Wales brand and tourism marketing evaluation: visitor survey 2019 privacy notice

The Welsh Government has commissioned BVA BDRC to undertake a visitor survey as part of an evaluation of the Wales brand and tourism marketing. The aim of this evaluation is to provide information and evidence on tourism demand, brand perceptions and the performance of Visit Wales’ marketing activities. This information will be used by Visit Wales to help understand visitor needs so that tourism in Wales can be developed and promoted to meet these needs. As part of this evaluation, BVA BDRC will be gathering information through a follow-up online survey at the end of each calendar year, in this case for 2019.

The Welsh Government is the data controller for the research. However, BVA BDRC will delete any personal data provided through the survey, and anonymise the raw data, before it is shared with the Welsh Government.

The information collected during the project will be included in a report published on the Welsh Government website and possibly in other publications by BVA BDRC and Welsh Government.

Your participation in this research is completely voluntary. However your views and experiences are important in order to help inform Welsh Government policies.

The contact for this research at BVA BDRC is:

Jon Young
Email: jon.young@bva-bdrc.com
Telephone: 020 7400 1010

Personal data is defined under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as ‘any information relating to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified by reference to an identifier’.

The Wales Visitor Survey is sent to an eligible sample of contacts recruited from mini online recruitment surveys that run on Visit Wales websites and social media channels, and from mini online surveys that run on third party and partner digital sites. As part of this recruitment you provided your permission for Visit Wales to contact you to take part in this survey. Visit Wales will send out the email invites to the survey. When responding to the survey via the link in the email your email address is not captured as part of the survey data. Your survey responses will be accessed by BVA BDRC who will undertake the analysis on behalf of the Welsh Government.

As part of this research we will be collecting the following personal information:

• gender
• age (bracket)
• marital status
• presence of disabilities and impairments
• ethnicity
• sexuality

If you choose to provide your contact details to BVA BDRC, these will only be used to reply to any correspondence between you and them or for the purposes of the survey prize draw. You do not need to provide your contact details to take part in the survey.

If you choose to provide additional personal data as part of the research we will try not to identify you from, or link your identity to, the responses you provide. If you raise a query or complaint and provide personal data requesting a response, the researcher will forward the request only to the relevant official and subsequently delete it from the research data.

Any personal data collected via the survey is anonymised at the outset of the online survey and any information relating to an identifiable person will not be collected or processed with the survey responses.

The lawful basis for processing information in this data collection exercise is our public task; that is, exercising our official authority to undertake the core role and functions of the Welsh Government. Some of the data we are collecting are called ‘special category data’ (in this case, disability, ethnicity and sexuality) and the lawful basis for processing this information is that it is for statistical or research purposes.

Participation is completely voluntary. Research studies such as this are important for the Welsh Government to collect information and actionable evidence about its ability to deliver government priorities. The information collected in this research, for example, might be used to measure the marketing impact of Visit Wales.

Personal information provided to BVA BDRC is always stored on a secure server. The data can only be accessed by a limited number of researchers working on this project. BVA BDRC will only use this data for research purposes. BVA BDRC has cyber essentials certification.

When conducting surveys, BVA BDRC use a survey software programme called Decipher. We have ensured that Decipher is GDPR compliant and meets our expectations in terms of the security of any data collected via the software (for example all data is processed within the EEA).

BVA BDRC has procedures to deal with any suspected data security breaches. If a suspected breach occurs, BVA BDRC will report this to the Welsh Government who will notify you and any applicable regulator where we are legally required to do so.

All data gathered through this research will be reported in an anonymised format. It will not contain your contact details and any identifiable information in open-ended answers will be removed. BVA BDRC will use the information gathered to produce a report that will be published on the Welsh Government website. This report will not include any information that could be used to identify individual participants.

BVA BDRC will collect personal data as part of this contract, but any personal data will be deleted by BVA BDRC six months after you complete the survey. This includes your contact details if you have provided them. BVA BDRC will provide Welsh Government with tabulations of the data but will not send any individual level data and so Welsh Government will not receive any data that could identify you.

Under GDPR, you have the following rights in relation to the personal information you provide as part of this survey, you have the right:

• to access  a copy of your own data
• for us to rectify inaccuracies in that data
• to object to or restrict processing (in certain circumstances)
• for your data to be ‘erased’ (in certain circumstances)
• to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office who is our independent regulator for data protection

The contact details for the Information Commissioner’s Office are:

Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 01625 545 745 or 0303 123 1113
Website: Information Commissioner’s Office

If you have any further questions about how the data provided as part of this study will be used by the Welsh Government or wish to exercise your rights using the General Data Protection Regulation, please contact:

David Stephens
Email: tourismresearch@gov.wales
Telephone: 0300 025 5236

The Welsh Government’s Data Protection Officer can be contacted at:

Welsh Government
Cathays Park
Cardiff
CF10 3NQ
Email: dataprotectionofficer@gov.wales