Cookies Policy

1. What are cookies and how are they used on this website?

Cookies are text files generated by a website and placed on your computer or on any other device you are using to access the website. Cookies are used on this website for various purposes including, to evaluate, develop and track website usage, improve your user experience and facilitate accommodation bookings, help your browser navigate the website, and to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information. Cookies from third parties facilitate targeted marketing on this and other websites and they are used to evaluate and compile statistical reports for us on website activity. Sections 2 - 6 below contain further details about the cookies used and their purposes.

Most of the cookies on this website do not capture a user's name or other information that would identify the user personally. They merely identify a computer or other device. All information collected by cookies on this website are anonymous.

However, some cookies operated by our technology providers (such as Google) may collect certain personal information. Please see below for an explanation of how you can find details on and manage these cookies.

Session cookies store information locally on your device for the duration of your visit and expire at the end of your browsing session, i.e. when you close your browser window the session, cookie and information it collected is deleted. Persistent cookies are stored on your computer or other device and they remain there after you close your session until you delete them manually or until your browser deletes them based on the pre-determined period contained within the persistent cookies file.

This website uses both first party and third-party cookies.

We have decided to categorise cookies used on our website based on the UK International Chamber of Commerce cookie guide, as follows:

"Strictly Necessary" Cookies – These are essential for the websites functionality and are used in order to enable users to move around this website and use its features.

"Performance" Cookies – These collect information about how users navigate this website, for instance which pages users access most frequently. They identify how users interact with our website, find out which pages seem to hold people up, which pages are not used often, which pages take a long time to load, which pages users tend to visit and in what order. All of this helps us to refine and develop our website to try and make it more user-friendly.

"Functionality" Cookies – These allow our website to remember choices you make. For example, the last date you’ve searched for or the last holiday you’ve viewed.

"Targeting" Cookies – These are used to deliver adverts relevant to an identified machine or device (i.e. mobile phone or tablet) which are tailored to interests associated with the website activity tied to that machine or device. These cookies are also used to limit the number of times a user sees an advertisement as well as to help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. They may also remember that this website has been visited from a device and share that information with marketing organisations. These types of cookies are operated by third parties with our permission.

We also use these cookies to measure the effectiveness of our advertising and to determine the frequency with which you are shown a particular advertisement.
For more general information about cookies and how to disable them through your browser, visit https://www.allaboutcookies.org/. 
You can control individual cookies on your browser at the Network Advertising Initiative's website or at Your Ad Choices website. 

2. Google Analytics & other Google services

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google Ireland Limited ("Google"). Google Analytics uses "cookies" to help us analyse how the site is used. The information generated by those cookies about your use of this website and your current IP-address will be transmitted by your browser to and will be stored by Google on servers in the United States and other countries. Google will use this information on our behalf for the purpose of evaluating your use of this website, compiling reports on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage to us. 

The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognize unique visitors.

Installed by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit.

The _gat cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites.

A variation of the _gat cookie set by Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to allow website owners to track visitor behaviour and measure site performance. The pattern element in the name contains the unique identity number of the account or website it relates to.

The test_cookie is set by doubleclick.net and is used to determine if the user's browser supports cookies. Google DoubleClick IDE cookies are used to store information about how the user uses the website to present them with relevant ads and according to the user profile.

You may choose not to opt-in to permit use of the Google cookies and thereafter you can prevent that use by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. You may also stop the transmission of information generated by the cookies about your use of this website and of your IP address to Google, by downloading and installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on available here: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Google also displays adverts for Argyll Holidays on third party websites.

Google will use cookies to display adverts on those third-party websites which may consider a user’s prior visits to this website.

You may opt-out of Google's interest-based advertising program by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page https://adssettings.google.co.uk/anonymous 

We combine data collected by Google Analytics to understand how anonymous users interact with this website after seeing our adverts. We do this to analyse and optimise our advertising campaigns.

3. Facebook

If you have a Facebook account and browse our website, Facebook will use cookies to enable them to offer you relevant information and products. It also helps them understand the information they receive from you. 

Our website also uses a Facebook Pixel, which is a web beacon to personalise advertising to you. You are able to manage your Facebook related marketing through the settings on your Facebook account. 

_fbp is the cookie set by Facebook to display advertisements when either on Facebook or on a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising, after visiting the website.

4. Hotjar

We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices. This includes a device's IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymised user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf. 

_hjid is a Hotjar cookie that is set when the customer first lands on a page using the Hotjar script.

Hotjar sets _hjFirstSeen to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false
value, indicating whether it was the first time Hotjar saw this user.

Hotjar sets _hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress to detect the first pageview session of a user. This is a True/False flag set by the cookie

For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site.

5. AppNexus

The uuid2 cookie is set by AppNexus and records information that helps in differentiating between devices and browsers. This information is used to pick out ads delivered by the platform and assess the ad performance and its attribute payment. 
AppNexus sets the anj cookie that contains data stating whether a cookie ID is synced with partners.

6. Popkit

Functional: The language cookie is used to store the language preference of the user.
Necessary: This cookie is native to PHP applications. The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. The cookie is a session cookies and is deleted when all the browser windows
are closed.

7. Does the policy apply to linked websites?

Our website contains various links to other websites. This cookie policy only applies to our website, so when you link to other websites you should refer to their own cookie policies.

8. How do we update our cookie policy?

We regularly review our cookie policy, and we post updates on our website. This cookie policy was last updated in November 2021.

9. Who can I contact if I have queries about this cookie policy?

Please contact us if you have any questions about our cookie policy.
By email: info@argyllholidays.com
By post: Marketing Dept, Argyll Holidays, Drimsynie Estate Office, Lochgoilhead, Argyll & Bute, PA24 8AD