The world's largest hotel group has announced that an internal investigation has revealed "unauthorized access" since 2014

On September 8, 2018, Marriott received an alert from an internal security tool regarding an attempt to access Starwood's customer reservation database.

The hotel group believes that the piracy contains information about approximately 500 million customers who have made reservations for a Starwood property.  For approximately 327 million of these customers, the information includes a combination of name, postal address, telephone number, email address, passport number, arrival and departure information, reservation date and communication preferences.

Arne Sorenson, Marriott’s President and Chief Executive Officer: "We are working hard to ensure our guests have answers to questions about their personal information, with a dedicated website and call center.  We will also continue to support the efforts of law enforcement and to work with leading security experts to improve.  Finally, we are devoting the resources necessary to phase out Starwood systems and accelerate the ongoing security enhancements to our network.”