Privacy Policy

We take your data as seriously as we do your ferry travel and we’re committed to respecting and safeguarding your privacy and the personal information that you give us.

We collect your personal information when you interact with us and use our website. This policy details the information that we collect about you, why and how we use that information, your rights regarding that information and how you can update it.

We may make changes to this policy from time to time, so it’s worth checking back occasionally to make sure you’re happy. Where we make significant changes to this policy or how we use your personal information, we will take additional steps to draw this to your attention. This privacy policy was last updated on 25 July 2019

Please ensure that you read and understand this Policy. Where you interact with us or use this website, we assume that you have done so.

Where you provide personal information relating to other people who are part of the same ferry booking, please ensure that you draw this Policy to their attention as it will also govern our use of their personal information.

If you have any questions regarding this policy, you can send them to freightsupport@poferries.com or you can write to us at P&O Ferries, Channel House, Channel View Road, Dover CT179TJ. Or you can call us on +44 (0)1304 863875

You should note that you have certain rights under this Policy, including to object to certain uses of your personal information. Further details are set out in the relevant parts of the Policy.

Who are we?

We’re P&O Ferries, a household name operator of ferry services across the English Channel, North Sea and Irish Sea, with almost 4,000 employees. We have a fleet of more than 20 ships and operate more than 30,000 sailings a year.

In addition to sailing on nine major routes between Britain, France, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium, we operate intermodal continental hubs at Zeebrugge and Europoort and have our own logistics arm, P&O Ferrymasters.

Every year we carry more than 10 million passengers, 1.6 million cars and 2.2 million freight units.

And who is this “we”?

Any references to “we” or “us” in the below refers to the P&O Ferries group company that you are contracting with under our terms of business, or which you engage with before making a booking.

The identity of the specific P&O Ferries group company will depend upon the ferry route that you are travelling with or enquiring about. These are as follows:

Route	Company	Registration number
Dover/Calais	P&O Short Sea Ferries Limited	03291852
Larne/Cairnryan and Liverpool/ Dublin	P&O European Ferries (Irish Sea Limited	00318227
Hull/Rotterdam, Hull/Zeebrugge and Teesport/Zeebrugge	P&O North Sea Ferries Limited	00809079
Tilbury/Zeebrugge	P&O Ferries Thames Limited	06860796

For any marketing materials that you receive or any competitions that we run, any references to “we” or “us” in the below refers to P&O Ferries Holdings Limited, registration number 6038077.

Each group company's registered address is:

Channel House
Channel View Road
Dover
CT17 9TJ

Main Switchboard: +44 (0)1304 863000

What do you collect, and how?

Your contact details

This means your name, address, email address and telephone number. We collect this when you sign up to an account, or when you make a booking through our website, App or call centre; or if you sign up to receive marketing communications on our website through one of the sign up forms, but don’t make a booking.

How we use it	Why we use it
Send you a booking confirmation	All part of our obligation to fulfil our contract with you. We don’t send out paper tickets any more, all of our “tickets” are electronic in the form of a booking confirmation email. We have to do this to make sure you have all of the information you need to travel.
Keep you updated on any changes to your bookings	Again, this is part of our obligation to fulfil our contract with you. Occasionally we’ll have to contact you to let you know that something has changed on your booking. For example if we have to make a change to a scheduled sailing time we’ll send you an email, or give you a call to let you know of the change.
Fraud detection and prevention	We need to process your payment safely and securely, and try to reduce fraud against us and our customers, which involves using your contact details in our fraud detection processes. It is in our legitimate interests to ensure that payments to our business are secure and protected from fraudulent activity.
Send you news and information by email	We’d love to keep you up to date with all the latest news and offers. We will only ever do this with your permission and you can tell us to stop at any time.
To understand our customer base	To understand where in the world our customers are based.

Sensitive personal information

When you book with us, we ask if you or anyone travelling with you requires any special assistance when using our services.

