The coronavirus pandemic is the source of a lot of bad news for the meetings and hospitality business, but unfortunately the industry is still plagued by other problems. On March 31, Marriott International announced that hackers compromised data from up to 5.2 million guests using an account login from two employees at a Marriott franchise. This is the second large breach for the company; in November 2018, more than 300 million customer accounts were hacked.
Marriott has set up an incident page for those who were affected, but at the moment the data that was exposed does not seem to include payment details, loyalty passwords, or driver’s license or other ID numbers. Marriott Bonvoy members will, however, be asked to change their passwords the next time they access their loyalty accounts.
The incident site lists the following exposed information:
• Contact details (e.g., name, mailing address, email address, and phone number)
• Loyalty account information (e.g., account number and points balance, but not passwords)
• Additional personal details (e.g., company, gender, and birthday day and month)
• Partnerships and affiliations (e.g., linked airline loyalty programs and numbers)
• Preferences (e.g., stay/room preferences and language preference)
Here are five steps to take if you believe you or your attendees were affected in the latest security incident.
