Privacy Policy

Last updated: June 2, 2020

At Japan Travel, your privacy is critically important to us and is guided by the following principles:

• Your data is yours – we are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
• We store personal information as per our data retention policy.
• We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information in your profile is shared publicly (or kept private).
• We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

Our Privacy Policy below incorporates and clarifies these principles in more detail, and applies to all information that we collect about you across our website (www.japantravel.com), Japan Travel Shop (shop.japantravel.com), Japan Travel Bike (www.japantravel.bike), and Japan Travel Zend (zend.japantravel.com)

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so – for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.

• Basic Account Information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for a Japan Travel account to provide your name and email address. You may provide us with more information–on your profile–but we do not require that information to create a Japan Travel account.
• Public Profile Information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, if you have a Japan Travel account, your name is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile, such as a photo or an “About Me” description. Your public profile information is just that–public–so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
• Transaction and Billing Information: If you buy something from us—a tour or activity from our shop, or a custom tour requiring accommodation and/or transportation, for example—you will provide additional personal and payment information that is required to process the transaction and your payment, such as your name, credit card information, and contact information.
• Customer Personal Information: We keep a portion of personal information provided by customers in travel requests and other transactions as personal data. Japan Travel also handles personal data entrusted to it by other travel companies in order to provide travel arrangements requested by those companies.
• Communications with us: You may also provide us information when you respond to surveys, communicate with our support team, or apply for a role with us.
• Technical, Usage and Location Information: We automatically collect information on how you interact with the Services, such as the IP address from which you access the Services, date and time, information about your browser, operating system and computer or device, pages viewed, and items clicked. We may also collect location information, including location information automatically provided by your computer or device. We use cookies and similar technologies to collect some of this information.

Sensitive Information

Japan Travel does not collect, use or provide user-identifiable information to third parties on political opinions, faith (religion, philosophy, or creed), race or ethnicity, medical treatment, sexual history or criminal history except where required by law, unless we inform you otherwise.

In cases where we may pass such sensitive information, such as a survey that you have completed as part of a campaign conducted by a third-party sponsor, we will always inform you that such information-sharing may occur. You will be able to decide for yourself whether to proceed or not.

When sensitive information is collected, used, or provided to a third party, Japan Travel takes special care in its handling so as not to collect, use, or provide information in a way that is not in accordance with the laws of Japan.

We use information about you as mentioned above and for the purposes listed below:

• To provide, maintain and improve our Services including to operate certain features and functionality of the Services
• To further develop and improve our Services–for example by adding new features that we think our users will enjoy;
• To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with our Services, which helps us improve our Services and make them easier to use;
• To measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition;
• To communicate with you, for example through an email, about offers and promotions and others we think will be of interest to you, solicit your feedback, or keep you up to date on Japan Travel and our products; and
• To personalize your experience using our Services, provide content recommendations, target our marketing messages to groups of our users, and serve relevant advertisements.

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Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

For users based in the European Union, the following outlines our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws:

1. Contractual obligations: The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under our Terms of Service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account; or
2. Legal Compliance: The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or
3. Protection of Interests: The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or
4. Legitimate Interest: We have a legitimate interest in using your information–for example, to provide and update our Services, to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience, to safeguard our Services, to communicate with you, to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition, to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, and to personalize your experience; or
5. Consent: You have given us your consent to process your data–for example when ticking a box to receive email newsletters, actively submitting a survey where we have informed you it will be shared with a sponsor, or agreeing to allow us to place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on, as described in our Cookie Policy.

Unless stated otherwise, Japan Travel does not rent, sell or share personal information with third parties or non-affiliated companies except to provide products or services under the following circumstances:

• Japan Travel will provide in electronic form a customer’s name, gender, age, address, phone number, e-mail address, passport number, and credit card number to transportation, accommodation, insurance and travel companies as necessary to arrange purchased travel services, or as necessary to fulfill travel agreements or complete insurance formalities to securitize costs when accidents occur.
• Where required by law or other legal proceedings to divulge such information to the authorities or where there is suspected fraud or potential threats to the physical safety of any person.

