GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliance for events means collecting, storing, and processing attendee personal data lawfully, transparently, and securely. The key obligations for event organisers include: obtaining clear, unbundled consent for marketing communications (separate from the event registration terms), providing a visible privacy policy and data retention period, honouring subject access requests within 30 days, and having a signed data processing agreement (DPA) with every technology vendor who touches attendee data.
Common compliance failures in the events industry include: using a single checkbox for both terms acceptance and marketing consent, sharing attendee lists with sponsors without explicit consent, retaining personal data indefinitely after an event concludes, and failing to update legacy attendee databases when individuals request deletion. Each of these can trigger enforcement action under GDPR, with fines of up to €20 million or 4% of global annual turnover.
EventHex is built with GDPR compliance in mind: data is stored in EU-compliant infrastructure, consent flags are captured separately at registration, opt-out requests are processed automatically, and DPAs are available for all enterprise clients.
