Last year, Sheraton hotel in South America gave me some information and had guests names and room numbers on the other side. I have been given a fax (remember those times?) when someone was recycling paper (this was Marriott Buenos Aires) and found the hotel’s account receivables on the other side. We have been informed by Design Hotels that they are addressing this matter. The hotel participates in the Starwood SPG program through its relationship with Design Hotels. does not own, operate or manage the Park Hotel Kolkata. Here’s the response that I received form the Marriott spokesperson:Īt Marriott, we take the matters of privacy and security of personal information very seriously. Combined this with more detailed information found from the IDs, passports and visas, it would not be difficult to someone engage in identity theft. Hotel employees have access to your personal and credit card information. The problem with 4 to 6 is that I have absolutely ZERO faith that these hotels have any kind of policy in place how long the information is stored and how they are purged (if they are purged at all). I have even been asked by front desk to take copy of the info page on regular digital camera Scan these two pages to the system such as MicrosĦ. Take photocopy of your passport info page and the arrival stamp or visa pageĥ. Record the ID or passport number and usually your birth date to the systemĪnd then we come so something that I don’t like:Ĥ. Merely check your ID and don’t record anythingģ. Don’t ask for any kind of ID especially if you are a regular guestĢ. What is the retention policy of these copies taken and who is responsible for properly storing them?ġ. When the reader sent this, I was about to check in to the Holiday Inn Express hotel in Phuket (blame those cheap MH fares of last year) and they had their front desk loaded with passport copies. We are checking out tonight (Friday 10 Feb in Kolkata) and are now very curious how secure our passport photocopies will be once we check out and the folios possibly tossed into the cabinet, as I am sure you can imagine.
We just checked the cabinet in the business center at 5:45pm (7 hours after alerting the GM, who said a “staffer isn’t doing their job” and he would look into it) and the cabinet is still unlocked and the photocopies are still there.
We discovered it when we opened the cabinet (it was ajar) to find some more paper for the printer. The fact these documents appear to be tossed into a cabinet left unlocked in the public business center (no hotel key needed access it) is frightening. With identity theft ever-increasing, this is very disturbing as there is much personal information such as birthdate, place of birth, etc that can be used to apply or counterfeit documents. There were hundreds, perhaps even thousands of photocopies of the passport pages and India visas from previous guests from more than a dozen countries. Pramode Bhandari at 10:15am and alerted him to this concern. He seemed more embarrassed that we had discovered it rather than concerned! We met with the GM of The Park Hotel in Kolkata, India Mr. I’ve also contacted the property GM but he was ‘not available’ when I went to his office just now. Last night, when searching for a stapler in the hotel’s Business Center I discovered hundreds of photocopies of guests’ passport photo page & visa pages left unsecured in a cabinet! Talk about identity theft opportunity! There were copies of passports from all over the world. I’m presently at an SPG property in India.
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