IHG Hotels & Resorts announced in a news release Tuesday that parts of its technology systems were “subject to unauthorized activity” over the past few days. The company’s website and app went down at 9 p.m. on Sunday for “scheduled maintenance” and was only up briefly on Monday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., according to reporting by LoyaltyLobby.
Although its website is back up, a message is posted warning guests they still may struggle to book a reservation, access information about upcoming reservations or access IHG One Rewards accounts. The company has notified regulatory authorities and has external specialists investigating the hack, according to the news release.
“IHG is working to fully restore all systems as soon as possible and to assess the nature, extent and impact of the incident. We will be supporting hotel owners and operators as part of our response to the ongoing service disruption. IHG’s hotels are still able to operate and to take reservations directly,” the news release said.
The company will provide an update once it has more knowledge on the situation.
This isn’t the first data breach in the hotel industry in recent memory: Marriott International dealt with a cyberattack in July after an international group stole information through an associate at the BWI Airport Marriott in Baltimore. Reservation logs for airline crew members, names of guests and credit card information were leaked. In November 2018, Marriott confirmed a data breach affecting up to 500 million guests over a four-year span that hit legacy reservation systems of Starwood Hotels & Resorts, acquired by Marriott in September 2016. At the time, this breach was one of the largest ever disclosed, according to the Wall Street Journal.