You read that right. One in three business leaders in the hotel industry categorized breaches as “no big deal” or “blown out of proportion”.
Perhaps this mentality would be okay if a business, hotel or not, didn’t store their customer’s personal or financial data. However, that is not feasible for any business. At the time of check-in, hotel goers are required to provide a credit card for incidentals. Additionally, if you join their perks programs they have your email address, date of birth, and mailing address. But keeping this information secure is clearly not their priority, because well data breaches — no big deal, right?
It is the job of a business, of any kind, hotel industry or not, to keep customer data secure. If personal and financial information is needed in order for a transaction to occur, the consumer trusts that business to keep their information private. Now, it’s not to say the hotel industry is not doing that. However, for an industry that is privy to the customer’s personal and financial information to undermine the severity of a data breach is beyond alarming.
As a consumer to travels for both business and leisure, I’m incredibly concerned by this. Quite frankly, you should be too. Unless of course you have never, and will never, book a hotel room.
