Guest privacy and data

Your guest book holds real personal information, and guests have the right to see it or ask you to remove it. TableStack gives you two tools for that — export and erasure — built to satisfy privacy rules like GDPR's right of access and right to erasure.

Export a guest's data

Export produces a complete, plain record of everything the organization holds about a guest: their name, email and phone, VIP flag, notes, marketing opt-ins, all their preferences, all their structured allergies (with severity and any notes), their tags, and when the record was created. That's the data-portability payload you hand a guest who asks "what do you have on me?"

Erase a guest (right to be forgotten)

Erasure is the stronger action. When you erase a guest, TableStack anonymises them rather than deleting the row outright:

• Personal details are scrubbed — name becomes "Anonymized guest", and email, phone and notes are cleared.
• Preferences and allergies are deleted, and tags are detached.
• Marketing opt-ins and the VIP flag are turned off.
• The guest is removed from search.

Crucially, their past visits and reservations are kept. Those records reference the guest but no longer identify them, so the personal data is gone while your analytics stay intact — your covers, no-show rates and trends don't suddenly lose history because someone exercised their rights. Erasure is permanent and can't be undone, so confirm the request before you run it.

Why anonymise instead of delete?

Deleting a guest outright would tear a hole in your reporting — every visit they ever made would vanish from your numbers. Anonymising honours the guest's privacy (their identity is genuinely removed) while preserving the aggregate story of your business. It's the balance privacy regulations are designed around.

What this affects

• The guest book — an erased guest can no longer be identified or searched.
• Reports — visit history survives erasure, so analytics are unaffected.
• Allergies — removed as part of erasure.

What affects this

• Your role — exporting and managing guest data is permission-gated.
• A guest's request — export and erasure are actions you take on their behalf.