Are hotels liable if a guest’s credit card or personal information is stolen?
Why or why not? A: Hotels are like any other business that collects financial and personal information about customers—they face liability for theft of credit-card or personal information in a number of situations and for a number of reasons. At the outset, it’s been estimated that in 2008, the average cost of an information breach to a company was US$7.2 million, and of that sum, a third was attributed to lost business. So this is a very expensive issue for hotels. Additionally, hotels are a particular target for information thieves; a recent study suggested that 38 percent of all reported information breaches were related to hotels. When those two issues are combined, it’s clear that hotels must be particularly vigilant. Regarding the costs of a breach, even where there is no direct claim by a guest, a hotel will incur costs to inform its guests that there has been a breach. Forty-five separate states, as well as the District of Columbia, have enacted laws that require a company to i
