Hotel Northland to take guests in 2019

Hotel News -- Restoring Green Bay's Hotel Northland is going to take a bit more time than expected, the hotel announced Friday. The project to restore the 90-year-old building as a hotel began in 2016. Searching for specific parts has drawn out the process, construction officials say. “Many of the hotel’s original architectural elements simply can’t be duplicated today causing us to scour the country and beyond for a variety of replacement parts and pieces,” explained Executive Vice President Kelly Schleif of Ganther Construction. Those challenges have prompted the hotel to take guests sometime next year, rather than by the end of 2018 as some had hoped. “We are going to take whatever time is necessary to finish it properly to make sure everything is exactly as everyone in the community expects it to be. And then we are going to open the doors," said General Manager John D. Williams. Williams is leading the project. Until then, the Poke the Bear restuarant at the hotel is set to open December 20 at 11 a.m. It will be open Tuesday through Saturday, serving lunch, dinner, and cocktails from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. The new bar and restaurant will expand its hours and days of service with the coming new year. Poke the Bear guests should enter at the hotel’s entrance at 304 N. Adams Street.

Building a five star hotel in only 15 days in China!

Marriott security breach exposed data of up to 500M guests

Hackers stole information on as many as 500 million guests of the Marriott hotel empire over four years, obtaining credit card and passport numbers and other personal data, the company said Friday as it acknowledged one of the largest security breaches in history. The full scope of the failure was not immediately clear. Marriott was trying to determine if the records included duplicates, such as a single person staying multiple times. The affected hotel brands were operated by Starwood before it was acquired by Marriott in 2016. They include W Hotels, St. Regis, Sheraton, Westin, Element, Aloft, The Luxury Collection, Le Méridien and Four Points. Starwood-branded timeshare properties were also affected. None of the Marriott-branded chains were threatened. The crisis quickly emerged as one of the biggest data breaches on record. "On a scale of 1 to 10 and up, this is one of those No. 10 size breaches. There have only been a few of them of this scale and scope in the last decade," said Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer of Veracode, a security company. By comparison, last year's Equifax hack affected more than 145 million people. A Target breach in 2013 affected more than 41 million payment card accounts and exposed contact information for more than 60 million customers. Security analysts were especially alarmed to learn that the breach began in 2014. While such failures often span months, four years is extreme, said Yonatan Striem-Amit, chief technology officer of Cybereason. It was unclear what hackers could do with the credit card information. Though it was stored in encrypted form, it was possible that hackers also obtained the two components needed to descramble the numbers, the company said. For as many as two-thirds of those affected, the exposed data could include mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and passport numbers. Also included might be dates of birth, gender, reservation dates, arrival and departure times and Starwood Preferred Guest account information. "We fell short of what our guests deserve and what we expect of ourselves," CEO Arne Sorenson said in a statement. "We are doing everything we can to support our guests and using lessons learned to be better moving forward." The breach of personal information could put Marriott in violation of new European privacy laws, as guests included European travelers. Marriott set up a website and call center for customers who believe they are at risk. The hackers' access to the reservation system could be troubling if they turn out to be, say, nation-state spies rather than con artists simply seeking financial gain, said Jesse Varsalone, associate professor of cybersecurity at the University of Maryland University College. Reservation information could mean knowing when and where government officials are traveling, to military bases, conferences or other destinations abroad, he said. "There are just so many things you can extrapolate from people staying at hotels," Varsalone said. The richness of the data makes the hack unique, Wysopal said. "Once you know someone's arrival, departure, room preferences," that could be used to incriminate a person or for a reputation attack that "goes beyond your traditional identity theft or credit-card theft," he said. It isn't common for passport numbers to be part of a hack, but it is not unheard of. Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific Airways said in October that 9.4 million passengers' information had been breached, including passport numbers. Passport numbers are often requested by hotels outside the U.S. because U.S. driver's licenses are not accepted there as identification. The numbers could be added to full sets of data about a person that bad actors sell on the black market, leading to identity theft. And while the credit card industry can cancel accounts and issue new cards within days, it is a much more difficult process, often steeped in government bureaucracy, to get a new passport.

Shin's return jumpstarts Hotel Lotte IPO

 Lotte Group appears to be accelerating its plan to list the shares of Hotel Lotte, which holds considerable stakes in Lotte Property and  Development and other key group units, since Chairman Shin Dong-bin was released from jail on Oct. 5, industry analysts said Friday. Korea's fifth-largest conglomerate has been trying to create a holding company structure for the past few years, with Lotte Corp. at the top holding majority stakes in shopping, chemical, construction and other subsidiaries. Then, Chairman Shin, who has a 10.5 percent stake in Lotte Corp., will control all the group's units. Taking public Hotel Lotte, which Lotte Holdings in Japan currently controls, has been the key to completing the holding company structure in Korea because it reduces Lotte Holdings' stake in the nation's largest hotel chain. After the shares of Hotel Lotte are floated on the local bourse, the group reportedly plans to combine it with Lotte Corp. to create a new holding firm. To jumpstart the largely stalled process to take Hotel Lotte public, Lotte Corp. on Oct. 10 decided to acquire a 23.24 percent stake in Lotte Chemical from two affiliates of Lotte Property and Development (11.27 percent) and Hotel Lotte (11.98 percent) in separate block deals. The deals were worth 2.23 trillion won ($1.96 billion). Under the deal, the holding firm said its stake investment in Lotte Chemical will help diversify its business portfolio, which currently focuses on retail, food and beverage s. The deals came just five days after Shin was freed from detention as an appellate court suspended his sentence of corruption charges. He had been in jail since February for involvement in a corruption scandal of the impeached former President Park Geun-hye. Upon his release, Shin said: "I will make enhanced efforts on the improvement of the group's ownership structure, which has been delayed so far." Over the move, analysts said Lotte will increase momentum in addressing remaining tasks for ownership restructuring, such as embracing Lotte Chemical into the holding firm structure and the IPO of Hotel Lotte.