Transparency leads to trust
The EU’s new data protection rules, known as GDPR, are now in place and could have a global impact on the travel industry, Rob Gill reports
D
uring the early months of 2018, travel companies across the EU were busy sending out emails to their customers urging them to sign up to continue receiving marketing messages from them.
The theme of these messages was usually along the lines of “We don’t want to lose you” or “Let’s stay in touch”, with links sending the consumer back to the brand’s website to effectively re-subscribe to marketing emails they may have been getting for years. The reason for this blitz of email
correspondence was to allow firms to comply with the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), which came into force on May 25. GDPR has introduced more stringent data protection rules across Europe and is set to have global repercussions for the travel industry as well.
Setting new standards GDPR basically tightens the
rules on how companies collect, manage and secure consumer data. This includes ensuring consumers give “explicit consent” to receive marketing messages – effectively ending the practice of having opt-out and pre-ticked boxes.
Security is also one of the major tenets of GDPR, with companies now having to alert the appropriate authorities of any data breach within 72 hours, as well as facing potentially eye- watering fines of up to €20 million or 4% of global turnover per breach. While GDPR has been on the radar of most EU-based travel firms for at least a year or two, the issue of data security has now seeped into public consciousness with several high-profile cases: most notably the Facebook- Cambridge Analytica scandal when the political research firm was able to access the personal data of 87 million Facebook users. The travel industry has not faced anything on this scale so far, but the dangers are there, particularly with travel firms collecting and storing significant amounts of data on their
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was recently grilled by US senators
clients – for example: names, addresses, passport numbers,
dates of birth,
payment information, loyalty card details and even health information for some customers.
Complying with GDPR is not just an issue for EU-based travel companies; it can also have implications for firms based in other parts of the world. Paul Stephen, chief executive of global digital marketing agency Sagittarius, says: “GDPR is not about the travel brand – it’s about the EU citizen and covers their rights as a person. It doesn’t matter whether you are based in the EU or not as a company; it’s about whether you are selling to EU citizens. “Often, travel companies don’t know
where their customers are based. So if you’re marketing to, or expecting to carry, EU citizens, you need to toe the line when it comes to GDPR.” GDPR is being seen as setting a “new bar” in data protection regulations and similar new rules could eventually be introduced in other countries, particularly now data has become such a “hot” issue for politicians.
wtm.com
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