (name, date of birth, place of birth, nationality, marital status, profession/industry and comparable data)
• contact data (address, email address, telephone number and comparable data)
• address data (registration data and comparable data)
• payment/cover confirmation for bank and credit cards
• information on your financial position (credit-rating data including scoring, i.e. data for the purpose of assessing the economic risk)
• customer history
• data on your use of the tele-media offered by us (e.g. time of call-up of our websites, apps or newsletters, our sites/links clicked on, or entries and comparable data)
• video and photo data
   

4. Recipients – or categories of recipients – of your data

Within our organisation, your data is made available to those internal bodies and organisational units that require these for the fulfilment of our contractual and statutory obligations, or in the context of the handling and implementation of our justified interest. Any forwarding of your data to external bodies takes place exclusively

• in connection with processing of the contract,
• for purposes of fulfilment of statutory requirements, under which we are obliged to provide information, to report or to forward data, or if the forwarding of the data is in the public interest (see Number 2.4),
• if external service providers process data on our behalf as order data processors or assumers of functions (e.g. external computing centres, support/maintenance of EDP/IT applications, archiving, voucher processing, call-centre services, compliance services, controlling, data screening for anti-money-laundering purposes, data validation or plausibility checking, data destruction, purchasing/procurement, customer administration, letter shops, marketing, media technology, research, risk controlling, settlement, telephony, website management, auditing services, banks, printers or data disposal companies, courier services, logistics),
• on the basis of our justified interest or of the justified interest of the third party within the scope of the purposes stated under Number 2.2 (e.g. to authorities, credit agencies, debt collection, lawyers, courts, expert assessors, and group companies, bodies and control instances),
• if you have issued us with your consent to the forwarding to third parties.

We shall not forward your data to third parties for any other reasons. If we appoint service providers within the scope of order processing, your data will be covered by the same security standards there as with us. In other cases, the recipients are entitled to use the data solely for the purposes for which they have provided to them.
 

5. Duration of storage of your data

We process and store your data for the duration of our business relationship. This also includes the initiation of a contract (pre-contractual legal relationship) and the winding up of a contract.

We are also subject to various retention and documentation obligations, resulting among other things from the German Commercial Code (HGB) and the German Tax Code (AO). The retention or documentation periods prescribed therein are up to ten years after the end of the business relationship or of the pre-contractual business relationship.
Special statutory regulations may also require retention for a longer period, e.g. the preservation of evidence in the context of the statutory time-barring regulations. Under Sections 195 et seq. of the German Civil Code (BGB) the normal limitation period is three years; nevertheless, limitation periods of up to 30 years can apply.
If the data are no longer required for the fulfilment of contractual or statutory obligations and rights, they will be erased as a routine procedure, unless their further processing – for a limited period -–is necessary for fulfilment of the purposes stated under Number 2.2 based on a predominantly justified interest. Such a predominantly justified interest shall also be given for example if erasure is not possible – or possible only at disproportionately high expense – due to the particular form of storage, and processing for other purposes is excluded using suitable technical and organisational measures.
 

6. Processing of your data in a third country or by an international organisation

Data will be forwarded to bodies in countries outside the European Union (EU) or the European Economic Area (EEA) (so-called third countries) if this is necessary for the execution of an order/contract from or with you, if it is prescribed by law (e.g. fiscal-law reporting obligations), is part of a justified interest of us or a third party, or if you have issued your consent.
In this respect, the processing of your data in a third country can also take place in connection with the involvement of service providers within the scope of the order processing. If no resolution of the EU Commission is available concerning an appropriate level of data protection in the country concerned, we shall ensure appropriate protection and guarantees of your rights and liberties through corresponding contracts in accordance with the EU data protection requirements. We shall provide you with corresponding detailed information on request.
Information on the suitable or appropriate guarantees and on the possibility of obtaining a copy of these, can be requested from the Company Data Protection Officer if required.
 

