Financial Information
Technology, Information Protection, and Privacy Risks
A failure to keep pace with developments in technology could impair our operations or competitive position. The lodging industry continues to demand the use of sophisticated technology and systems, including those used for our reservation, revenue management, and property management systems, our Marriott Rewards and The Ritz-Carlton Rewards programs, and technologies we make available to our guests. These technologies and systems must be refined, updated, and/or replaced with more advanced systems on a regular basis, and if we cannot do so as quickly as our competitors or within budgeted costs and time frames, our business could suffer. We also may not achieve the benefits that we anticipate from any new technology or system, and a failure to do so could result in higher than anticipated costs or could impair our operating results.
An increase in the use of third-party Internet services to book online hotel reservations could adversely impact our business. 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 helped prevent customer preference shift to the intermediaries and 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®, Bing®, Yahoo®, and Baidu® to steer customers toward their websites (a practice that has been 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’ websites is too large to permit us to eliminate this risk entirely. In addition, recent class action litigation against several online travel intermediaries and lodging companies, including Marriott, challenges the legality under antitrust law of contract provisions that support programs such as Marriott’s Look No Further® Best Rate Guarantee, and we cannot assure you that the courts will ultimately uphold such provisions. 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, operational inefficiencies, damage to our 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 in various information systems that we maintain and in those maintained by third parties with whom we contract to provide services, including in areas such as human resources outsourcing, website hosting, and various forms of electronic communications. We and third parties who provide services to us 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 and our service providers will adequately protect their personal information. The information, security, and privacy requirements imposed by governmental regulation and the requirements of the payment card industry are also increasingly demanding, in both the United States and other jurisdictions where we operate. Our systems may not be able to satisfy these changing requirements and employee and customer expectations, or may require significant additional investments or time in order to do so. Efforts to hack or breach security measures, failures of systems or software to operate as designed or intended, viruses, operator error, or inadvertent releases of data all threaten our and our service provider’s information systems and records. Our reliance on computer, Internet-based and mobile systems and communications and the frequency and sophistication of efforts by hackers to gain unauthorized access to such systems have increased significantly in recent years. 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, or litigation. A breach in the security of our information systems or those of our service providers could lead to an interruption in the operation of our systems, resulting in operational inefficiencies and a loss of profits.
Changes in privacy law could adversely affect our ability to market our products effectively. We rely on a variety of direct marketing techniques, including email marketing, online advertising, and postal mailings. Any further restrictions in laws such as the CANSPAM Act, and various U.S. state laws, or new federal laws on marketing and solicitation or international data protection laws that govern these activities could adversely affect the continuing effectiveness of email, online advertising, 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 certain 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.