Privacy Policy

Introduction: Benchmark Hospitality International has a strong commitment to providing excellent service to all of our customers, including respecting their concerns about privacy. We understand that visitors to our website may have questions about how this website collects and uses information. We have prepared this statement to inform you of the privacy principles that govern benchmarkhospitality.com (including all Benchmark managed individual property websites).

This statement contains numerous general and technical details about the steps we take to respect your privacy concerns. The bottom line is that meeting your needs and expectations form the foundation of everything we do - including protecting your privacy.

If you have any questions about this privacy statement or privacy concerns please send an e-mail to privacy@benchmarkmanagement.com or send a letter to
Benchmark Hospitality International
Att: Privacy Protection
2170 Buckthorne Place
The Woodlands, TX 77380-1719

Browsing: This website does not collect personally identifiable information from your computer when you browse the site. This means that, unless you voluntarily and knowingly provide us with personally identifiable information, we will not know your name, your e-mail address, or any other personally identifiable information.

Internet Protocol (IP) Address: An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer when you browse the Internet. When users request a page from our site, our servers log the user's current IP address. We use IP addresses to help diagnose problems. We do not link IP addresses to any personally identifiable information about you.

Cookies: Our website uses cookie technology. Cookies are strings of text that a website may store on a user's computer. Our website uses cookies but only requires them in the online reservation process. Cookies enable our website to keep track of your preferences and activities relating to the website. Our website creates session cookies for each visit in order to facilitate your visit. The session cookie expires at the end of the session.

• Use of Cookies and E-Mails - We use a third party service provider to send marketing e-mails on behalf of Benchmark. There are no cookies in the e-mail. However, when an e-mail recipient clicks on a link to the Benchmark Hospitality International website included in the e-mail, a persistent cookie is placed on the user's computer. This cookie is used to measure the effectiveness of our e-mail marketing efforts and better understand how our users navigate through the site. The cookie set by our service provider will remain on your hard drive 30 days after the last time you clicked on the coded link in the e-mail, or until you delete it.
• Use of Cookies for Advertising - we use third party service providers to serve and host our advertisements. These third parties use persistent cookies to track the number of times our site is accessed and whether the site was accessed from the advertisement. The cookies generated from the advertisements do not contain personally identifiable information and may remain on your hard drive three or more years unless deleted by you.

The third party service providers mentioned above are contractually bound not to use any information they gather for any purpose other than providing services to us. Cookies do not corrupt or damage your computer or computer files. In addition, we do not use cookies to gather information concerning your visits to non-Benchmark websites. If you do not wish to receive these cookies, you may set your browser to reject the cookies (consult the instructions for your particular browser on how to do this), although doing so may affect your ability to perform certain transactions on our website.

Pixel Tags: The third party service providers mentioned above serve and host Benchmark advertisements on other sites. To track the effectiveness of Benchmark Hospitality International advertisements on other sites, benchmarkhospitality.com uses pixel tags (also known as clear gifs, beacon gifs, 1-by-1 gifs, or web bugs). Pixel tags are not visible to the user of the site and consist of a few lines of computer coding. If you are visiting benchmarkhospitality.com from an advertisement on another site, the pixel tag references the cookie you received when you clicked on the advertisement. The pixel tag then registers this activity with the third party advertising company to allow us to count the number of times an advertisement is accessed. In addition, we also measure the reservations generated from a particular ad. At no time is personally identifiable information about you or your reservation collected by the third party advertising company, nor is any tracking information generated from the pixel tag allowed to be used by them for any other purpose other than to report website activity to us or allow us to better target future interactive advertising.

Our third party service providers may use pixel tags in Benchmark marketing e-mails that help us send the e-mail in a format you can read, to allow us to know which e-mails you act upon and to better target the content of future e-mails. In addition, we track the aggregate number of e-mails read and whether any of the links in the e-mail were accessed. No other information is collected or used from pixel tags.

