Last updated: 9 August 2026
AKIN Travel Pty Ltd (ABN 43 686 493 201) and its related bodies corporate, (AKIN, we, us or our) recognise the importance of protecting the privacy and the rights of individuals in relation to their personal information. This document is our privacy policy and it tells you how we collect and manage your personal information.
We respect your rights to privacy under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) and we comply with all of the Privacy Act’s requirements in respect of the collection, management and disclosure of your personal information. Where our Members are located in the European Union or United Kingdom, we also comply with the requirements of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) respectively. Where our Members are located in California, we also comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA).
Capitalised terms used in this document that are not otherwise defined have the meaning given to them in our AKIN Travel Loyalty Program – Customer Terms and Conditions.
When used in this privacy policy, the term “personal information” has the meaning given to it in the Privacy Act. In general terms, it is any information that can be used to personally identify you. This may include your name, address, telephone number, email address and profession or occupation. If the information we collect personally identifies you, or you are reasonably identifiable from it, the information will be considered personal information.
We may collect the following types of personal information about you:
We may also collect some information that is not personal information because it does not identify you or anyone else. For example, we may collect anonymous answers to surveys or aggregated information about how users use our website.
We generally collect your personal information directly from you unless it is unreasonable or impracticable to do so. When collecting personal information from you, we may collect in ways including:
We may also collect personal information about you from third parties, such as:
We may combine different information that we hold about you to create derived information about you.
Where a Partner or Partner staff member creates a Member Account on your behalf, that Partner is required under our Partner Terms and Conditions to obtain your consent before doing so. If you believe a Member Account has been created for you without your knowledge or consent, please contact us at privacy@akintravel.com and we will investigate and, if appropriate, delete the account.
If you provide us with personal information about a third party (for example if you provide your emergency contact), you must inform that person that their details have been provided to AKIN and that they are aware of this Privacy Policy.
In some cases we may also collect your personal information through the use of cookies and pixel tags on our website, mobile apps, email messages and advertisements.
The tracking technologies we place in our emails help measure the effectiveness of our email campaigns by identifying the individuals who interacted with the email and actions taken with the email, and device and browser information about the device used to deliver the email.
We use and disclose the information collected by these tracking technologies for the purposes of improving our platform, measuring the effectiveness of our communications, and delivering AKIN's own marketing communications to you through third-party advertising platforms (such as Meta and Google). Where we use third-party advertising platforms for this purpose, those platforms are contractually required to process your information only to deliver AKIN's communications to you and are not authorised by AKIN to use your information for their own advertising purposes or to build advertising profiles about you for use by others.
We do not sell your personal information to third parties, and we do not share your personal information with third parties for their own advertising or marketing purposes.
We may log IP addresses (that is, the electronic addresses of computers connected to the internet) to analyse trends, administer the website, track users movements, and gather broad demographic information. Travel Credit transaction records are retained for at least 7 years for financial and tax compliance purposes; records of conversations with our AI chat assistant are retained for 12 months; full IP addresses are anonymised after 90 days and are not retained in identifiable form beyond that period.
If you do not provide us with the personal information described above, some or all of the following may happen:
We collect personal information about you so that we can perform our business activities and functions and to operate our AKIN Travel Loyalty Program and AKIN Platform.
We collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:
AKIN Travel Loyalty Program and other products and services
Emergency contact details
Communication and marketing
Web, app and account features
Insights, research and development
Business processing
Your personal information will not be shared, sold, rented or disclosed other than as described in this Privacy Policy.
This section applies to Members located in the European Union or United Kingdom. Under the EU GDPR and UK GDPR, we are required to identify a lawful basis for each purpose for which we process your personal information. The table below sets out the lawful basis we rely on for each category of processing.
