Simple meaning of GDPR explained for hospitality owners – Boost Hospitality Podcast

The Boost Hospitality Podcast is back for another season! In this episode, I talk about GDPR and what it means for hospitality owners in simple terms.

I want to explain GDPR so that anyone can understand it.

What is GDPR? Wikipedia tells me this: “The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) is a regulation by which the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission intend to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the European Union (EU).”

Why should you care about GDPR?

If you ignore this law, they can be fined up to €20m or 4% of their global annual turnover. Customers care about their privacy and expect companies to respect that. It’s good business sense to demonstrate that you “get” this cultural aspect as well as the financial one.

What are the new rules of the GDPR?

If you build the rules into your organisational culture rather than they tyrannise you, then they will help you manage data more effectively, internally and externally.

It falls on these six themes

✅Know what you have, and why you have it
✅Manage data in a structured way
✅Know who is responsible for it
✅Encrypt what you wouldn’t want to be disclosed
✅Design a security-aware culture
✅Be prepared. Expect the best but prepare for the worst

What is the impact on businesses?

If businesses and organisations see this as an opportunity to represent themselves to their customers and target audiences as more responsible and empathetic on the topic of data, then the GDPR can not be a bad thing. This will be particularly true if it enables stronger relationship building because it potentially offers the basis for more equality and trust between businesses and their customers.

To read the full blog post, click here.

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