In Circumstances When Personal Information is Leaked

If for some reason Japan Travel personal information is disclosed, we will do our best to contact the customer immediately. If necessary, we will temporarily shut down our system to maintain security, or we may promptly announce facts about the situation publicly on our website and newsletter.

Court of Jurisdiction

The laws of Japan shall be applied to this website and terms of use and visitors consent to the jurisdiction of the Tokyo District Court in any and all disputes.

For website visitors:

We will retain your information for 5 years after the last date that you: provided such information to us, used such information (for example username and password), re-accessed our website, used our services or communicated with us.

Exceptions to this period include email information, where our email service provider, Google, may have its own policies about retention of user information and where we cannot control those policies.

For Travel Agency customers:

• Customer bank and credit card data will be erased after the customer's return date to their own country + 1 month. Retention during this period is to cover unanticipated customer expenses that may come to Japan Travel as the booking entity of record.
• Detailed customer contact data will be retained for 18 months to all Japan Travel to contact customers when receiving claims for damages by customers, from suppliers. The retention period is to cover the legal period available to suppliers to make commercial claims against Japan Travel.
• Basic trip and name/country data will be retained for 7 years, which is the data retention requirement for private companies in Japan (per Japanese Tax Office rules).
• Disclosure: Like all registered travel agents, Japan Travel is obligated by Japanese law to pass on customer names to the Ministry of Land, Infrstructure, and Transport.

If you require us to remove your data at an earlier time than described in the above retention schedule, please let us know and we will remove the data at the point you indicate as your preference.

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

1. Limit the information you provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services may not be accessible.
2. Opt-Out of Electronic Communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional messages from us. Just follow the instructions in those messages. If you opt out of promotional messages, we may still send you other messages, like those about your account and legal notices.
3. Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies: You can choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using Japan Travel's websites, with the drawback that certain features may not function properly without the aid of such cookies.
4. Review your Privacy Settings: Visit your account settings when logged in to review your privacy settings, as well as other information connected to your account.
5. Close Your Account: You can contact us to remove your account by emailing info@japantravel.com.

1. The right to be informed: At every point where we are collecting your data, we will inform you of why it is being collected and how it is being processed.
2. The right of access: If you wish to see what information we hold on you, you may send us what is called a Subject Access request. We will require photocopies of two pieces of identification. We will respond within 30 days of receipt of your request. There is no cost to you in requesting to see your data, but please note that we reserve the right to charge you if you make subsequent requests. You can use the contact details below for a Subject Access Request.
3. The right to rectification: We offer the opportunity to amend your personal information by contacting us using the details below.
4. The right to erasure: If you wish to cancel all communications with us, we can anonymize or de-identify your data. Note: However, if you have contributed content to the site other than communications as a customer, you may be bound by a separate contract, whereby we hold certain rights that supersede the terms here. Please contact us at info@japantravel.com.
5. The right to restrict processing: You can opt-out or restrict the processing of your data by modifying your account settings (email notifications) and updating your cookie settings.

The latest version of our Privacy Policy will always be published here, which should be referred to for the latest information at any time.

Japan Travel may update this policy. We will notify you about significant changes in the way we treat personal information by sending a notice to the primary email address specified in your JapanTravel account or by placing a prominent notice on our site.

JapanTravel.com, is produced by Japan Travel KK, and references to JapanTravel, JT, JapanTravel.com or Japan Travel KK shall in general be interchangeable.

You can send privacy-related questions, complaints, and requests to Japan Travel at privacy@japantravel.com or at the following address:

ATTN: JT Data Protection Officer (DPO)
Japan Travel KK
Tokyo 102-0083, Chiyoda-ku, Kojimachi 3-5-17, Seika Bldg. 5 F
Tel. +81 (0)50-1791-1500
Email: privacy@japantravel.com