Privacy Policy

The Ministry of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Telecommunication, and Traffic of the Government of Sint Maarten treats your privacy with the utmost respect and is dedicated to protecting your personal information. This Privacy Policy provides information on the personal data processing by the St. Maarten Tourism Bureau (STB), and explains what information is collected on this website, and how such information may be used. This Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected through this Site and not through any other sources. This Privacy Policy is subject to the terms of Use posted on this Site. Any changes to this Privacy Policy will be effective immediately upon the posting of the revised Privacy Policy on this Site. Your use of this Site constitutes your agreement to this Privacy Policy.If any proposed change is unacceptable to you, you may request that STB. removes your Personal Data from the records, using the privacy control tools set out in this privacy policy or by contacting us at info@vacationstmaarten.com.

This Privacy Policy covers the collection, use, storage, treatment, and disclosure of personal information we collect when you visit or use any of the websites that are owned, published, or operated by us (individually, the “website” and collectively, the “websites”). It also covers personal information disclosed to us via mail, our websites, or telemarketing.

DATA COLLECTED ON STB WEBSITES

During the length of your visit to STB’s Websites we may collect data for statistical purposes, data for tracking purposes, and personal information you provide for marketing purposes

Data for statistical purposes

STB uses Google Analytics to help us analyze how visitors use the website for the purposes of improving the visitor’s experience as well as the website’s performance. This information is gathered in aggregate form and does not contain any personal information

Data for tracking purposes

STB uses Google Analytics, as well as 3rd parties, to assist us with the marketing of St. Maarten as a tourism destination. These third parties use ‘cookies’ to store information about your visit to STB Websites for the purpose of providing you with targeted advertisements on other websites, to track your behavior online, and to receive insights from those 3rd parties about our target audiences and where to advertise.

STB will not allow the placement of cookies for the collection of data for tracking purposes without your explicit consent. This consent is requested and provided via the consent form on our website’s pages. Consent can be withdrawn at any time via the same consent form. For more information on how these third parties treat your personal information, please check their privacy policy (if available).

Information you provide

On STB Websites we also collect personal information through the use of forms with which you can provide us with personal information. These forms will include an option to give us your consent whether or not we can collect, hold, and share your information where applicable.

Examples of forms we use are newsletter subscription forms to let you subscribe to our newsletters or marketing updates, forms to enter contests or raffles to administer these contests or raffles and to collect email addresses for marketing, forms to download our visitor guides, as well as any surveys or quizzes placed on our website or sent via email marketing. In any case where you provide us with information about other people or businesses it is your responsibility to ensure that they are aware of the information you provide to STB and that they have given you permission to do so. 

Cookies

Our website uses Cookies. Cookies are small text files that are downloaded to the browser of a computer, tablet, or smartphone used to visit a website. A Cookie will identify your browser, help you log in and improve the navigation of a website. We use Cookies to help us improve the performance of our website.

Cookies allow us to review the number of visitors to our website and a visitor’s usage patterns; to track key performance indicators such as pages visited, frequency of visits, downloads, and other statistical information; whether a visitor views the mobile or desktop version of our website; to recognize you if you return to our website; to store information about your past visits, and to remember your preferences.

We use cookies in 3 different ways:

• For technical purposes.

These are cookies that are set to remember your choices during your visit and to prevent attacks on our website. These do not contain personal information.

• To measure statistical information.

These are cookies that are set by Google Analytics which allow it to measure visits to the website. We use this information to improve your experience on our website. These cookies do not contain personal information.

• For tracking purposes.

These are cookies that are set by third parties with the purpose of marketing St. Maarten(see ‘Data for tracking purposes’ for a full explanation). These cookies contain personal information and we do not allow placement of them without your consent.

Some third parties we use on STB Websites, most notably Google Maps and YouTube, may place cookies of their own. You can control their behavior through their own websites.

Protecting and sharing personal information

STB takes every reasonable step to safeguard your personal information and will not share it with unauthorized third parties to collect, hold, or share it.

Your personal information may be shared with:

• Legal and other professional advisers;

• Service providers contracted to us for IT and customer relationship management purposes;

Whenever STB shares information with third parties we will ensure that the contract we have with these third parties includes clauses pertaining to the confidentiality and security of any personal information shared with them.

STB will process and share personal information of our visitors with government- or law enforcement authorities in response to targeted requests for information.

Storing your personal information

Any personal information you consent to share with STB will be stored in accordance with our data retention policy and/or until you request your data to be removed. Clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link in an email received from STB will result in not receiving like emails anymore, but it will not necessarily remove all your information from our database.

STB takes technical and organizational measures to ensure personal information is safeguarded against unlawful processing, including loss of data, and unauthorized access. Should there occur a data breach CTB will inform you and applicable authorities of a suspected data breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data retention

For different kinds of personal information we use different data retention periods:

• For any cookies, user identifiers, and advertising identifiers we store with Google Analytics for the data retention period is 38 months. This period is reset on new activity on the website with consent.

• For your consent to place cookies for tracking purposes on the data retention period is 365 days. After this period the consent is expired and we will ask for it again on new activity.

• If you provide us with personal information for the purpose of sending you (electronic) marketing newsletters or special offers. This data will be retained until you indicate that you no longer want to receive this communication and you exercise your right to be forgotten (see below).

YOUR ACCESS TO YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

STB provides access to your own personal information and the ability to change, remove, and retrieve this information. With any such request we require you to provide adequate identification and to allow at most 30 days for processing said request.

If you have questions regarding your privacy, you can always contact us. If you feel that your data protection rights are not adequately respected, you can file a complaint with the relevant supervisory authority.

Where consent is used as a ground for processing, you can always withdraw your consent for that specific processing activity, and we will cease processing (unless other laws require us to continue certain processing activities).

Right to access

Should you wish to receive a copy of the personal information we have of you, you can contact us via one of the contact options below. Your information will be provided to you in a commonly used machine-readable format.

Right to rectification

If at any point you wish to change the personal information we have of you, you can contact us via one of the contact options below.

Right to be forgotten

If at any point you wish to completely remove the personal information we have of you, you can contact us via one of the contact options below.

Please note that the right to be forgotten applies to specific situations, e.g. where we are processing personal data based on consent and you have withdrawn your consent. If we are required to keep your data for specific purposes (e.g. to comply with tax legislation), we may not be able to delete your data completely.

Any request that, if executed, would not comply with the laws of Curaçao will be refused. The reason for not executing the request will be outlined in CTB’s response.

CONTACT

Please feel free to contact STB at any time with questions or requests. If you choose to contact us please keep in mind that our office hours are Monday – Friday between 9 AM and 5 PM in time zone UTC-4. Any communications that reach us outside of these hours will likely not be processed until the next working day at the earliest.

St. Maarten Tourism Bureau 
Krippa Commercial Building
6 Juancho Yrausquin Boulevard
Philipsburg, Sint Maarten
Phone: +1721-549-0200
Email: info@vacationstmaarten.com