An increase in the use of third-party Internet services to book online hotel reservations could adversely impact our revenues. Some of our hotel rooms are booked through Internet travel intermediaries, such as Expedia.com®, Travelocity.com®, and Orbitz.com®, as well as lesser-known online travel service providers. These intermediaries initially focused on leisure travel, but now also provide offerings for corporate travel and group meetings. Although Marriott's Look No Further® Best Rate Guarantee has greatly reduced the ability of intermediaries to undercut the published rates at our hotels, intermediaries continue to use a variety of aggressive online marketing methods to attract customers, including the purchase, by certain companies, of trademarked online keywords such as "Marriott" from Internet search engines such as Google® and Yahoo® to steer customers toward their Web sites (a practice currently being challenged by various trademark owners in federal court). Although Marriott has successfully limited these practices through contracts with key online intermediaries, the number of intermediaries and related companies that drive traffic to intermediaries' Web sites is too large to permit us to eliminate this risk entirely. Our business and profitability could be harmed if online intermediaries succeed in significantly shifting loyalties from our lodging brands to their travel services, diverting bookings away from Marriott.com, or through their fees increasing the overall cost of internet bookings for our hotels.

Failure to maintain the integrity of internal or customer data could result in faulty business decisions, damage of reputation and/or subject us to costs, fines or lawsuits. Our businesses require collection and retention of large volumes of internal and customer data, including credit card numbers and other personally identifiable information of our customers as they are entered into, processed by, summarized by, and reported by our various information systems and those of our service providers. We also maintain personally identifiable information about our employees. The integrity and protection of that customer, employee, and company data is critical to us. If that data is inaccurate or incomplete we could make faulty decisions. Our customers and employees also have a high expectation that we will adequately protect their personal information, and the regulatory environment surrounding information security and privacy is increasingly demanding, both in the United States and other jurisdictions in which we operate. A significant theft, loss or fraudulent use of customer, employee or company data could adversely impact our reputation and could result in remedial and other expenses, fines and litigation.

Changes in privacy law could adversely affect our ability to market our products effectively. Our Timeshare segment and, to a lesser extent, our other lodging segments, rely on a variety of direct marketing techniques, including telemarketing, email marketing, and postal mailings. Any further restrictions in laws such as the Telemarketing Sales Rule, CANSPAM Act, and various U.S. state laws, or new federal laws, regarding marketing and solicitation or international data protection laws that govern these activities could adversely affect the continuing effectiveness of telemarketing, email, and postal mailing techniques and could force further changes in our marketing strategy. If this occurs, we may not be able to develop adequate alternative marketing strategies, which could impact the amount and timing of our sales of timeshare units and other products. We also obtain access to potential customers from travel service providers or other companies with whom we have substantial relationships and market to some individuals on these lists directly or by including our marketing message in the other company's marketing materials. If access to these lists was prohibited or otherwise restricted, our ability to develop new customers, and introduce them to our products could be impaired.

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