InterContinental Hotels Group, which operates under various brands such as Holiday Inn Express and Six Senses, today confirmed the reason for the total system outage that has lasted for two days.
IHG acknowledges that it has been hacked instead of going through a scheduled maintenance which resulted in a complete disruption in their IT infrastructure.
There is a way to access IHG here.
Ihg One rewards rate and bonus points offers are currently available.
InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (IHG or the Company) reports that parts of the Company’s technology systems have been subject to unauthorised activity. IHG’s booking channels and other applications have been significantly disrupted since yesterday, and this is ongoing.
IHG has implemented its response plans, is notifying relevant regulatory authorities and is working closely with its technology suppliers. External specialists have also been engaged to investigate the incident.
IHG is working to fully restore all systems as soon as possible and to assess the nature, extent and impact of the incident. We will be supporting hotel owners and operators as part of our response to the ongoing service disruption. IHG’s hotels are still able to operate and to take reservations directly.
A further update will be provided as and when appropriate.
We don't know how supporting hotel owners is going to work when their internal systems are down, nobody is picking up the phones, or they are busy.
Guests with close-in cancellation policies online or through contact centers may be charged by hotels if they can't change their reservations.
Considering that booking windows have been shortened due to the Pandemic, the loss of bookings is a catastrophe.
Business travelers and guests are booking late and not months in advance. You can't call individual hotels directly if you want to book an IHG affiliated hotel.
The hotels can't check what your status is for elite benefits if you are an ihg one rewards status member
Considering that the systems have been down for a couple of days, it must be quite intrusive.
The outage is September 5, 2022.
On the second day, the total system outage continues.
It was the conclusion.
If customer data has been leaked again, it can be expected to be fined hundreds of millions of dollars by authorities in different countries.
When there is not enough staff to manage day-to-day operations, hotels can't suddenly handle them inhouse.
If you want to book a hotel through an online travel agency, you can't because of the hack.
When the systems are completely offline and down, it's not true that they have been disrupted. This is a complete meltdown.
Data security has not been taken seriously by companies. This past Sunday was a good one, as it was a reckoning day.
I hope that IHG and its partners are able to quickly clean up the mess.
There is no notice on the website or app about this hack.