Collection of personal information and privacy

Introduction: This notice is provided because we propose to collect, or have collected personal information about you (i.e., information that identifies you or could be used to do so), via this website. While, as a small business, the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“Act”), and the Australian Privacy Principles set out in the Act may not apply to us, we nonetheless seek to treat privacy with due respect, and in line with the requirements of the Act.

Circumstances of collection: We collect your personal information (and, if you are to be accompanied by a guest, their personal information) when you submit a registration or application form to us via this website, to indicate your wish to participate in the conference/event.

Our identity and contact details: Personal information is collected by Expert Events Pty Ltd (ABN 35 619 941 561) (“Expert Events”). If you wish to communicate with us about privacy, we can be contacted by the following means:

Phone: +61 7 3848 2100
Email: admin@expertevents.com.au
Address: The Privacy and Data Protection Officer, Expert Events Pty Ltd, Suite 11, 137-143 Racecourse Road, Ascot, Queensland, Australia 4007

Ordinarily, we are engaged by our clients to manage their conferences and events, and to interact with participants as their agents. In those cases, we collect personal information for and on behalf of our client, the event/conference host.

Are there laws that require us to collect personal information? No, but we cannot manage this conference/event unless we do so. Also, for insurance, legal and tax purposes we may need to retain some of your personal information on our files after completion of our work.

What information do we collect and for what purposes? Generally, we collect your personal information so that we can interact with you and manage our commercial relationship with you. By doing so, we provide professional conference and event-management services for our client—the conference/event host.

Contact information: We usually collect names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses for contact and identification purposes.

If you are attending the conference/event, we may collect your personal information so that we can properly register you and accept your payments, facilitate your entry to the venue(s) and functions and conference sessions, and to arrange for various services to be provided to you, such as accommodation, transport, food and beverage.

If you are participating in the conference/event as a sponsor, exhibitor, speaker or presenter, we may collect your personal information so that we can manage your participation and presence, the supply of your inputs to the conference/event and manage the delivery of your benefits and entitlements.

Health and other sensitive information: In some cases, we may collect health information, where that may be relevant to the supply of food and beverage at events we manage, such as if you have special dietary needs. In some cases, we may also collect information concerning your religious, ethnic or philosophical background or allegiance, where that is relevant to food and beverage supplied at the conference/event, or relevant to other aspects of cultural sensitivity.

Where the conference/event is connected to a profession, trade or industry sector, and where our client/host is a professional or trade association, we may also collect information concerning your membership of a professional or trade association.

Credit-card details: If you are to pay for your attendance or other participation in this conference/event, we may also collect your credit-card details, or other particulars as may be necessary to process your payment. Payments made to us by credit card are subject to, and compliant with, Payment Card Industry (PCI) security protocols and we do not store your credit-card details. Where you submit credit-card details to us to book accommodation, we will have access to those details until the date that is 14 days after your check-out. In order to make payment, we disclose your credit-card details to the hotel or other supplier of accommodation and those details may be retained by those hotels and suppliers of accommodation as provided in their respective privacy policies and collection statements. They may retain your credit-card information in order to ensure full payment is made for room hire and other goods and services provided to you.

Other purposes: We may also use the information to advise you of services we provide and of conferences and events that we think you may be interested in.

If you are submitting personal information of a colleague or guest: If you are supplying us with personal information of a colleague, we ask that you provide a copy of this “Collection of personal information and privacy” statement to that person.

Consequences if we are unable to collect the personal information we seek: If we are unable to collect the personal information we ask for, the likely consequence is that we may not be able to achieve the purposes outlined above, or allow your participation in the conference/event.

Disclosure of personal information to others: When we manage a conference or event for a client, we do so as agent for and on behalf of our client, the event host. Accordingly, we will usually provide personal information (identity and contact details) collected in the course of managing their conferences and events to our clients.

If you are attending a conference/event that we are managing, we may disclose information about you that is necessary for us to provide our services, and for contracted suppliers to provide goods and services in connection with the conference/event. For example, depending on the nature and extent of your participation in the conference/event, we may disclose your information to the conference/event venue, the venues for social functions, accommodation suppliers, food and beverage suppliers, and suppliers of tour and travel services.

We may supply your personal information (identity and contact details) to sponsors of the conference/event.