| Purpose | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Creating and administering your Member Account, including allocating your Membership Number and Membership Tier | Contract performance — processing is necessary to perform the AKIN Travel Loyalty Program agreement you enter into when you register as a Member |
| Crediting AKIN Points for qualifying stays and administering Origin Partner attribution | Contract performance — necessary to deliver the core mechanics of the loyalty program you have signed up for |
| Crediting, redeeming and administering your Travel Credit balance | Contract performance — necessary to administer the Travel Credit you earn and redeem as part of the loyalty program |
| Enabling authorised Partner staff to view your Membership Tier, your progress toward your next Membership Tier (without your AKIN Points balance), contact details and upcoming bookings at their properties in order to provide your AKIN Benefits | Contract performance — necessary to deliver the benefits you are entitled to under the program |
| Processing Partner Portal admin user personal information for the purpose of administering access to and use of the AKIN Partner Portal | Contract performance — processing is necessary to perform the AKIN Travel Loyalty Program agreement between AKIN and the Partner. Partner staff admin data is not shared with third parties and is retained only for as long as the individual holds an active admin role, or as required by applicable law. |
| Maintaining audit logs of account activity, Membership Tier changes, and authorised staff access events | Legitimate interests — AKIN has a legitimate interest in maintaining security, accountability and regulatory compliance records. This processing is proportionate and does not override your interests or rights |
| Administering white-label loyalty programs powered by AKIN | Contract performance — where you have enrolled in a white-label program, processing is necessary to deliver that program |
| Fraud prevention, platform security and abuse detection | Legitimate interests — AKIN has a legitimate interest in protecting the integrity of the program and the security of Members' accounts. This processing does not override your interests or rights |
| Sending transactional and account communications (booking confirmations, tier change notifications, account alerts) | Contract performance — communications that are necessary to manage your membership and keep you informed about your account |
| Sending direct marketing communications (promotional emails, partner offers) | Consent — we will only send marketing communications where you have expressly opted in. You may withdraw consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal, and without affecting your Membership, Membership Tier, AKIN Points or AKIN Benefits |
| Delivering AKIN's marketing communications through third-party advertising platforms (such as Meta and Google) acting as our service providers | Consent — where you have opted in to marketing, we may use advertising platforms as processors to deliver those communications to you. Those platforms are not permitted to use your data for their own purposes |
| Personalised accommodation recommendations and search ranking via our AI-powered personalisation engine | Legitimate interests — AKIN has a legitimate interest in improving your experience on the platform through relevant recommendations. You may opt out of personalised recommendations at any time without affecting your Membership status or Membership Tier |
| Automated Membership Tier determination by our loyalty tier rules engine | Contract performance — tier determination is a core and necessary function of the loyalty program. You have the right to request human review of any tier outcome, via the support chat on our platform. |
| Analysing platform usage and compiling aggregated, de-identified insights | Legitimate interests — AKIN has a legitimate interest in understanding how the platform is used in order to improve it. Where possible this processing uses anonymised or aggregated data that does not identify you |
| Sharing de-identified aggregated insights with Partners | Legitimate interests — Partners have a legitimate interest in understanding booking trends within their network. Data is anonymised before sharing and cannot be used to identify individual Members |
| Complying with legal obligations (tax records, regulatory requests, data breach notification) | Legal obligation — processing is necessary to comply with applicable laws including the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the EU GDPR and UK GDPR |
| Retaining booking and transaction records for financial and tax compliance | Legal obligation — records are retained for 7 years in accordance with applicable financial regulatory requirements |
| Processing job applications and administering employment relationships | Contract performance — necessary to assess your application and, if engaged, to administer your employment |
| Internal staff account access and supervised impersonation sessions for support and troubleshooting | Legitimate interests — AKIN has a legitimate interest in being able to provide effective customer support and investigate technical issues. All such sessions are explicitly initiated, time-limited and fully audited |
Where we rely on legitimate interests as our lawful basis, we have assessed that our interests are not overridden by your interests, rights or freedoms. You have the right to object to processing carried out on this basis — see 'Additional rights for EU, UK and California members' below. If you object, we will cease that processing unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds that override your interests.
Where we rely on consent, you may withdraw it at any time by contacting us at privacy@akintravel.com or by using the unsubscribe facility in any marketing communication. Withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before the withdrawal.
We may disclose your personal information:
We may provide aggregated, de-identified data and insights derived from Member activity to our Partners. This data is anonymised before sharing and is not in a form that can reasonably be used to identify any individual member. Partners are contractually prohibited from attempting to re-identify any Member from this data.
We may disclose information that is not your personal information (including non-identifying information that is compiled or derived from your personal information) to any person at our discretion.
Authorised AKIN personnel (specifically those with Admin and Super Admin roles) may access Member Account data for customer support, dispute resolution, fraud investigation, technical troubleshooting, and regulatory compliance. In limited circumstances, authorised AKIN personnel may access your account in a supervised mode that allows them to view your account as you would see it. All such sessions are explicitly initiated, automatically terminated after 60 minutes, and fully and permanently audited, including the staff member’s identity, the duration of the session, and all actions taken.
We will only send you direct marketing communications where you have expressly opted in to receive them. You may opt out of receiving marketing communications from us at any time by using the unsubscribe facility in any marketing communication or by contacting us using the details below. Opting out of marketing communications will not affect transactional communications necessary for your Membership (such as booking confirmations and account alerts).
You may request access to any personal information we hold about you at any time by contacting us (see the details below). Where we hold information that you are entitled to access, we will try to provide you with suitable means of accessing it (for example, by mailing or emailing it to you). The first copy of your personal data will be provided free of charge, however for subsequent requests we may charge you a fee to cover our administrative and other reasonable costs in providing the information to you. We will not charge for simply making the request and will not charge for making any corrections to your personal information.
