Generally-speaking, we use 1st and 3rd-party session and persistent cookies. The cookies set by us are called "1st party cookies’ and the cookies set by our third-party partners and service providers are called ‘3rd party cookies.’
Session cookies are temporary cookies that remain on your device until you close your web browser. Many session cookies are essential to make our Websites work correctly, as they enable you to move around our Websites and use our features.
Persistent cookies remain on your device for much longer or until you manually delete it (how long the cookie remains on your device will depend on the duration or "lifetime" of the specific cookie and your browser settings). Persistent cookies help us recognize you as an existing user of our Websites, so it’s easier and convenient to return to our Websites or interact with our Services without signing in again. In addition, persistent cookies also help us recognize you when you view a resource belonging to our Website from another website or an app (such as an advertisement) and help us record information about your web browsing habits during the lifetime of the persistent cookie.
1st and 3rd-party session and persistent cookies can be categorized further based on their particular function. Please see below for the categories of cookies that we use (which may originate from a 1st-party or 3rd-party domain), along with a description of their purposes:
Strictly Necessary Cookies
These cookies are strictly necessary for our Website to function properly and ensure our Services are accessible to you (e.g., log-in functionalities, load balancing, fraud detection and security, navigation, filling in forms). You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies but then some parts of the site will not then work.
Performance Cookies
Performance cookies allow us (i) insight into analytics, such as visit count, “events” (e.g., tracking clicks, searches, or other actions taken by a user), most to least popular pages, most to least popular origin/destinations, and traffic sources, (ii) A/B testing between different versions of the Website, and (iii) browser session recording and feedback (e.g., for analyzing or replicating bugs or user experience issues), for the purpose of optimizing the performance of our Website.
Functional Cookies
Functional cookies enable us to personalize your experience on the Website (e.g., find the best or most relevant deals for you) through development of a user profile. This profile would include information such as username, searches or bookings made, propensity to make bookings across products, and other user demographics (e.g., type of traveler, search preferences, geolocation data).
Advertising Cookies
These cookies help us serve our own ads on third-party websites, serve our advertising partners’ ads on our Website, analyze the effectiveness of these advertising campaigns, limit the number of times you see an ad (also known as “frequency capping”), track whether ads have been properly displayed, and prevent ad fraud.
Social Media Cookies
These cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share or "like" our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies, you may not be able to use these social media functionalities.