This policy explains what personal data Arctic Vela Hotel collects, why we collect it, how long we keep it and what rights you have. We handle personal data in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Finnish law.
1. Who is responsible for your data
The data controller is:
Any question about this policy, or about the data we hold on you, can be sent to the address above and it will reach the person responsible for privacy matters at the hotel.
2. What data we collect
- Booking and stay details — arrival and departure dates, the room or suite booked, the number of guests, the rate, and extras such as private sauna hours, sailings or restaurant reservations.
- Contact details — name, home address, email address, telephone number, and the details recorded on the guest registration card on arrival.
- Stay preferences and dietary requirements — bed and room preferences, allergies and any dietary needs you tell us about, so that Restaurant Ahti can cook for you safely.
- Enquiries sent through this website — our enquiry form opens a message in your own email client, so we receive only what you choose to write and send from your own email address. The website itself does not store the contents of the form.
- Payment card guarantees — card details used to guarantee or settle a booking are collected and processed by our payment provider. We see a masked reference and the outcome of the transaction, never the full card number.
3. Why we use your data, and on what legal basis
- Performing the accommodation contract — to confirm and manage your booking, prepare your room, serve you in the restaurant and the sauna, and settle your account.
- Legal obligations — Finnish accounting legislation requires us to keep invoices and accounting records, and the Finnish Act on Accommodation and Food Service Operations requires us to collect a guest registration card for every guest.
- Legitimate interest — to answer enquiries and communicate with you before, during and after your stay, to handle complaints and claims, and to keep the hotel, our guests and our staff safe and secure.
We do not use your data for automated decision-making or profiling.
4. How long we keep it
- Guest registration data is kept for the period required by Finnish law, and is then deleted.
- Booking and accounting records are kept for the statutory bookkeeping period.
- Enquiry emails and other correspondence are kept no longer than is necessary for the purpose they were sent for.
5. Who we share it with
We never sell your personal data, and we do not pass it to third parties for their own marketing.
We share data only with the processors we need in order to run the hotel — our booking provider, our payment provider and our email provider — each bound by a data processing agreement that limits them to acting on our instructions. We also disclose data to the authorities where the law requires it.
6. Transfers outside the EU and EEA
Your data is normally processed within the EU and the EEA. Where a service provider processes data outside that area, we allow the transfer only with appropriate safeguards in place, such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision covering the country concerned.
7. Your rights as a guest
Under the GDPR you have the right to:
- access the personal data we hold about you;
- have inaccurate data rectified;
- have data erased where we no longer have grounds to keep it;
- ask us to restrict processing;
- receive the data you gave us in a portable, machine-readable form;
- object to processing carried out on the basis of our legitimate interest.
Write to privacy@arcticvelahotel.com to exercise any of these rights. We may ask you to confirm your identity first, so that we never release one guest's data to another person. If you believe we have handled your data incorrectly, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Finnish Data Protection Ombudsman (Tietosuojavaltuutetun toimisto).
8. Cookies
This website uses only essential cookies — the small technical files needed for the pages to work correctly. We use no advertising cookies and no tracking cookies, and nothing here follows you across other websites.
9. How to contact us about privacy
For anything to do with privacy, write to privacy@arcticvelahotel.com, call +358 9 6820 7300, or send a letter to Arctic Vela Hotel Oy, Luotsikatu 12, 00160 Helsinki, Finland. Reception is open 24 hours a day and will make sure your message reaches the right person. We aim to answer every privacy request within one month.