How we use it

Why we use it

Provide you and your party with the assistance you require

Another aspect of fulfilling our contract with you. This information is only processed to allow you to travel with us safely and comfortably. We never use this information for marketing purposes. We only process this data with your consent, which you can withdraw at any time. If, however, you do wish to withdraw or withhold your consent to this use of your personal information, we will not be able provide you with the special assistance you require, and may decide that we are unable to provide services to you at all.

Your payment details

A vital part of making your booking is actually paying for it. Therefore, we have to collect your credit/debit card information or bank details.

How we use it	Why we use it
Take payment and process refunds	We need to do this to complete your transaction and book your ferry trip. We store your payment details so that if, for any reason, we need to refund your payment, we are able to do so.
Fraud detection and prevention	We need to process your payment safely and securely, and try to reduce fraud against us and our customers. It is in our legitimate interests to ensure that payments to our business are secure and protected from fraudulent activity.

Details of your bookings and quotes

What you buy from us. This includes the routes, dates, and times that you travel. It also includes the names and gender of the people that you travel with and the details of the cargo you are carrying and registration of the vehicle that you’re travelling in. We will also record the dimensions and weight of your vehicle.

How we use it	Why we use it
Allow you to travel with us	We need this information to allow you to travel, and therefore fulfil our contract with you. We are required by law to produce manifests for each of our sailings, detailing who is on board in the event that anything goes wrong.
Provide you with the best possible customer service when you contact us	One more aspect of fulfilling our contract with you. Should you need to contact our Customer Care team for any reason, we need to be able to locate your booking history to help resolve your issue. We also retain this information after you have travelled with us, as it is in our legitimate interests to maintain internal records of any customer issues and complaints, and improve our customer services more generally.
Tailor our communications to you	We want to make sure that any communications we send to you are relevant. We don’t want to send you unwanted messages about our Larne to Cairnryan service if you’ve only done trips from Dover, for example. We will not send you any marketing materials without your consent, and you can tell us to stop at any time.

How you interact with our website and marketing emails

When you arrive on our website we store a small amount of information about your visit and how you interact with us. This information is stored in a cookie in your browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Chrome).

This information is then used to surface relevant information to you as and when you need it – meaning you have the best possible online experience with us.

Need a little more detail? You can find the full details of the cookies we use and how we use them in our cookie policy.

Your responses to surveys

Occasionally we may send you a survey to gather your thoughts and opinions on our products and services. This may include the collection of some personal information (including your name and contact details).

How we use it	Why we use it
Gauge how well we’re meeting your expectations	We want to make sure that everyone who steps on board one of our ships has a great time. Our surveys give you the opportunity to give us the feedback we need (good and bad!) to ensure that we’re giving you the level of service that you expect and deserve. This information is used only with your consent, which you may withdraw at any time.

Competition entries

From time to time we'll run competitions where we'll ask you for your contact details

How we use it	Why we use it
To conduct a competition	If you’re lucky enough to win, we need to be able to let you know!
Send you news, offers and information by email or post	We’d love to keep you up to date with all the latest news and offers. We will only ever do this with your permission and you can tell us to stop at any time.

When and how you use our app

When you install and use our app we collect and process information about you to deliver functionality within the app. This will include your email address, booking details and your location while using the app.

How we use it	Why we use it
Allow you to login to the app and view your bookings	This is required for you to use and get the most out of the app. Without this you won’t be able to view and amend your bookings from within the app.
Send you relevant notifications	We’d like to send you notifications that are relevant to your bookings. These include information about any changes to your bookings as well as information about the services you can find on board. You can turn these notifications off at any time within the Settings of the app.
Help you find your way around the ship	Location information will allow us to help you navigate our ships more easily. We’ll ask your permission to use this information when you install the app, and you can turn this off at any time in your phone settings.

If you have an accident while travelling with us

If you are involved in an accident on one of our ferries, or on our premises, we will ask you to complete an accident form. This will require you to provide us with contact information and details of your accident. We need to collect this information to comply with our legal requirements regarding the safety of our services, and should we need to follow-up with you in relation to the accident, or use the information in relation to a legal claim against us.

CCTV footage

For security purposes, we collect CCTV footage in our premises and ships, which will involve the collection of your image if you are located at or visit our premises or ships where we maintain CCTV systems.