There may be instances where we cannot grant you access to the personal information we hold. For example, we may need to refuse access if granting access would interfere with the privacy of others or if it would result in a breach of confidentiality. If that happens, we will give you written reasons for any refusal.
If you believe that personal information we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate, then you may request us to amend it. We will consider if the information requires amendment. If we do not agree that there are grounds for amendment then we will add a note to the personal information stating that you disagree with it.
For Members located in the EU or UK (GDPR / UK GDPR)
In addition to the rights described above, if you are located in the European Union or United Kingdom, you have the following rights in relation to your personal information: the right to erasure (‘right to be forgotten’); the right to restrict processing; the right to data portability (to receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format); the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests; the right not to be subject to solely automated decisions that have a legal or similarly significant effect on you without the ability to request human review (see ‘Automated decisions’ below); and the right to lodge a complaint with your national data protection supervisory authority (a list of EU authorities is available at edpb.europa.eu; the UK authority is the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk).
For Members located in California (CCPA / CPRA)
If you are a California resident, you have the following additional rights: the right to know the categories of personal information we collect, the purposes for which it is used, and the parties to whom it is disclosed; the right to delete your personal information (subject to legal exceptions); the right to correct inaccurate personal information; the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising (we do not sell or share personal information for this purpose, so you have this right by default); the right to limit our use of sensitive personal information to that which is necessary to provide the service; and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights. Exercising any of the above rights will not affect your AKIN Membership, Membership Tier, AKIN Points or AKIN Benefits.
If you believe that your privacy has been breached, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact information below and provide details of the incident so that we can investigate it.
We request that complaints about breaches of privacy be made in writing to our Privacy Officer (using the contact details below), so we can be sure about the details of the complaint. We will attempt to confirm as appropriate and necessary with you your understanding of the conduct relevant to the complaint and what you expect as an outcome. We will inform you whether we will conduct an investigation, the name, title, and contact details of the investigating officer and the estimated completion date for the investigation process.
After we have completed our enquiries, we will contact you, usually in writing, to advise the outcome and invite a response to our conclusions about the complaint. If we receive a response from you, we will assess it and advise if we have changed our view.
If you are not satisfied with the way your privacy-related complaint is handled by us, you may refer your complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). Details of how to lodge a complaint with the OAIC may be found at www.oaic.gov.au or by calling 1300 363 992.
AKIN powers white-label loyalty programs for select Partner chains. If you enrol in one of these programs, your AKIN Membership Tier, Origin Partner attribution, Membership Tier progression, and AKIN Points will be shared with that white-label Partner to power their branded loyalty interface. Your contact details (email address and phone number) will also be shared with that white-label Partner, but only where you have separately consented to receive marketing communications from that white-label Partner. The white-label Partner’s platform will display your white-label program tier and may also display your underlying AKIN Membership Tier, otherwise this will be available through the AKIN Platform. Enrolment in a white-label program is voluntary and separate from your core AKIN Travel Loyalty Program membership. The terms, conditions and privacy policies of those Partners govern their white-label loyalty programs.
We use online services (also known as cloud services) to operate our business. Your information may be disclosed to, or stored and processed in the United States, the European Economic Area and other locations where our service providers are located or maintain servers.
Some of our Partners and providers of AKIN Benefits may be located outside Australia, or may have service providers that are located outside Australia. Where your information is disclosed to these Partners and providers, your information may be disclosed to, or stored and processed in locations outside Australia. It is not practicable for us to specify those countries in this policy.
Where we transfer personal information from the European Economic Area or United Kingdom to countries without an adequacy decision, we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission or, for UK transfers, the UK International Data Transfer Agreement.
We take reasonable steps to ensure that the overseas recipients of your personal information do not breach the privacy obligations relating to your personal information.
When you complete a stay from a booking made through the AKIN Platform, your Origin Partner receives some details regarding the booking and may receive a commission for that booking. Your Origin Partner does not receive your name, booking destination, dates, or profile information, only an anonymised commission report. Commission records are retained for 7 years for financial and tax compliance purposes.
We employ the following automated decision making systems that may significantly affect the rights or interests of an individual. Where we use artificial intelligence tools provided by third-party service providers, we require those providers to process your personal information only in accordance with our instructions and applicable data protection laws. Third-party AI providers are contractually prohibited from using your personal information to train their own models or for any purpose beyond delivering the contracted service to AKIN.
