CNET: Google Adds Hotel Sustainability Info to Search Results. “Googling your next potential hotel stay? The search giant will now serve up information on a hotel’s sustainability and health and safety programs right there in the search results.”
The Register: Marriott Hotels admits to third data breach in 4 years. “Crooks have reportedly made off with 20GB of data from Marriott Hotels, which apparently included credit card info and internal company documents. The unnamed crew behind the theft told DataBreaches it broke into a server at the Marriott hotel at Baltimore-Washington International Airport in Maryland late last month.”
Google Blog: New tools for hotels to reconnect with travelers. “As travel interest rebounds, businesses need easy ways to connect with potential customers. So today, we’re announcing new tools to help hoteliers find people who are ready to book their next trip.”
PR Newswire: Iconic Waldorf Astoria New York Launches ‘Waldorf Stories’ Website To Honor The History Of The World-Renowned Hotel (PRESS RELEASE). “Today the iconic Waldorf Astoria New York has launched Waldorf Stories, a brand-new website that will honor, document, and preserve the oral history of the world’s most famous hotel through stories told by the people that lived them—the guests, visitors, and staff who have experienced special moments at the legendary building on Park Avenue.”
BNN Bloomberg: Google Is Now Helping Travelers Go Green. “Hotels that take sustainability seriously don’t often shout it from the rooftops, while others tout themselves as green just for offering an option to skip daily laundering of linen. The most significant new tool comes courtesy of Google. Starting on Sept. 22, it will label hotels as ‘Eco-Certified’ in global search results, with a leaf-shaped icon next to the hotel’s name. Clicking on the ‘About’ tab will detail the property’s specific sustainability practices, such as having water use audited by an independent organization or using energy from carbon-free sources.”
KITV: HLTA: Hotel industry seeing large number of cancelations. “Hawaii Lodging and Tourism Association president and CEO Mufi Hanneman says many visitors are listening to Governor David Ige’s message to postpone traveling to Hawaii during the current surge. He says the hospitality industry is seeing a record number of cancelations and forcing many businesses to revise budgets.”
Wired: Watch a Hacker Hijack a Capsule Hotel’s Lights, Fans, and Beds. “A TRAVEL TIP: When staying in a ‘capsule hotel,’ the Japanese style of budget accommodation that packs guests into tiny, adjoining rooms not much bigger than their bodies, be considerate of your neighbors. Especially if the capsule hotel you’re staying in offers digital automation features—and a hacker is staying in the next room over.”
TechCrunch: After similar moves for Shopping and Flights, Google makes hotel listings free. “Last year, Google made a significant change to its Google Shopping destination by making it free for e-commerce retailers to sell on Google, when before the Shopping tab had been dominated by paid product listings. It also made it free for partners to participate in Google Flights. Today, the company announced it’s now doing the same thing for hotel booking links on the Google.com/travel vertical.”
Reuters: France fines Google 1.1 million euros over hotel rankings practices . “Google Ireland and Google France have agreed to pay a 1.1 million euros ($1.34 million) fine after a probe found that Google’s hotel rankings could be misleading for consumers, France’s finance ministry and fraud watchdog said on Monday.”
News AU: Outrageous food waste in Sydney hotel quarantine revealed. “Australia’s $10 billion food waste shame extends to Sydney’s hotel quarantine system, with thousands of kilos of food being sent straight to landfill after perfectly healthy travellers check out. From bottles of water, to packets of noodles, breakfast cereals and fruit, you only need to take one glimpse at Northern Beaches mother Sarah Morris’s garage to get a grasp of the true crisis.”
Washington Post: At Trump’s New York hotel, the pandemic is hurting business — again. “In the White House, President Trump has sought to play down the threat posed by the coronavirus, saying this past weekend that the country is ’rounding the corner.’ But at Trump’s luxury hotel in Manhattan, executives told a much less hopeful story Monday. Ten months into the pandemic, Trump hotel executives told investors that resurgent caseloads were driving down their business again — snuffing out a brief uptick in the early fall.”
ThreatPost: Millions of Hotel Guests Worldwide Caught Up in Mass Data Leak. “A widely used hotel reservation platform has exposed 10 million files related to guests at various hotels around the world, thanks to a misconfigured Amazon Web Services S3 bucket. The records include sensitive data, including credit-card details.”
6SqFt: NYC’s landmarked Roosevelt Hotel will close after 96 years due to pandemic. “When the Roosevelt Hotel opened on East 45th Street in 1924, it was connected to Grand Central via an underground tunnel, signaling its prominence among New York’s Jazz Age society. But nearly 100 years later, the Midtown hotel will shut it doors for good on October 31.”
New York Times: American Could Face Prison in Thailand After Posting Negative Reviews of a Resort. “An American man who lives in Thailand was unhappy that a resort hotel wanted to charge him a $15 corkage fee for bringing his own bottle of gin to the restaurant. He argued with a manager and then later did what has become second nature for disgruntled tourists: He posted negative reviews of the resort online.” Apparently the resort is willing to settle with the guest, but I don’t know if it happened. No recent news on a quick search.
New York Times: Lumberjack, Tailor, Counselor, Host: A Hotel Owner Does It All in the Pandemic. “As the head of a small business, Mr. Patel, whose family owns eight budget hotel franchises, was used to wearing multiple hats. But since March, when the long-haul drivers, families on road trips and business travelers who made up most of his clientele stopped checking in, forcing him to lay off workers and hunt for cash, Mr. Patel has become a one-man army battling for the survival of his business. Its death would be no less than the extinguishing of an American dream.”
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