Think back to your most recent stay at a hotel. Did you leave anything behind? If you paid for your stay with a credit card, then you likely left your personal financial information at the front desk. If you indulged in a spa treatment, then you might have left your medical information as well. If you dined, booked another stay, or enrolled in a hotel loyalty program, then you also left valuable information about your lifestyle and behavior. Disclosure of such personal information has become commonplace in the hospitality industry and the world at large, and hotel guests reasonably assume that hotels are safeguarding this sensitive, personal information. However, ever-growing numbers of sophisticated computer hackers and cyber-criminals appear to be focusing their attention on stealing the personal information of hotel guests despite the often state-of-the-art data security systems implemented by the hospitality industry to protect it.

Given the increasing sophistication of computer hackers and their ability to infiltrate even the best designed data security systems, a question often arises following the theft of such personal information as to the extent of a hotel company’s liability to guests whose personal information was stolen. While virtually every state, including New York,1 has enacted laws that require a company to disclose a data breach to its customers once a security breach has occurred, there is a dearth of law or statutes regulating what measures a company, including hotel managers, must implement to protect its guests’ sensitive and personal information in the first instance.

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