What you hold on a guest, how long you keep it and who may ask for it.
A number a guest left to hold a table was left for the booking. Ringing it with a midweek offer is a different rulebook, another register, and complaints that reach the regulator.
The exemption a list broker invokes cannot cover data the restaurant did not collect, whatever the invoice says. The ICO's own worked example of that failure is a restaurant.
Orders in one column, contactable guests in the other. The gap between them is the cost of a year's trading that built no list, and it is countable before Monday's lunch.
Consent to email a guest is not consent to text them, and the second question is the one most booking pages never asked. The cost of that gap lands on the worst possible night.
A repeat-visit email sent too early reads as inattention and costs an address; sent too late it arrives after the guest has found somewhere else. Neither failure announces itself.
Across 68 UK hospitality brands, 90% engage on Instagram on weekdays, 46% at weekends and 51% in the evenings. A restaurant’s hardest trading hours are the hours a message waits.
Most restaurants pick a loyalty mechanic on what it costs to print, not on what guests say they want, and the published ranking puts stamp cards fifth of ten.
Two restaurants, one company, one guest list — and a guest who never agreed to hear from the second name. The ICO's answer bites at the send; the risk starts with an assumption.
Before buying a platform to unify guest data, count the systems that actually disagree about who a guest is. For one site the merge is usually a merge of one, at a recurring cost.
A guest list fed by hand is only ever as current as the last upload — and the opt-out recorded on Monday is missing from Wednesday's send.
Guest notes kept one login away are lost to the rush. Three reachability questions, not a feature list, decide this purchase.
A guest list holding the same regular three times, one row carrying the allergy note. What the law requires when a guest says the record is wrong — and where it is unsettled.