7. Your data protection rights

Under certain circumstances you can assert your data protection rights against us

• For example, you have the right to receive information from us concerning your data stored by us pursuant to the rulings of Art. 15 GDPR (possibly with restrictions pursuant to Section 34 BDSG).
• Upon request by you, we shall rectify the data stored on you pursuant to Art. 16 GDPR if these are inaccurate or incorrect.
• If you wish, we shall erase your data in accordance with the principles of Art. 17 GDPR, provided no other statutory rulings (e.g. statutory retention periods or the restrictions pursuant to Section 35 BDSG), or a predominant interest of us (e.g. for defending our rights and entitlements), stand in the way of this.
• Taking account of the preconditions of Art. 18 GDPR, you can ask us to restrict the processing of your data.
• You can also file a complaint against the processing of your data pursuant to Art. 21 GDPR, on the basis of which we are obliged to end the processing of your data. Nevertheless, this right of objection applies only given the presence of very special circumstances concerning your personal situation. In this respect, rights of our organisation may stand in the way of your right of objection.
• Subject to the preconditions of Art. 20 GDPR, you also have the right to receive your data – or to forward them to a third party – in a structured, commonly-used and machine-readable format.
• You also have the right to revoke consent – already issued – to the processing of personal data by us at any time with effect for the future (see Number 2.3).
• In addition, you have a right to complain to a data protection supervisory authority (Art. 77 GDPR). However, we recommend that complaints always be addressed initially to our Data Protection Officer.

If possible, your applications concerning the exercise of your rights should be sent in writing to the above address or directly to our Data Protection Officer.
 

8. Scope of your obligations to provide us with your data

You are only obliged to provide the data required for the start and execution of a business relationship or for a pre-contractual relationship with us, or data that we are obliged to collect by law. Without these data, we shall not, as a rule, be in a position to conclude or execute the contract. This can also apply to data required later in the context of the business relationship. If we request additional data from you, we shall draw your separate attention to the voluntary nature of the information.
 

9. Existence of automated decision making in individual cases (including profiling)

We do not use purely automated decision-making procedures as per Article 22 GDPR. If we nevertheless use such a procedure in individual cases in future, we shall inform you of this separately, insofar as this is prescribed by the law.
Under certain circumstances we process your data in part with the aim of evaluating specific personal aspects (profiling).
We may use evaluation instruments to enable us to provide you with targeted information and advice on products. These enable requirements-oriented product design, communication and advertising, including market and opinion research.
Such procedures can also be used to enable the assessment of your financial position and creditworthiness as well as for combating money laundering and fraud. So-called “score values” can be used to assess your financial position and creditworthiness. A scoring uses mathematical procedures to calculate the probability of a customer meeting his/her payment obligations in contractually-conform manner. These score values thus assist us for example in assessing creditworthiness, in decisions in the context of product contracts, and are included in our risk management. The calculation is based on mathematically-statistically recognised and proven procedures, and is carried out on the basis of your data, in particular income situation, outgoings, existing liabilities, profession, employer, length of employment, experience from previous business relationships, contractually conform repayment of previous loans as well as information from credit agencies.
In this respect, we do not process information on nationality or special categories of personal data as per Art. 9 GDPR.
When concluding contracts and in specific cases in which a justified interest exists, our company regularly checks your creditworthiness, even if you are an existing customer. For this, we work with Creditreform Boniversum GmbH, Hellersbergstrasse 11, 41460 Neuss,  from whom we receive the necessary data. To this end we forward your name and your contact data to Creditreform Boniversum GmbH. The information pursuant to Art. 14 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation concerning the data processing carried out at Creditreform Boniversum GmbH can be found here: www.boniversum.de/EU-DSGVO

 

10. Supplementary privacy information

10.1 Data protection information from KölnTourismus GmbH (Cologne Tourist Board) regarding the use of guestoo

We use the cloud solution guestoo (www.guestoo.de) either separately or as part of our online services in order to handle the guest management of events that we organize ourselves, including those which we organize in cooperation with third parties (partners). For the management of the events, we transfer the personal data of the guests planned by us — and in the case of joint events, those planned by partners — to guestoo. The other processes (e.g. the dispatch of invitations, registrations, cancellations, correspondence in the run-up to the event and admission checks) are also managed through guestoo. For these purposes, we mainly enter and collect the following personal data:

• e-mail address
• Name
• Title
• Professional position
• Telephone number
• Institution
• The institution’s address data
• The name and institution of any accompanying persons

Pursuant to Article 6 (1) f GDPR (balancing of interests), we and guestoo store this data and process it through guestoo solely in the context of the respective event. Insofar as additional people are registered for an event (e.g. accompanying persons), the data processing takes place on the basis of Article 6 (1) b GDPR.

Insofar as we carry out individual events in cooperation with partners and that we are solely responsible for the event organization within this context, we will subsequently transfer the respective final guest list including the collected data and the participation status to the respective partner. This information is transferred on the basis of the respective partner’s overriding legitimate interest pursuant to Article 6 (1) f GDPR.