Information We Collect: When we need to collect personally identifiable information from you, we will ask you to voluntarily supply us with the information we need. For example, if you would like to make a reservation at one of our hotels, we will ask you for information such as name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, credit card number, and room preference to process your reservation. We may use your e-mail address to send a confirmation and, if necessary, might use the other information to contact you for help to process the reservation. The same types of information would be requested to complete a gift certificate transaction. As indicated below (see E-Mail section), we may also use your e-mail address to notify you about special offers and promotions.

Securing the Transmission and Storage of Information: When we ask you for credit card data when making a reservation or purchasing a gift certificate, it is transferred over a Secured Sockets Layer (SSL) line provided you are using a SSL enabled browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. We also use SSL on other select pages where you would enter personally identifiable information. This ensures that your information is encrypted as it travels over the Internet. This secure mode is enabled before any such information is transmitted from your computer. You will know you are in secure mode when the padlock or key icon in the lower right-hand or left-hand corner of the computer screen appears in the locked position. In addition, when accessing a secure server, the first characters of the site address will change from http to https. After information reaches Benchmark it is stored on a secure server that resides behind firewalls designed to block unauthorized access from outside the Company.

E-Mail: It is our intention to only send you e-mail communications that will be useful to you and that you want to receive. When you make a reservation and provide your e-mail address, we will occasionally contact you via e-mail and provide information about special offers and promotions that may be of interest to you. These communications will relate to Benchmark Hospitality International offers and/or the promotions of select, reputable third parties with whom Benchmark has a strategic marketing relationship because they offer products or services that we believe would of interest to you. We use a third party e-mail service provider to send e-mails. This service provider is prohibited from using your e-mail address for any purpose other than to send Benchmark related e-mail. Every time you receive e-mail you will be provided the choice to opt-out of future e-mails by following the instructions provided in the e-mail, or you may opt-out by updating your online profile.

Benchmark Hospitality International Use of Information: We treat the information you provide to us as confidential information; it is, accordingly, subject to our company's security procedures and strict corporate policies regarding protection and use of confidential information. Because laws applicable to personal information vary by country, our hotels or other business operations may put in place additional measures that vary depending on the applicable legal requirements. Information collected on the sites covered by this privacy statement, which are listed in the first paragraph, is generally processed and stored in the United States.

The personally identifiable information you provide to us for making a reservation is made available to the applicable hotel for the purpose of meeting your reservation request. If you cancel your reservation, the information is stored for recordkeeping purposes only and is not accessed again. After making a reservation or completing your stay at a Benchmark hotel, unless you tell us otherwise, the information you provide may be used by us for direct marketing of a Benchmark hotel, other Benchmark products or the products of select, reputable third parties with whom Benchmark has a strategic marketing relationship because they offer products or services that we believe would of interest to you. Benchmark Hospitality International may use the services of a third party mail house for the sole purpose of mailing materials.

Disclosure of Information to Third Parties: Benchmark Hospitality International prohibits the sale or transfer of personal information to entities outside of the Benchmark Hospitality International for their use without your approval.

How to Change Your Information: The personally identifiable information collected through this website is not accessible to you. If you believe the information you voluntarily provided us is not correct, or has changed, please send an email message to webmarketing@benchmarkmanagement.com explaining the correction or change and provide any relevant information.

Links to Other Sites: If you choose to leave this Benchmark site via links to other non-Benchmark websites, including those of advertisers, Benchmark is not responsible for the privacy policies or content of those sites, nor is Benchmark responsible for the cookies those sites use.

Legal Issues: This is a United States website and is subject to United States law. Benchmark will disclose personally identifiable information without your permission when required by law, or in good faith belief that such action is necessary to investigate or protect against harmful activities to Benchmark guests, visitors, associates, or property (including this site), or to others. As mentioned above, laws related to personal identifiable information vary by country. For example, personally identifiable information collected in the European Union is subject to the EU Data Protection Directive.

Privacy Policy Effective Date: The privacy policy is in effect at the time of each visit to our site. Please check our privacy policy each time you visit our website if you are concerned about how your information will be used.

Benchmarkhospitality.com Privacy Statement Changes: In the future, we may need to change the privacy statement for benchmarkhospitality.com. All changes will be made here so that you will always know what information we gather, how we might use that information and whether we will disclose it to anyone.