| Description of the automated decision system | The kinds of personal information that is used by such system | The kinds of decisions that are: (i) made solely by such system; and (ii) substantially and directly related to a thing done by such systems |
|---|---|---|
| Loyalty tier determination engine | Stay history (check-in/check-out dates, booking value, property), AKIN Points balance, Origin Stays, Network Stays, white-label tier equivalence achievements | (i) Decisions solely made by the system: Membership Tier upgrades and downgrades (Tier A, K, I, or N) applied automatically at checkout based on qualifying thresholds. (ii) Decisions that are substantially and directly related to a thing done by the AKIN Platform: Availability and quantum of AKIN Benefits and AKIN Points. |
| AI-powered personalisation engine | Booking history, stated preferences, search behaviour on the AKIN Platform | (i) Decisions solely made by the AKIN Platform: Accommodation recommendations and search ranking presented to the Members. (ii) Decisions that are substantially and directly related to a thing done by the AKIN Platform: Content and ordering of Member-facing recommendations; personalised offers presented during the booking flow. Members may opt out of personalised recommendations at any time without affecting Membership status or Membership Tier. |
We retain your personal information for no longer than is necessary for the purposes described in this privacy policy, subject to our legal obligations. As a guide: active Membership Account data is retained for the duration of Membership plus 3 years after closure; booking and transaction records are retained for at least 7 years from the transaction date (for tax and financial regulatory compliance); audit logs of account activity and staff access events are retained for at least 7 years; marketing consent records are retained until consent is withdrawn plus 3 years; full IP addresses are anonymised after 90 days. Where you request deletion of your Membership Account, we will delete your personal information within 30 days except where we are required to retain it by law, in which case we will tell you what we have retained and why.
We take reasonable steps to ensure your personal information is protected from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We may hold your information in either electronic or hard copy form. We take reasonable steps to securely destroy or de-identify personal information when no longer needed.
Our security measures include encryption of data in transit (TLS 1.2 or higher) and at rest (AES-256 or equivalent); password hashing using industry-standard one-way algorithms (plain-text passwords are never stored); role-based access controls ensuring staff access only the data necessary for their role; full audit logging of all administrative actions and data access events; PCI-DSS compliant payment processing (full card data never passes through AKIN systems); and regular security assessments and penetration testing. In the event of a data breach that is likely to result in serious harm to you, we will notify the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and will contact affected members directly, in accordance with our obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). For EU and UK members, we will notify the relevant supervisory authority within 72 hours of becoming aware of a breach that is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms.
With your consent, calls with our support team may be recorded and/or monitored for quality assurance, coaching and training purposes. As part of any recording, we may collect information such as the identity of the caller, the date and time of the call, and the subject matter of the enquiry. Any financial information discussed during a support call is not retained by AKIN.
Our website and mobile apps may contain links to other websites operated by third parties. We make no representations or warranties in relation to the privacy practices of any third party website and we are not responsible for the privacy policies or the content of any third party website. Third party websites are responsible for informing you about their own privacy practices.
If you have any questions about this privacy policy, any concerns or a complaint regarding the treatment of your privacy or a possible breach of your privacy, please use the contact link on our website or contact our Privacy Officer using the details set out below.
We will treat your requests or complaints confidentially. Our representative will contact you within a reasonable time after receipt of your complaint to discuss your concerns and outline options regarding how they may be resolved. We will aim to ensure that your complaint is resolved in timely and appropriate manner.
Please contact our Privacy Officer at:
Privacy Officer, AKIN Travel Pty Ltd. Post: West Carr and Harvey, East 13, Federal Mills Park, 33 Mackey Street, North Geelong, VIC 3215, Australia. Email: privacy@akintravel.com
VeraSafe has been appointed as AKIN Travel Pty Ltd's representative in the European Union for data protection matters, pursuant to Article 27 of the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union. If you are in the European Economic Area, VeraSafe can be contacted in addition to our Privacy Officer at privacy@akintravel.com, only on matters related to the processing of personal data. To make such an inquiry, please contact VeraSafe using this contact form: https://verasafe.com/public-resources/contact-data-protection-representative or via telephone at: +420 228 881 031. Alternatively, VeraSafe can be contacted at:
VeraSafe Ireland Ltd. Unit 3D North Point House, North Point Business Park, New Mallow Road, Cork T23AT2P, Ireland
VeraSafe has been appointed as AKIN Travel Pty Ltd's representative in the United Kingdom for data protection matters, pursuant to Article 27 of the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation. If you are located within the United Kingdom, VeraSafe can be contacted in addition to or instead of our Privacy Officer at privacy@akintravel.com, only on matters related to the processing of personal data. To make such an inquiry, please contact VeraSafe using this contact form: https://verasafe.com/public-resources/contact-data-protection-representative or via telephone at: +44 (20) 4532 2003. Alternatively, VeraSafe can be contacted at:
VeraSafe United Kingdom Ltd. 37 Albert Embankment, London SE1 7TL, United Kingdom
We may change this privacy policy from time to time. For material changes, that is, changes that affect your rights, how we use your personal information, or the parties to whom it is disclosed, we will notify you by email at least 30 days before the change takes effect and will display a prominent notice in your Member Account. Any updated versions of this privacy policy will be posted on the AKIN Platform. Previous versions are available on request.
This privacy policy was last updated on 9 August 2026.