A quick word about children

We do not and will not knowingly collect information from any unsupervised child under the age of 16. We only collect information relating to children as part of a ferry booking where they are one of the passengers, and the ferry booking has been made by an adult, or if a child is involved in an accident whilst travelling with us.

Why do we do all of that?

We only process your personal information where we have a legal basis to do so. The legal basis will depend on the reason or reasons we collected and need to use your information.

Under EU and UK data protection laws in almost all cases the legal basis will be:

• Because we need to use your information so that we can process your booking, fulfil your travel arrangements and otherwise perform the contract we have with you.
• Because it is in our legitimate interests to use your personal information to operate and improve our business as a travel provider, and protect our business against fraudulent activity. Where we rely upon our legitimate interests to process your personal information, we have specified that fact in this Policy.
• Because we need to use your personal information to comply with a legal obligation.
• To protect the vital interests of you or another person.
• Because you have consented to us using your information for a particular purpose. Where we rely upon your consent to process your personal information, we have specified that fact in this Policy (and that you have a right to withdraw that consent at any time).

Processing Data for Marketing Purposes

If you’ve booked with us or given us your contact details to receive marketing communications before 17 May 2018, it is in our legitimate interest to process your personal information to provide you, our customer, with information about our products and services. You can object to this processing at any time.

If you’ve booked with us or given us your contact details to receive marketing on or after 17 May 2018, we will only process this information for marketing purposes with your permission.

You can find more information on how to object or withdraw your permission to process for marketing purposes below, in the Can I opt out section.

How long do you keep it for?

The period for which we retain your personal information depends upon the reasons we collected it:

Marketing

If you’ve booked with us, and you have consented to us providing you with marketing materials, we’ll keep your details for marketing purposes for up to 6 years after your last interaction with us.

Once this period has elapsed, we’ll remove all of the personally identifiable information. This will leave an anonymised record that someone booked a ferry crossing, but we’ll no longer know who you are.

If you’ve not booked with us but you’ve signed up to receive marketing communications (via our website, for example), we’ll keep your details for up to 2 years after the last time you interacted with us. After this time, we’ll also delete your details.

Payment details

We will keep your payment details for a period of up to 12 months following your payment to us.

Booking information

Save as set out above in relation to the retention of your data for marketing purposes, we will only retain your booking information for as long as necessary to comply with our legal obligations. In most cases, this means storing this information for six years.

Once this period has elapsed, we’ll remove all of the personally identifiable information. This will leave an anonymised record that someone booked a ferry crossing, but we’ll no longer know who you are.

Customer Services information

This will be logged against your account with us and removed, along with other details, after 6 years.

Information relating to accidents

If you have an accident while travelling with us, we will retain your information for a period of up to 7 years following the accident to ensure that we have this information so that we can respond to requests you may have about the accident, or should you wish to make a claim against us in relation to the accident.

How safe is my personal information?

We take all necessary steps to protect the personal information that you give us.

The personal information that you enter on our website while making a booking is encrypted via HTTPS. This is demonstrated by the “padlock” icon in the address bar of your web browser (ie. Google Chrome/Internet Explorer/Mozilla Firefox) when on these pages.

We store all data in secured environments with access controls to ensure that only people with a legitimate reason can access your data.

When we transfer personal data electronically (for example to a third party service provider), we do so in an encrypted form via a secure transfer method (ie. SFTP).

Who will be using it?

We never sell your personal information to any third parties for any reason.

We will share your data with selected third party service providers, border and security services and subcontractors, agencies and subcontractors who do work on our behalf to provide services such as data storage, analysis and marketing services. Where this is necessary we will only pass over the information necessary to carry out the specific service (delivery of a marketing mailing, for example) and the third parties are under contract to keep your information safe and secure and not to disclose it to anyone or use it for their own marketing purposes.

When you make a booking with us, your payment will be processed by a third party payment processor who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. If you have any questions regarding the processing of payment transactions, please contact us.

