Ever since the new General Data Protection Regulations have been put into effect, things have changed online as well as in business. All companies that have customers from the EU are obliged to comply with the GDPR or they could face legal consequences.
Given the fact that hotels have a lot of customers from all around the world, chances are that they will have a lot of those that come from the EU. To adjust to these regulations properly and to treat customers properly, hotels from all around the world will need solutions that can allow them to do this transparently.
This is why here, at mycloud Hospitality, we decided to make our hotel management software compliant with GDPR and allow hotels to manage their customers properly. Here are the upgrades we added.
1) Enable GDPR for processing under advanced controls
Any hotel that already owns or gets our hotel management software can instantly switch on GDPR processing features by simply going to the “advanced controls” section and enabling their GDPR compliant hotel software. This means that companies that have no EU customers don’t have to bother with the added features unless they have the need for it.
2) By enabling GDPR, you will get a GDPR option in the menu
Once you’ve enabled GDPR, you will instantly get the GDPR options alongside other options in your menu panel. This is where you can customize your GDPR features and set them up properly according to your needs based on your actions with customers, as this is a specialized GDPR for hotels. At the same time, this is where you will manage all GDPR related information, consents, and customer details.
3) Operations which can be done by users
- GDPR data can be viewed through the hotel management system. This includes seeing consents, how customer information was acquired, on which basis, and all of it will be structured properly.
- Apart from hotel management being able to see all consents, they will be able to deliver this information to customers if they want to see what they consented to, as this is something every business must do to comply.
- Both hotel management and users can manage consents and give customers the rights to change what they consent to.
- All hotel visitors can send emails to request data concerning their individual rights and download guest data in CSV format.
- In case customers want their information moved or erased, they have to contact the management and the staff can quickly perform these actions through the software.
- Even if guests haven’t given their consent and you already acquired certain information about them, you can easily search for those kinds of customers through the software and send them individual emails or contact them in person to ask for consent.
4) Easy GDPR submissions by guests
One of the essentials for getting GDPR consents is to make it easy for guests to submit them. Our hotel management system is integrated with the booking engine and, when you activate the GDPR feature, all of them will see the link where they can submit their GDPR consents.
They can’t miss it, as it will be visible next to their booking options. At the same time, they will see all the necessary information about GDPR, their consent, and why you are requiring this information from them.
5) A default registration card includes GDPR consents
All customers that are eligible for GDPR will get registration cards that have an added piece of information which will show their consents. This improves transparency and reminds customers of the consent they gave once they became guests of a certain hotel.
One of the most important aspects of GDPR is to make customers understand what kind of compliance they gave you and for what reason and, when booking online, a lot of customers won’t read what they are doing and you will improve your transparency and integrity with this added information on the registration card.
Given the big need for protecting customer rights and making consent a priority, it has become a top priority for businesses to collect, process, and store their customer data the right way, to avoid any legal issues.
About The Author
Deepak Chauhan
Deepak Chauhan is responsible for marketing and positioning of “mycloud” platform and is a veteran in the hotel software industry with over 25 years’ experience giving him a strong understanding of the product requirements in the industry. He has very rare mix of working in operations of various hotels and chains for over 10 years and then co-founding a software product and service company, servicing 5 star hotels and chains for 14 years.
Deepak has led the development and marketing of cloud based hospitality systems to meet the specific, business objectives of small and mid-size properties across the globe and has worked closely with a diverse group of hoteliers and hotel technology vendors.
