Simple meaning of GDPR explained for hospitality owners S4E8

Welcome to Season four of the Boost Hospitality Podcast. I'm back again to show all hospitality owners how you can turn lookers into bookers, get more heads on beds and increase your direct booking. This season I've got something very special lined up. The Boosterly website was recently voted one of the top 10 UK hotel blogs.

Out there, and after asking you guys.

I realized that so many of you haven't actually read the blogs. You said that you prefer audio as a way of learning about new tactics.

And tips to get in more direct bookings.

So what I'm doing this season is I'm going to be providing the audio version of all of my blogs that.

Are on the Boostly website.

So it doesn't matter whether you're on the computer in the car getting ready for breakfast or changing those beds.

I can show you how you can increase your diary book. Let's get on with the show. Okay, so today I'm going to share a simplified version of what GDPR means for hospitality owners. If you want to go and read the full blog about this, which I do recommend you do, go to boostly.co.uk and in the search bar look for simple meaning of gdpr. Okay, so what is gdpr? Wikipedia told me that it's the General Data Protection Regulation is a regulation by which European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission intend to strength, strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the European Union. If you're lost, so am I. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to go out and I wanted to research exactly what it would GDPR would mean for European businesses and worldwide businesses. Anybody that has got European customers needs to get on board with this and I wanted to find out exactly how it could affect the hospitality industry. So I went away, did a little bit more research and in the blog I go into this One of the blogs that I looked into was GDPR for Dummies by Kate Bordwell of the Nile hq. After reading this article, I think Baudwell makes some excellent points about GDPR and here are a few highlights. On 25 May 2018 the GDPR will be enforced across Europe, including the UK. The law aims to give more citizens more control over their data and to create a uniformity of rules to implement these. So why should you care about it? If you ignore this law then you can be fined up to 20 million euro or 4% of your 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 a financial one. What are the new rules? If you build the rules into your company culture, rather than trying to just keep on doing what you're doing, then it falls on to six themes. Know what you have and why you have it. Manage data in a structured way, know who's responsible for it, encrypt it, design a security aware culture and be prepared. I mean to break this all down into layman's terms, into simplistic terms, is that over the past 30 years our, our data protected rules haven't been updated and now data is one of the most valuable currencies out there and it needed an update. So all of this scaremongering, all of this fancy words, all of this EU regulation is just basically saying that our data, our personal data is got to stay that way. And we've got the, we have now got the ability with these new powers to, for companies to respect that more. Now for people in the hospitality industry, what we have to do now is we've just got to make sure that we've got the bare basics, the bare minimum we should have covered. In all honesty, until somebody gets actually taken to court, whether that's a big company or a little company around gdpr, we are not going to know the full ramifications. But still, that doesn't mean that we can just bury our head in the sand and think that it'll just go away, because it won't. As of recording right now, this is July 2018. These new rules have been in place for about six weeks now and there's been murmurs in the media about Facebook and other big, huge companies being fined by the ICO or the government in body. But until we, until we know more, until this becomes a year or two years or three years in, we're still not going to know the full ramifications. But like I said, the, the way that my, my blog and the way that I'll finish today's episode of the podcast, I let, I gave across my three bare minimums. I think everybody should be doing. So number one, get a privacy policy implemented onto your website. If you go onto my blog@boostly.co.uk I've even shown you an example of what a privacy policy should look like. And also as well, it's really important that you get a cookie bot or a cookie policy on your website as well. So what is a cookie policy? It just shows the user when they come onto your website a what you're going to do with their data because a cookie, if you didn't know when you land on a website, so if you go onto Boostly, it tracks your IP address and when you go onto other websites, then I've got the ability to put an advert in front of you because you came onto my website. That's basically what I can do with a cookie or anybody could do with a cookie. If you're feeling hungry and you need to go get a cookie, please pause this, come back to it and then let me know what cookie you went for. But go check out the example. You've got to have it as a bare minimum on your website. Number two would be check on the ICO website if you're in the UK and go through their quick checklist form to see if you have to register with them. Not everybody does, but there's some businesses that will do. Finally, make sure that your email signup form now has GDPR compliant boxes. You've got to be really transparent. So when someone signs up to your email list, they have to actually opt in to receive marketing emails from you. And again, if you want to see an example, go to my blog on Boostly. If you can't find it, just go to the search and just type in gdpr. And there's an example of what a sign up form looks like. The big companies, the big CRMs like mailchimp etc now give you all the GDPR forms so you are covered, so there isn't an excuse. Now now that GDPR is active and live, the big companies that help you grow your list have got GDPR compliant boxes. And even if you go onto WordPress right now, if you've got a WordPress website, they even help you with a privacy policy template. Hopefully this episode has helped in some ways shape or form. If you haven't done anything regarding gdpr, even at this point it's still not too late. You can get up to date and make sure that your business is covered because at the end of the day the last thing you want is to fall foul and then have the ICO or whichever governing body knocking on your door trying to find out more information. So please let me know your thoughts and your feedback as always. Markusu.co.uk Let me know what you've done for GDPR. If you've done the bare minimums, if you've done nothing, if you want to send me a tweet, it's ostleyuk, but that is today's episode and I will see you again very soon.

Okay, well done for getting through another episode of the Boost Hospitality Podcast.

My name has been Mark Simmerson and you can reach out and contact me.

On Twitter, Facebook or email. If you have enjoyed this episode and all of the episodes of the Boost Hospitality Podcast, please go to itunes or wherever you are listening to this and leave one of those lovely five star.

Reviews virtual hugs for everyone that does. Thank you very much and I'll see you soon.