Enterprise preference center boosts privacy compliance and enhances guest experience
140%
Increase in the size of the marketable audience
At a glance
Client
Global hospitality company
Industry
Hospitality
Our role
Lead consent management redesign
Our solution
Establish OneTrust preference center
A single source of truth for compliant, scalable consent
Scenario
A global hospitality company grappled with fragmented customer consent data, stalled marketing efforts in highly regulated regions and no unified source of truth for consent.
Approach
We worked with our client to create a consent data model, define requirements, design and configure a preference center powered by OneTrust.
Result
Marketing could reach new audiences, restore activity in halted regions, embed compliance into workflows and strengthen regulatory defensibility.
Scenario
Fragmented consent data challenges compliance, marketing efforts
A global hospitality company faced critical gaps in managing guest consent and preferences. Through Grant Thornton’s alliance with OneTrust, our client sought support to design and develop a modern consent management platform compliant with regulatory and marketing requirements while also providing a top-tier guest experience.
The company’s marketing operations spanned corporate, regional and property levels, creating inconsistent practices and uneven compliance. In several highly regulated jurisdictions, marketing activities were paused because teams could not confirm appropriate consent. While the company’s long-term ambition was to deliver more personalized guest experiences, it first needed a reliable, unified way to manage and store consent across systems.
A foundational challenge was the absence of a single source of truth for consent data. Siloed approaches created inconsistencies and limited visibility. At the same time, the company was modernizing its marketing organization, making a centralized consent solution and data model a cornerstone of its transformation.
Approach
Grant Thornton, OneTrust redesign and deploy enterprise consent
Grant Thornton partnered with the client and OneTrust to lead an enterprise-wide redesign and implementation of consent management. The team assessed all consent entry points — such as web forms and cookie banners — and mapped how data flowed across the company’s digital ecosystem. Together, they defined a strategic transition from fragmented, reactive practices to a unified, enterprise-level consent infrastructure using OneTrust’s consent management solution.
The consent program modernization implementation followed a phased approach to ensure existing marketing operations were not disrupted while honoring previously captured guest consent preferences. The result established a centralized single source of truth that aligned all marketing communications with global regulatory requirements. After internal testing, the solution moved to an external launch, followed by enhancements to address global regulatory requirements. Future capabilities were planned to allow guests to tailor preferences more granularly, supporting a richer, more personalized experience.
Decommissioning legacy systems required careful sequencing to avoid disruption. Beyond technology, change management was critical: marketing teams across corporate, regional and property levels needed to be familiar with the data model and align with the preference center’s standardized processes. Grant Thornton guided this transition with governance frameworks, security reviews, strict access controls and a consent language tracking system. This approach gave the company an auditable, point-in-time record of exactly what language each guest saw on a given date — materially strengthening regulatory defensibility.
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Result
Preference center improves compliance, guest experience
The new OneTrust preference center to manage guest consent delivered measurable improvements in both compliance and guest experience, and most importantly, providing a foundation that allowed the company to continue driving more personalized marketing and guest experiences.
- Expanded engagement: The company could now connect with millions of non-loyalty members who previously could not be reached due to inadequate consent tracking
- Increased marketable audience: Through preference center custom logic — which shows the right options to the right visitor — data from tens of millions who booked can now be assessed to determine whether they were eligible for marketing based on now-known eligibility requirements. Consequently, the company increased its marketable audience by 140%.
- Improved guest choice: Extending preference capture to email and phone reservations increased guest’s access to personalization, empowering them to actively shape their experiences
- Restored global consistency: Marketing activities resumed in countries where compliance concerns had halted them, reducing regulatory risk and ensuring guests received consistent, trusted communications
- Country-based logic: Built-in logic determined the guest’s country of residency, and their privacy laws thus guiding compliant consent collection and maximizing marketing eligibility.
- Embedded compliance: Marketing templates were mapped to preference categories, shifting decision-making from individual marketers to system-driven logic. This ensured communications were both compliant and aligned with guest expectations.
- Strengthened governance: Legal and privacy teams gained greater assurance through precise consent language tracking, equipping the company with defensible evidence for regulatory inquiries.
“Managing guest choices while enforcing privacy requirements upheld our client’s core operating principles. Partnering with OneTrust, we designed and deployed an enterprise preference center for a hospitality client that restored compliant marketing in high-regulation regions, re-engaged tens of millions of previously unreachable guests and increased the marketable audience 140% through jurisdictional logic and expanded consent touchpoints.”
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This Grant Thornton Advisors LLC content provides information and comments on current issues and developments. It is not a comprehensive analysis of the subject matter covered. It is not, and should not be construed as, accounting, legal, tax, or professional advice provided by Grant Thornton Advisors LLC. All relevant facts and circumstances, including the pertinent authoritative literature, need to be considered to arrive at conclusions that comply with matters addressed in this content.
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