If you consent in the form you submit, we may also publish photos and/or film footage in which you may appear on the event website, social media and other promotional platforms.

We may also disclose your personal information where required or permitted by law.

Disclosure of health and other sensitive information: In some cases, we may need to pass on health and other sensitive information (as defined above), where this is necessary for health reasons or to arrange the supply of culturally sensitive goods or services to you. For example, we may need to advise a food and beverage supplier if you have special dietary requirements that may be based on religious or philosophical beliefs, or because you have a particular food allergy.

Other disclosure: We may from time to time outsource management of certain functions, such as our website, the conference/event website and other information technology, including our database of contacts and clients, or marketing tasks. In such cases the external service provider may have access to your personal information.

Finally, we may also disclose your personal information to our professional advisers, such as our lawyers in any case where we need to seek advice, or to a purchaser of our business or part of our business. Other than in the context of a sale of our business or part of our business, we will not sell your personal information to third parties.

Your access rights to your personal information: With some exceptions, we will provide you with access to the personal information we hold about you, and enable you to have it corrected if required, generally in line with your access entitlements under the Act. The right of access is qualified because there are some circumstances in which we can withhold some or all of the information we hold.

Our privacy policy: Our broader privacy policy can be found at: https://www.expertevents.com.au/privacy-policy/. You can request a copy of our Privacy Policy at any time by contacting us as noted above. Our Privacy Policy contains details of how you can gain access to the personal information we hold about you, how you can seek correction of the information or make a complaint, and how we will deal with such requests and complaints.

Overseas disclosure of personal information: If the conference/event is taking place in a foreign country; if you are attending a conference from a foreign country; or if our client, the conference host, is located in another country, we may need to disclose your personal information to recipients in that country. If we need to disclose your personal information to any person overseas, we will not do so unless we have your consent or are satisfied that privacy laws in the overseas country provide similar protection for the privacy of the individual as applies in Australia under the Act.

European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

If the GDPR applies to our collection of your personal information, in addition to the foregoing, we notify you that:

• We are a “data processor” of your personal information, on behalf of our client, the event host.
• Our representative and Data Protection Officer is Ms Leanne Mulheran, who may be contacted as set out above.
• The categories of personal information we collect and our purposes of collection are set out above.
• Our client, for which we act as agent as noted above, has a legitimate interest in your personal information, because the contract with you for participation in the event lies between you and our client as a principal.
• The likely recipients or categories of recipients of your personal information and the purposes of our disclosure to them are set out above.
• If, in the satisfaction of the aforementioned purposes, we need to transfer your personal information to a third party, being a person or organisation in another country, we will take the following measures to safeguard your personal information:
  • We will make reasonable endeavours to seek inclusion of provisions in relevant contracts with such third parties, that require the third party to:
    • use your personal information solely for the purpose(s) for which the information is transferred to them; and
    • otherwise comply with the GDPR;
  • We will notify you in writing if we become aware of any data breach by the third party;
  • To the extent that we are able to do so, we will provide reasonable assistance to you in connection with any complaint you may have in connection with the third party’s use and management of your personal information.
• Save where retention periods are specified above, we will retain your personal information for such period as may be necessary to complete the contractual obligations of our client and to complete our services. We may also retain your personal information where necessary for legal, insurance and taxation purposes.
• You have the following rights:
  • The right to access – You have the right to request us to provide copies of your personal data.
  • The right to rectification – You have the right to request that we correct any information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request us to complete personal information that you believe to be incomplete.
  • The right to erasure – You have the right to request us to erase your personal data, under certain conditions.
  • The right to restrict processing – You have the right to request us to restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
  • The right to object to processing – You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
  • The right to data portability – You have the right to request that we transfer the data that we have collected to another organisation, or directly to you, under certain conditions.
  • The right to withdraw consent – If you provide us with a consent in connection with your personal information, you have the right to withdraw consent at any time, for future purposes.
  • The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.
• The provision of your personal data is required under your contract for registration for participation in the event. If you do not provide that personal data, we are unable to register you for participation in the event.

Where the GDPR applies, and there is overlap between our obligations under the GDPR and under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), we will comply with the higher standard of data protection.

Yours faithfully
Lidia Dalton

Director
Expert Events Pty Ltd