Privacy notice

This website is run by The Middle East Council of Shopping Centres, trading as the Middle East Council of Shopping Centres & Retailers (MECSR), the organiser of Retail Congress MENA. Our address is One Central, The Offices 2, Dubai World Trade Centre, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. In this notice, “we” means MECSR. MECSR decides why and how the personal data described here is used.

You can reach us at connect@mecsr.org. See also the contact page.

We collect personal data only when you send us one of the four forms on this site. Each form asks only for what we need to reply to you. Like any website, our hosting provider also keeps short-lived technical logs of requests (such as IP address and browser type) to run the site securely; we do not use them to identify you.

• Register interest (the Attend page): first name, last name, company, job title, work email, country, and which of attending, exhibiting, sponsoring, speaking or entering the MENA Awards you are interested in. We use it to tell you about Retail Congress MENA, including when dates, venue and passes are announced. It is not a booking.
• Partnerships enquiry (the Expo page): name, company, job title, work email, phone number (optional), whether you are interested in exhibiting, sponsoring or both, and your message. We use it to reply with the prospectus and next steps.
• Media enquiry (the Media page): name, outlet, email and your request. We use it to answer your request.
• Contact form: name, company (optional), email, topic and your message. We use it to reply to you.

With every form we also record the date and time of the submission and that you ticked the consent box. We do not ask for, and you should not send us, sensitive information such as health, religion or financial account details.

We do not store your IP address with your enquiry. Your address is held briefly in the memory of the server to limit automated spam, and is discarded afterwards.

We rely on your consent, which you give by ticking the box on each form, and on the need to answer the request you have made. You can withdraw your consent at any time (see “Your rights”). Withdrawing does not affect anything we did before.

MECSR staff who deal with attendance, partnerships, media and general enquiries can see what you send. Every form is recorded in MECSR's customer relationship management system, together with a note of your consent.

We use two service providers: Zoho Corporation, which runs that system, and Vercel Inc., which hosts this website and its videos. Both hold data in the United States and act only on our instructions, under data processing agreements with contractual protections for international transfers, as the UAE data protection law requires. Ask us if you would like details.

We use your details only for the purpose stated on the form you sent. We do not sell your data, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not add you to unrelated marketing. We share it with others only where the law requires, or where you ask us to (for example, passing your media request to a colleague).

We keep form submissions for as long as we need them to reply to you and to run the event you asked about, and for no more than 24 months after our last contact with you. After that we delete or anonymise them.

If you ask us to delete your details sooner, we will do so unless the law requires us to keep them.

This site uses no advertising or tracking cookies, and does not track you across other sites. It stores only the two items below.

We count visits with Vercel Web Analytics, which sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device. It records the page you view, the site that sent you, your country, your browser, operating system and type of device, and a few actions on this site (such as playing a video, downloading a report or sending a form, but never what you type into it). Visits are told apart only within a single day, using a code worked out from your request that resets every 24 hours, so we cannot identify you or follow you from one day to the next. We use these figures only to understand how the site is used and to improve it.

• rcm_members (a cookie, strictly necessary). Set only if you enter the members' password to watch a session recording. It keeps the recordings unlocked for 30 days and is not used to identify or track you. Because it is strictly necessary for the feature you asked for, it does not need your consent. If you never enter the password, it is never set.
• Colour theme (browser local storage). Remembers whether you chose the light or dark theme. It stays on your device and is not sent to us.
• Session videos (not stored by us). Recordings are played through YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode and load only when you press play. Once you do, YouTube may set its own cookies; see its privacy information.

Under the UAE Personal Data Protection Law (Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021) you have rights over your personal data. In plain terms you can ask us to:

• tell you what personal data we hold about you and how we use it, and give you a copy;
• correct data that is wrong or incomplete;
• delete your data, or restrict how we use it;
• stop using your data for the purposes you consented to, and withdraw that consent;
• object to automated decisions about you (we make none on this site); and
• move your data to another organisation in a usable format, where the law provides for it.

Speakers, award winners and others who appear on this site do so with their agreement. To correct or remove anything about you, write to the address below.

If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom, we rely on your consent, and you may also complain to your local data protection authority.

To use any of these rights, write to connect@mecsr.org and tell us which form you used and the email address you gave. We may need to confirm it is really you before we act. If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to the UAE Data Office.

We will update this notice if we change how the site uses personal data, and we will show the date of the latest version here.

Questions about this notice: connect@mecsr.org.