HFTP chief operations officer Lucinda Hart, CAE, MBA, explained why this initiative is integral to the association’s strategic goals. “The GDPR is greatly impacting the hospitality industry and the dedication that HFTP and our members have committed to industry awareness demonstrates HFTP’s commitment to assisting our stakeholders in finding solutions to their challenges more efficiently than any organization,” she said.
The HFTP HDPO Task Force held its first meeting July 14-15, 2017 at the Sheraton Amsterdam Airport Hotel and Conference Center in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
“I am very pleased with the outcome of our first meeting held in Amsterdam this summer,” said Hidalgo. “We have identified areas in which specific solutions (registration challenges, integration of DPO, communication with IT providers and others) are being analyzed, and we are confident to bring those solutions to the industry this autumn.”
When the task force met it set out to address the following:
- Identify the major challenges for the industry to achieve compliance, as well as the stakeholders involved;
- Provide guidelines to enable the industry to assess their specific needs to achieve compliance on time;
- Define the specific features of a Hospitality Data Protection Officer (HDPO) job role, and resulting from this, propose the structure of a HFTP HDPO certification;
- Establish a communication policy to create awareness within the industry.
Hidalgo’s post, details how the task force will address each of these areas. Part of the ongoing work for the task force and HFTP will be to continually provide related information to the industry to support compliance preparation. One of the first action items taken was to include a dictionary of terms related to the GDPR on the hospitality-specific site PineappleSearch.com. Referenced from the European Data Protection Supervisor, the glossary will be centralized with a library of hospitality resources.
HFTP will host a HDPO education session at its upcoming Annual Convention on October 25-27, 2017. Wrapping up 2017, HFTP will produce its inaugural HITEC Dubai counterpart event, in partnership with Naseba, from November 14-15 – serving as the third, and final, HITEC of the year. In 2018, HFTP will bring back HITEC Amsterdam on April 11-13 in addition to the larger HITEC Houston on June 18-21. For more information about HITEC and HFTP’s other global activities, contact the HFTP Meetings & Special Events Department at education@hftp.org or visit www.hftp.org and www.hftp.org/hitec/.
For the latest news, follow HFTP/HITEC on HITEC Bytes, PineappleSearch, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter (@HFTP), Instagram (HFTP_HITEC), Flickr and YouTube. For more information about HITEC Amsterdam, contact the HFTP Meetings & Special Events Department at education@hftp.org, +1 (512) 249-5333.
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About HFTP
Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP®) is a global nonprofit hospitality association, headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA, that uniquely understands the industry”s problems. HFTP has members and stakeholders across the globe. HFTP assists its members in finding solutions to industry problems more efficiently than any organization via its expert networks, research, conferences such as HITECSM and certification programs. HFTP also owns the world’s only hospitality specific search engine, PineappleSearch.com. HFTP is recognized as the spokes group for the finance and technology segment of the hospitality. For more information about HFTP, e- mail membership@hftp.org .