In addition, we also work in association with third party product providers to offer you a range of products and services. When you purchase one of those products, the relevant product provider will use the information you’ve given them to provide the purchased product or service and to carry out their obligations arising from any contracts you have entered into with them. In some cases, the third party product providers will be acting as the Data Controller of your information and will have their own privacy policies. These third party product providers will share your information with us which we will use in accordance with this privacy policy.

We may transfer your personal information to a third party as part of a sale of some or all of our business and assets to any third party or as part of any business restructuring or reorganisation in accordance with our legitimate interests, or if we’re under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation or to enforce or apply our terms of use or to protect the rights, property or safety of our customers. However, we will take care to ensure that your privacy rights continue to be protected.

Do you transfer my data outside of the EU?

Some of our external third party service providers are based outside the European Union (EU) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EU.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EU, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission. For further details, see European Commission: Adequacy of the protection of personal data in non-EU countries
• If the service provider is not in a country deemed to provide an adequate level of protection, we may use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give personal data transferred outside the EU an adequate level of protection. For further details, see European Commission: Model contracts for the transfer of personal data to third countries.
• Alternatively, if the service provider is based in the US, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the EU-US Privacy Shield, which has been approved by the European Commission as giving personal data an adequate level of protection. For further details, see European Commission: EU-US Privacy Shield.

Please contact us if you would like further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EU.

How can I update my details?

Obviously we want to make sure that our information is as accurate as possible. If the data we hold about you is incorrect or out-of-date, and you’d like us to make any changes, you can contact us by email on freightsupport@poferries.com, by telephone on +44 (0)1304 863875 or by writing to us at P&O Ferries, Channel House, Channel View Road, Dover CT179TJ

Can I opt out?

Absolutely. You have the right to object to marketing or data processing at any time.

You will be asked if you wish to opt in when your freight account is set up. Otherwise, contact us at freightsupport@poferries.com or call us on +44 (0)1304 863875.

We include unsubscribe links at the top and bottom of all marketing emails that we send. So if you’ve received a marketing email from us and would like it to be the last, simply click the link at the top of the email. Please be aware though that we may still send you emails related to your bookings/purchases with us, for example booking confirmations and updates to your booking.

If you’ve received something through the post from us, you can unsubscribe by returning it to P&O Ferries, Channel House, Channel View Road, Dover CT179TJ.

Alternatively, if you’ve not received any marketing communications from us yet and want to make absolutely sure it stays that way, you can opt out of any and all direct marketing at any time by contacting us on freightsupport@poferries.com, by telephone on +44 (0)1304 863875or by writing to us at P&O Ferries, Channel House, Channel View Road, Dover CT179TJ

Subject Access Requests, Objecting to use of your information and Right to be Forgotten

You can request that we provide access to / copies of all information that we hold about you. You also have the right to request that we stop using and/or delete your personal information.

If you wish to exercise these rights, you can contact us and tell us why. In certain circumstances we may not be able to stop using and/or delete your personal information but, if that is the case, we'll let you know and tell you why.

You can exercise these rights by contacting us by email on freightsupport@poferries.com, by telephone on +44 (0)1304 863875or by writing to us at P&O Ferries, Channel House, Channel View Road, Dover CT179TJ.

Making a complaint

If you have any queries or complaints about our collection, use or storage of your personal information, please contact us. We will investigate and attempt to resolve any such complaint or dispute regarding the use or disclosure of your personal information. You can contact us by email on freightsupport@poferries.com, by telephone on +44 (0)1304 863875or by writing to us at P&O Ferries, Channel House, Channel View Road, Dover CT179TJ.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint about our processing of your personal information with the Information Commissioner's Office, the supervisory authority for data protection issues in England and Wales.

Data Controllers

Any personal information processed by P&O Ferries in connection with this Privacy Policy is controlled by the relevant P&O Ferries company detailed at the start of this policy. This P&O Ferries company will be considered the “Data Controller” of your personal information under European Union and UK data protection law.

In each case, the registered address of each P&O Ferries company is:
Channel House
Channel View Road
Dover
CT17 9TJ

Data Protection Officer: Susan Kitchin