Set a Data Retention Period

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Last updated: Sept 06, 2023 by Kenya Puig
3 min read

As more governments adopt data protection and privacy regulations, ALICE aims to provide a simple path to staying compliant with regulations. ALICE provides the flexibility to adjust the Data Retention Period to adhere to your local government regulations and have greater control over guests’ PII (Personal Identifiable Information). 

User Type & Roles

To perform this action in ALICE, the user must have at least Hotel Admin User Type access.

Things to Consider

  • An email confirmation will be sent to all Hotel Admin users for the property each time the automation runs successfully.

  • Once enabled, ALICE will automatically detect reservations with an end date greater than or equal to the time specified and anonymize Tickets, Internal Notes, and all SMS messages containing any Personal Identifiable Information (PII).

  • Anonymized text fields will display as “Data Purged”.
    Anonymized phone number fields will display as 555-555-5555
    Anonymized emails will display as name@email.com

  • Data retention period is set on an individual property basis.

  • The maximum value for retention period is 5 years

  • The minimum value for retention period is 1 day

  • This setting is disabled by default for new hotels. 

Steps

  1. Select “Security & Data Privacy” from the ALICE Admin menu, then select “Data Retention Policy. 

  2. Enables the Data Retention Policy by selecting the checkbox. 

  3. Use the fields provided to set the desired time to retain information in the ALICE account. 

  4. Once enabled, ALICE will automatically detect reservations with an end date greater than or equal to the time specified and anonymize them.

  5. Fill out an email if you want to be notified every time the anonymization job runs. Please note you will receive an individual email notification for every 1000 reservations that are anonymized:

  6. Select Save to apply the changes. The PII will be anonymized at midnight (12 AM) in the property timezone once saved. The anonymization of guest data cannot be undone. Once the guest data is deleted, there is no way to retrieve it. 

A Data Retention icon is visible from the Guest Tab to indicate when the Data Retention Policy is active.

As of April 2023, all ALICE customers will have Data Retention Policy enabled, with a time parameter of 3 Years after the Check Out date.

We do not recommend disabling this feature. An opt-out option is available for those accounts that want to disable Data Retention Policy. You may opt-out and disable directly in ALICE, in the Security and Data Privacy > Data Retention Policy settings page.