In November 2018, Marriott reported a data breach of 500 million guests. CEO Arne Sorenson explains its response
In the Fall of 2018, we merged the loyalty programmes, and transferred four billion customer records
from the legacy Starwood side to the Marriott side. We announced the data hack on 30 November, roughly two weeks after we discovered it. When the story went out there was still a lot we didn’t know, which was frustrating because you’d like to have a more solid view of the facts before you explain things externally. But we thought we had to be transparent with our customers. Our philosophy about this is we’re in the business for the long term. We still feel incredibly enthusiastic about the merger. We are stronger than we could have been alone. We have a greater breadth of choice and a stronger loyalty programme. We signed 816 new hotel deals in 2018, and so have almost half-a-million hotel rooms in our pipeline, and that includes 200 luxury hotels. None of our competitors have anything like that in terms of distribution.
