Expedia Group Cookie Statement

Last updated: 21 August 2023

Cookies are small pieces of text sent as files to your computer or mobile device when you visit most websites. Cookies may be delivered by us (first-party cookies) or delivered by a third-party partner (third-party cookies). Cookies are either session cookies or persistent cookies. Session cookies enable sites to recognise and link the actions of a user during a browsing session, and expire at the end of each session. Persistent cookies help us recognise you as an existing user and these cookies are stored on your system or device until they expire—although you can delete them before the expiration date.

• Web beacons, GIFs and clear GIFs are tiny graphics, each with a unique identifier that are embedded invisibly on sites and in emails. Web beacons allow us to know whether a certain page was visited or if ad banners on our sites and other sites are effective. We also use web beacons in our HTML-based emails to let us know whether our emails have been opened by recipients, which helps us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications, promotions and marketing campaigns.  
• Pixels are small objects embedded into a web page that are not visible to the user. We use pixels to deliver cookies to your computer, facilitate the login process, monitor the activity on our sites and deliver online advertising. 
• Tags are small pieces of HTML code that tell your browser to request certain content generated by an ad server. We use tags to show you relevant advertising and promotions. 
• Scripts are pieces of JavaScript code that launch automatically when certain web pages load, to determine whether users view associated advertisements. 
• Local Storage Objects, such as HTML 5, are used to store content and preferences. Third parties with whom we partner to provide certain features on our site to display advertising based on your web browsing activity use Local Storage Objects to collect and store information.  

All of the technologies described above will be collectively referred to in this Cookie Statement as ‘cookies’.

On this site, we may use cookies for a number of reasons, including to:  
 

• Help us improve your experience when visiting our sites; 
• Fulfil transactions and ensure our sites perform as intended; 
• Remember your preferences, such as language, region or currency; 
• Provide you with relevant advertising and analyse the performance of ads; 
• Enable you to return to previous searches or other information; 
• Identify errors on our sites; 
• Help with data protection and potentially detect and investigate malicious or fraudulent activity; 
• Help us understand traffic to our site, including the time and date of the visit, the time and date of the last visit and other information; 
• Analyse how well our sites are performing. 

The types of information that we collect through cookies may include: 
 

• IP address 
• Device ID 
• Viewed pages 
• Browser type 
• Browsing information 
• Operating system 
• Internet service provider 
• Whether you have responded to—or interacted with—an advertisement 
• Referring or referred links or URLs 
• Features used and activities engaged in on our sites. See the ‘Categories of personal information we collect’ section in our Privacy Statement for more information on what types of information are collected automatically. 

Certain cookies are required or ‘essential’ for our site to function as intended. Essential cookies are necessary for you to navigate our site and use certain features like logging in to your account and managing our services. These cookies are also used to remember security settings that allow access to particular content. Lastly, we use essential cookies to collect information on which web pages visitors go to most, so we can improve our online services. You are not able to opt out of essential cookies.

We may also use other types of cookies to make our site engaging and useful to you: 
 

• Functional cookies. We want to make sure that your preferences (such as your preferred language), settings and previous searches are remembered when you visit our site. Functional cookies enhance your experience on this site. 
• Performance cookies. We use performance cookies to: 
• Understand this site’s performance and how it is used, including the number of visitors, how long you stay on the site and which parts of the site you visit. We can see details about how visitors interacted with the site, like the number of clicks visitors made on a given page, their mouse movements and scrolling activity, the search words visitors used and the text visitors enter into various fields. 
• Test different designs and features for this site. 
• Monitor how our visitors reach this site. 
• Determine the effectiveness of our advertising. 
• Improve our services, including your experience on this site. 

For analytics, our third-party service providers may use cookies to perform their services, and may combine the information that they collect about you on our site with other information that they have collected. For example, we use Google Analytics cookies to monitor the performance of our site. Our ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visit to our site is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy. This Cookie Statement does not cover such third parties’ use of your information. 

Some Analytics cookies can perform tasks that are essential and/or functional to online services, like enabling site improvements and testing changes on a site.   
 

• Targeting cookies. Expedia Group and our third-party advertising partners may use advertising cookies to show you advertisements both on and off our site that are based on your interests. We may allow third parties to collect information about your online activities through cookies to perform their services, and may combine the information they collect about you on our site with other information that they have collected. These third parties include business partners who collect information when you view or interact with one of (1) their advertisements on our site or (2) our advertising or booking information on their sites and advertising networks, which collect information about your interests when you view or interact with one of the advertisements or tracking mechanisms they place on many different sites on the internet. Our partners may make assumptions about your interests, characteristics or preferences and add you to groups based on those assumptions in order to show you tailored advertisements. Expedia Group does not have access to the cookies these third parties may use to collect information about your interests, and the information practices of these third parties are not covered by this Cookie Statement nor our Privacy Statement. Some of these companies are members of the Network Advertising Initiative, which offers a single location to opt out of ad targeting from member companies. To learn more, please click here and here. 

You can choose not to receive tailored online advertising on this site and other sites, and learn more about opting out of having your information used for tailored advertising purposes by accessing one of the following resources: 
 

• For EEA, Switzerland and UK:  http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/
• For Canada:  http://youradchoices.ca/choices/
• For US and rest of world: 
  • http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ 
  • http://optout.networkadvertising.org/ 

Please note that if you choose not to receive tailored ads, you will still see online advertisements, but they will be general and less relevant to you.

You can set or amend your web browser controls to accept or refuse cookies whenever you like. However, please remember that if you do choose to reject cookies, your access to some of the functionality and areas of our site may be restricted. 

You can change your setting at any time by managing your cookie preferences.

Some web browsers may transmit ‘do-not-track’ signals to sites with which the browser communicates. Due to differences in how web browsers incorporate and activate this feature, it is not always clear whether users intend for these signals to be transmitted, or whether users are even aware of them. Participants in the leading organisation for setting internet standards that is addressing this issue are in the process of determining what, if anything, sites should do when they receive such signals. We currently do not take action in response to these signals. If and when a final standard is established and accepted, we will reassess our sites’ responses to these signals and make appropriate updates to this Cookie Statement.

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, please contact us via the ‘Contact us’ section of our Privacy Statement here. 

We may update this Cookie Statement in response to changing laws or technical or business developments. You can see when this Cookie Statement was last updated by checking the ‘last updated’ date displayed at the top of this Statement.