Privacy

01

What we collect

This site has no accounts, no bookings and no sign-up. We never ask you for your name, your email address or anything else about you, and there is nowhere on this site to give them to us.

We use Google Analytics, a service that counts visits so we can see which pages actually help people. Through it we receive the pages you opened and in what order, roughly how long you stayed, how far down a page you read, which links you followed away from this site, any file you downloaded, your approximate location (usually the city or region, worked out from your internet address), the type of device, browser and operating system you used, how you arrived — a search engine, a link from another site, or typing the address — and a randomly generated identifier stored by your browser so that several page views can be recognised as one visit. Your full internet address is used to work out that approximate location. We never see your name and we make no attempt to work out who you are.

02

Why

To see which parts of this website help visitors and which do not, so we can improve it. That is the only purpose. Nothing here is used to make a decision about you, and there is no automated profiling.

03

Our legal basis

We process this information to fulfil our mandate as a public office, under Section 12(e) of the Data Privacy Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 10173).

04

Who else receives it

Google LLC, which operates Google Analytics, processes this information for us on our instructions. Google is based in the United States, so this information leaves the Philippines. Our arrangement with Google requires it to protect the information and to use it only as we direct. We do not sell it, we do not use it for advertising, and we share it with no one else.

05

How long it is kept

Detailed visit records are kept for 14 months and then deleted automatically. Summary counts — how many people opened a page in a month, with nothing that could point to a person — are kept longer so we can compare one year against another.

06

Cookies

This site stores a small file in your browser so that several page views can be recognised as one visit. It carries a random identifier and nothing about you. You can block or delete it in your browser settings at any time. The site will keep working, and we will simply count you as a new visitor each time. This site does not show a cookie pop-up.

07

The accreditation register

This site publishes the Department’s own record of accredited tourism enterprises and accredited tour guides. That register contains information about those businesses and guides, not about you as a visitor, and it is reproduced from the Department’s record rather than gathered here. Only these fields are published: name, category or classification, municipality, contact telephone where the Department holds one, and accreditation status. Addresses, email addresses, certificate numbers and issue dates are not published.

If you are on the register and want an entry corrected or a detail withheld, write to the Department at the privacy address below.

08

Your rights

Under the Data Privacy Act you may ask what information we hold about you, have it corrected, object to how it is used, ask for a copy, or ask us to erase or block it. You may also complain to the National Privacy Commission at privacy.gov.ph. Because we hold nothing that identifies you as a visitor, we may not be able to find records relating to you specifically — but we will explain what we have and how it works.

09

How to reach us

For anything about privacy, or about personal information held by the Department, write to the Department of Tourism at privacy@tourism.gov.ph. That is the address the Department itself publishes for corrections and for withdrawing consent.

The Department has not published the name of a Data Protection Officer, and we have not invented one. Its own privacy notice says the same.

For anything about this website, this region, or tourism in Bohol and Cebu, use the contact details on the About page.