Guests who made reservations at the Westin Dragonara in St Julian’s before September 10 could be among those whose personal data was exposed after hackers illegally accessed Marriott International’s reservation database.
The company said on Friday hackers had illegally accessed its Starwood Hotels brand’s reservation database since 2014, potentially exposing personal information on about 500 million guests.
Read: Marriott hacked, potentially exposing data on 500 million guests
In Malta, the Westin Dragonara is part of the Starwood brand.
Contacted about the data breach, a spokeswoman from the European branch of the brand told the Times of Malta that “guests who made reservations at any Starwood-branded property before September 10, 2018, may be impacted”.
Questions on how many guests who booked their stay at the Westin Dragonara had been impacted by the hack were not answered.
We fell short of what our guests deserve and what we expect of ourselves
In a statement, the company said that for 327 million of the guests, personal information compromised could include passport details, phone numbers and email addresses. For others, it could also include credit card information.
It went on to say that it had learnt about the breach after an internal security tool sent an alert on September 8 and upon further investigation, the hotel chain found that data had been hacked long before.
The company, which bought Starwood in 2016, said it had reported the incident to law enforcement, had begun notifying regulatory authorities and was to start sending e-mails to affected customers on Friday.
“We deeply regret this incident happened. We fell short of what our guests deserve and what we expect of ourselves. We are doing everything we can to support our guests and using lessons learned to be better moving forward,” Marriott’s president and chief executive officer Arne Sorenson said in a statement.
The company has also instructed those who believe they might have been impacted by the hack to access their dedicated website or telephone a specifically set-up call centre, which will be open seven days a week and available in multiple languages.
Malta's first Marriott-branded hotel is set to open next year in Balluta Bay instead of what used to be a Le Méridien hotel.
The Le Méridien brand was bought by Starwood Hotels in 2005 and is now part of Marriott International, but a spokesman for the Balluta hotel said it was unclear whether clients were affected by the global data breach.