The world has made it easier to book a hotel reservation but if the issues at the MGM and Caesar’s palace in Las Vegas have taught us anything, they have also made it easier for hackers to steal infromation.
Indulge me, if you will.
Many decades ago, when I was a young boy, my aunt and uncle took my brothers and I to a lake in upstate New York for a little bit of a vacation. We stayed at a mom-and-pop motel.
I will never forget the proprietor waving my uncle off when we checked in and he went to pay.
“That’s OK,” the proprietor said. “We’ll settle up when you check out.”
In present-day terms, that seems mind-boggling.
Even way back then, I knew that this was unusual. Maybe the proprietor just needed to see a credit card, or took the license of the car down, but it very much seemed like he was just operating on the honors system. Even if we had skipped out, which, of course we did not, the loss to the owner would have been minimal.
Now flash forward to the present day.
The MGM and Caesars Palace in Las Vegas both had sensitive information stolen, and the hackers demanded a $30 million ransom for the information.
Yes, technology has made it easier to expedite check-in for hotels and for guests, but it is also easier for the hacker.
Maybe, to protect people’s sensitive information, we need to go back in time.
Maybe we need to find a way to have an amalgam of what is available in the present today and to the honor system from years ago.
I get it. We are trying to streamline travel. Heck, just look at the way we board airplanes these days.
I speak from experience on this. Last month, I was hacked and lost $1,400. And it all started with someone claiming to be from a reputable company that, surprisingly, offered their services for online protection.
Go figure.
It’s a helpless feeling of violation. And on top of that, it was time-consuming and, at times problematic, to change my bank account and personal information, and then call all of my credit cards and anybody else such as the car loans and subscriptions or other things that automatically withdraw funds every month.
When it comes to guests who stayed at the hotels that were hacked in Las Vegas, it seems to me that there is a space for someone to come up with a better way to both streamline travel and protect traveler information. If we don’t thing of a solution, the next time a travel company is hacked, it will likely be more costly than $30 million.
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