Privacy Notice
This notice explains what information we collect when you apply for a role at HOTELA, why we collect it, and the rights you have over it.
HOTELA Cities KK ("HOTELA", "we", "us") is the data controller responsible for personal information collected during our hiring process. Our head office is located at Hamamatsucho Dia Building 2F, 2-2-15 Hamamatsuchō, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
This notice applies to everyone who applies for a role with HOTELA Cities KK or any HOTELA group company, whether you apply through our careers website, by email, through a recruiter, or via a referral. It is separate from the general privacy policy that governs our guests, owners, and website visitors.
When you apply for a role with us, we collect the personal information you choose to share with us and information we generate during our assessment of your application. This typically includes:
Identity and contact details: your name, email address, phone number, postal address, and — where relevant — nationality and work-authorisation status. Application materials: your résumé or CV, cover letter, portfolio, work samples, and any links you share (for example, LinkedIn or a personal website). Professional history: your education, employment history, certifications, language ability, and professional memberships. Interview and assessment records: notes taken by interviewers, assessment scores, and any exercises or take-home tasks you submit. References: the names and contact details of referees you provide, and the feedback those referees share with us. Background check information: HOTELA Cities KK does not engage third-party background check providers. Any factual verification (for example, right-to-work confirmation) is conducted directly by our internal team and only where a role requires it or where permitted by law. Correspondence: emails, messages, and call records exchanged between you and our hiring team.
We do not ask for sensitive personal information (such as health, religion, or political views) as part of our standard process. If a specific role requires it — for example, a disability accommodation you request — we will ask for your explicit consent first.
We use the information you share with us to assess whether your skills, experience, and interests are a good fit for the role you applied for; communicate with you about your application, schedule interviews, and share feedback; evaluate you against other candidates through a fair, consistent process; comply with our legal and regulatory obligations as a Japanese employer; keep accurate records of our hiring decisions; and — with your consent — consider you for other roles at HOTELA in the future.
Under Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI), we collect and use your information because it is necessary for us to take steps, at your request, toward a possible employment relationship, and because we have a legitimate interest in running a fair and efficient hiring process.
For applicants based in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, our legal bases under the GDPR are: Article 6(1)(b) — processing necessary to take steps prior to entering a contract with you; Article 6(1)(f) — our legitimate interest in evaluating candidates and keeping records of our decisions; and Article 6(1)(a) — your consent, where we ask for it specifically (for example, to keep your details on file for future roles).
You can withdraw any consent you have given us at any time by emailing the address listed below. Withdrawing consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing that happened before you withdrew it.
Your application is reviewed by the HOTELA hiring team assigned to the role you applied for. This typically includes the hiring manager, members of the team you would join, and our people operations team. Information is stored in our applicant tracking system and, where relevant, shared with interviewers in advance of a conversation with you.
We do not use your application materials to train AI models, sell your data, or share it with advertisers. We do not make fully automated decisions about your application — every offer or rejection involves a human decision-maker.
Within HOTELA, your information is available only to people who need it to evaluate your application or make a hiring decision. Candidate information is held on HOTELA Cities KK's internal systems. We do not use a third-party applicant tracking system. We use standard email and calendar tools internally to communicate with candidates, and we do not share your application with unrelated third parties. Where external recruiters or staffing agencies introduce you to us, we exchange only the information needed to consider your candidacy, and we engage professional advisors (legal, audit) only where needed.
Each of these providers is bound by a written agreement requiring them to protect your information and to use it only for the purposes we specify.
We will never share your application with another employer, a recruiter you did not authorise, or any third party for marketing purposes.
If we hire you, the information we collected during the hiring process becomes part of your employee record and is retained according to our employee data retention policy.
If we do not hire you, we retain your application for one (1) year from the date we close the role or from our last substantive contact with you, whichever is later. We keep it for this period so that we can respond to any questions, demonstrate that our hiring decisions were fair, and comply with applicable legal obligations.
After that period, we delete or anonymise your application — unless you have given us explicit consent to keep your details on file for consideration for future roles, in which case we retain them for a further two (2) years or until you ask us to delete them, whichever comes first.
You have the right to: access the personal information we hold about you; correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete; request deletion of your information, subject to any legal obligations we have to retain it; object to or restrict certain uses of your information; withdraw consent you have previously given, without affecting processing already carried out; and lodge a complaint with Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission (PPC) at https://www.ppc.go.jp/ or, if you are in the EEA or UK, with your local data protection authority.
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at the address in the next section. We will respond within a reasonable period and, in any case, within the timeframes required by applicable law.
Your candidate information is stored on HOTELA Cities KK's systems, primarily in Japan. We do not routinely transfer your application data outside Japan for recruitment processing.
When we transfer your information outside Japan, we rely on safeguards recognised under APPI and the GDPR, such as contractual commitments from the recipient to protect your information to a standard equivalent to the one that applies in your home country. You can ask us for a copy of these safeguards using the contact details below.
If you have any questions about this notice, or if you would like to exercise any of your rights, please contact us:
By email: info@hotelajapan.com. HOTELA Cities KK has not separately designated a Data Protection Officer; the inquiry address above is monitored by our internal team. By post: HOTELA Cities KK — Attn: Privacy, Hamamatsucho Dia Building 2F, 2-2-15 Hamamatsuchō, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Please put "Candidate privacy request" in the subject line so we can route your message quickly.
We may update this notice from time to time to reflect changes in our hiring practices, the services we use, or the law. When we make a material change, we will update the effective date at the top of this page and — where required by law — notify candidates who are currently in an active hiring process. We encourage you to review this notice when you apply, and again if your application is still active after a long period.
This Candidate Privacy Notice is issued by HOTELA Cities KK and is effective from 2026-04-14. The English and Japanese versions of this notice are both published by HOTELA Cities KK. In the event of any inconsistency, the Japanese version prevails.