We process and store your data within guestoo for the period required to organize the respective event (including the corresponding preparation and follow-up phases). This does not affect any legal obligations to retain data. We will delete your data in guestoo within one year after an event has ended, insofar as you have not been invited to another event. You have the right to object to this, of course.

KölnTourismus GmbH (Cologne Tourist Board) has concluded a data processing agreement with the operator of guestoo (code piraten UG, Managing Director: Stefan Wirtz, Am Ruhmbach 44, 45149 Essen, Germany). KölnTourismus GmbH monitors the processing of your personal data in accordance with the requirements of the GDPR.

You can obtain further information about the use of your data on this website in guestoo’s privacy policy (www.guestoo.de/datenschutzerklaerung).
 

Information on your right of objection pursuant to Art. 21 GDPR

1. You have the right to file an objection at any time against the processing of your data on the basis of Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (data processing on the basis of a weighing-up of interests) or Art. 6 (1) (e) GDPR (data processing in the public interest), given the presence of reasons resulting from your particular situation. This also applies to profiling based on this provision as defined in Art. 4 No. 4 GDPR.
If you file an objection, we shall then no longer process your personal data, unless we can demonstrate compelling reasons for the processing warranting protection, and these prevail over your interests, rights and liberties, or if the processing is for the purpose of asserting, exercising or defence of legal entitlements.

2. We may possibly also process your personal data for the purpose of carrying out direct advertising. If you do not wish to receive advertising, you have the right to object to this at any time. This also applies to the profiling insofar as this is connected to any such direct advertising. We shall comply with this objection for the future.
We shall no longer process your data for direct advertising purposes if you object to processing for these purposes.
The objection can be filed informally and, if possible, should be addressed to
KölnTourismus GmbH
Kardinal-Höffner-Platz 1
50667 Cologne
 
Our data protection statement as well as the information on data protection concerning our data processing pursuant to Art. 13, 14 and 21 GDPR can alter from time to time. All alterations will be published on this site. Older versions will be kept available for inspection in an archive.

 

Data protection information last amended 03/12/2019

 

 

Part 2: Supplementary privacy policy for our website

Thank you for your interest in our website. Protecting your privacy is very important to us. The following section explains in detail how your personal data will be handled.

You can visit our page without entering any personal information. We store only access data without personal information — even when you use a newsletter link to visit our site. For example, we store:

• the name of your Internet provider
• the page you are connecting from
• the name of the requested file

This information is evaluated solely for the purpose of improving our service and does not enable us to draw any conclusions about you personally.
We collect, store and handle your information in connection with the processing of your purchase orders, possible warranty service requirements and advertising purposes. Personal information is collected when you voluntarily provide it to us when you place an order for a purchase, open a customer account or register for the newsletter.

Your personal information will be passed on to a service provider (transporter, shipper, bank) as part of the processing and delivery of an order.
 

Right to information

As stated in the Bundesdatenschutzgesetz (Federal Data Protection Law), you have the following rights: to receive information free of charge about your saved data, including the right to correct, block or erase this data; to be informed of the main reasons for an adverse credit-related decision; to be informed of the release of your collected or saved probability values, including how these values were determined and the types of data used to establish them.
 

Use of cookies

 

 

Data security

As part of the ordering process, your payment information is transmitted over the Internet in encrypted form. Technical and organizational measures ensure that our website and other systems are secured against the loss of, or damage to, your data. Similarly, such measures prevent access to, or the alteration and dissemination of, your data by any unauthorized person. You should always handle your access information confidentially and close the browser window when you have finished communicating with us, especially if you share a computer with other people.
 

Contact person for data protection

For questions about the collection, handling or use of your personal data; general inquiries; requests to correct, block or erase data; or retraction of consent, please contact our data protection representative:

HEC Harald Eul Consulting GmbH
Data Protection Officer KölnTourismus
KölnTourismus GmbH
Kardinal-Höffner-Platz 1, 50667 Cologne
datenschutz(at)koelntourismus.de

 

Use of Google Analytics

This website uses Google Analytics, a Web analysis service from Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, 4 Barrow St, Dublin, D04 E5W5, Irland (“Google”). Google Analytics employs “cookies”, which are text files that are stored on your computer and make it possible to analyse how you are using the website. The information created by the cookie concerning your use of this website is normally transferred to a Google server in the U.S. and stored there. Google uses this information at the request of, and on behalf of, the operator of this website to evaluate your use of the website, to create reports on the website activities, and to provide the website’s operator with additional services connected with the use of the website and the Internet. The data sent by us and linked to cookies, user IDs or advertising IDs will be automatically deleted after 26 months. The deletion of data whose retention period has been reached is done automatically once a month.
 

