Marriott President and CEO Arne Sorenson explains the unexplainable:
We have withdrawn our petition to the FCC on cybersecurity – an initiative we thought was the right thing to do. However, in the face of disagreement from both regulators and our customers, we see that the effort was doomed.
This issue has been a complex one, and one that has opened Marriott to much criticism – the most painful of which has been the misunderstanding of our intentions. We wanted to protect the security of Wi-Fi use for conferences at our hotels – it had nothing to do with individual guest use of Wi-Fi or personal Wi-Fi hotspots.
In fact, we have led the industry in offering millions of customers free Internet access. In October, we announced that Marriott Rewards Members – a membership that is free and open to anyone – would have free Internet when they book direct. That message has been drowned out by the noise with the FCC.
Cybersecurity is a major concern across the business world and, certainly, in our industry, where guests and conference-goers rightly expect that any hotel-provided connection be secure. We are in a pitched battle against hackers who are at work daily trying to fool consumers – sometimes by setting up a Wi-Fi network that seeks to lure conference-goers into a site intended to steal passwords or other valuable data.
To me, the logic is simple. If you care so much about the security of your guests, make internet access free for all your guests. All of them. The Marriott Rewards program is free, fair enough. And if you required guests to sign up to get free access, that would be reasonable. It gives you some level of (really, the illusion of, but that’s just a quibble) control over who is on the network. But if you take money from anyone, if internet access is a revenue line item for you, then you are simply blowing smoke.
My 2 cents.
typical double speak…
I was in a Marriott Suites last week and some script kiddy on their guest network launched an attack against my computer. Crappy attack actually and the usual safeguards picked it up.
Being a boy scout I reported it to the hotel, since the attack was trying to exploit a samba vulnerability for file and print servers. I was actually concerned about their systems. Their response: “Well, there’s really nothing we can do about that.”
“However, in the face of disagreement from both regulators and our customers, we see that the effort was doomed.” Not wrong though. Those pesky Feds and whiny customers just can’t see that Marriott, as benevolent overlord—er, corporate mast—uh, honest businessmen, just want to provide the best service to their captive audie—um, loyal customers. The best part is that this stuffed shirt has the gall to talk about “noise with the FCC” when he has his crisis management PR flaks writing crap like this for him.
Wasn’t it Ronald Reagan who said “If you’re explaining, you’re losing”? Marriott are explaining forcefully, they lost already.
Perhaps if they had a trained security expert at each location, atleast on call. If they are taking responsibility for the security of their customers cyber security, are they willing to indemnify those same customers, if they screw up. How many of their hotels have staff that are trained beyond “unplug it, wait 10 secs, and plug it back in”?
After all, when you consider the analog, physical security, if they leave a backdoor unsecured at night and someone sneaks in and say kills a guest, they might be held responsible for the screw up, as they have assumed certain standard responsibilities in running the business.
Translation: “We got caught trying to dick our customers out of some potentially very nice extra cash. But we’re still trying to spin it.”