Building upon previous output, Hospitality Technology Next Generation's GDPR for Hospitality Workgroup released a more comprehensive white paper for the industry. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation went into effect on May 25, 2018, with a mission to strengthen the protection of individuals' personally identifiable information.
Before the GDPR took effect, the workgroup produced a framework and a self-assessment tool to help the hospitality industry prepare for this new privacy regulation. Now that the GDPR has been in effect for more than a year, the workgroup continued their work to publish an updated white paper. The group went beyond cleaning up and clarifying the output of the first phase by providing guidance regarding data processing agreements, clarity through communicative FAQs and perspective through the creation of a "12-Step Prioritized Approach to Privacy Regulation Compliance."
This workgroup was led by co-chairs John Bell, founder/president of Ajontech; Daniel Johnson, partner/co-founder of Venza; Finn Schulz, principal at Schulz Consulting; and Richard Sheinis, partner at Hall Booth Smith.
"The GDPR Workgroup has now been expanded in scope to cover privacy on a global basis, as we see a clear movement toward similar legislation in a number of countries around the world," Schulz said in a statement. "HTNG realizes the need for an industry overview of such regulations and maybe even an easy-to-read comparison of similarities and specific variances to look for."
"The white paper covers a lot of territory and we were conscious to make it reader-friendly," Johnson said. "I am hopeful the industry will leverage it as something as close to a 'GDPR user manual' as anything else that's in existence. However, like any other manual, it needs to be cracked open and read to be of value."
The updated GDPR for Hospitality White Paper can be downloaded here.