Protection of your personal data

To protect your personal data on this website, we activated the IP anonymization feature for Google Analytics. The activation of IP anonymization means that your IP address is shortened by Google before it is sent to a server within the member states of the European Union or in other states that are signatories of the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases is the complete IP address transferred to a Google server in the U.S. and shortened there. Google does not combine the IP address that is transferred by your browser as part of the operation of Google Analytics with any other information.
Should we have other personal data of our website users, we do not combine this data with website tracking data or other, non-personal, data.
 

Deactivation of the website tracking feature by website users

You can prevent the storage of any cookies by carrying out a corresponding setting in your browser software; however, we expressly inform you that in this case you may not be able to use the full scope of all of the features of this and other websites.  In addition, you can disable the cookie’s sending of the data it has created concerning your use of this website (including your IP address) to Google and the processing of this data by Google if you download and install the browser plugin that is available under the following link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en.

As an alternative to the browser plugin or in browsers on mobile terminals you can click on the following link in order to set an opt-out cookie that will prevent Google Analytics from collecting data within this website in future (this opt-out cookie only functions in this browser and only for this domain; if you delete the cookies in this browser you will need to click on the link again: Deactivate data collection by Google Analytics for this website

The personal and/or pseudonymous data are deleted or anonymized after 14 months.

 

Withdrawing consent

You may have expressly given your consent to the following service(s). We would like to remind you that you can withdraw your consent at any time, although this does not apply retroactively.
 

Consenting to receive e-mail advertising

I would like to regularly receive interesting offers by e-mail. My e-mail address will not be passed on to other companies. I can revoke this consent to having my e-mail address stored and used for advertising purposes at any time (not applicable retroactively), for the cost of transmitting this message at the basic rate.
 

Content liability

The content of our webpages was created with the utmost care. However, we cannot guarantee that the content is complete, correct and up to date. According to §7 par. 1 of the German Telecommunications and Electronic Media Act (TMG), we, as a service provider, are responsible for our own content on these webpages in line with the general laws. However, according to §§8 to 10 of the TMG, we, as a service provider, are not required to monitor third-party information that has been stored or transmitted, nor are we obligated to investigate the information to determine if there is any evidence that an illegal act has been committed. This does not affect the requirement to delete or block the use of information in accordance with the general laws. However, we do not bear any liability in this case until we have become cognizant of an actual violation of the law. We will immediately delete such content as soon as we become cognizant of the corresponding violations of the law.
 

Liability for links

With its verdict of 12th May 1998, the Hamburg Regional Court (Landgericht) decided that linking to another website might make the person or organization that created the link liable for the content contained on the linked website. According to the court, this can only be circumvented by expressly distancing oneself from the content on the linked website. Our webpages contain links to other sites on the Internet. With regard to all of these links, we would like to expressly state that we have no influence on the form and content of the linked webpages. We therefore expressly distance ourselves from the content of all of the webpages linked to this website and do not accept them as our own. This declaration applies to all of the links on our website. The respective providers or operators of the websites are responsible for the linked webpages. Without any clear indications of a legal violation, it would be unreasonable for us to continuously monitor the content of the linked webpages. We will immediately delete such links as soon as we become cognizant of any violations of the law.
 

Copyright

The content and works on these pages that were created by the website operator are subject to German copyright law. The mere mention of some content does not mean that the content used here is not protected by third-party rights. The reproduction, processing or dissemination of content, as well as any kind of use not  covered by copyright law, requires the express written permission of the respective author or creator. Downloads from and copies of these pages may only be used for private, non-commercial purposes.

Property rights to pictures depicting persons
According to §22 par. 1 of the German law governing the rights to works of art and photography (KUG), pictures may only be published or publicly displayed if the person(s) depicted in them permit it. The pictures displayed on these webpages have been published either because the persons depicted in them have given their permission or because special legal stipulations permit it. Should a picture be published in violation of this principle despite careful monitoring of the content, you should notify us of this fact in writing. You can also request the deletion of a picture whose publication you have already permitted (revocation of your approval). To do this, you merely have to send us an e-mail or fax notifying us of this fact. To enable us to identify the picture, we ask that you describe it in detail and tell us on which page of the KölnTourismus GmbH website it can be found.