A hotel runs day and night, which means a systems incident immediately affects guests who are already in the building and not only turnover still to come.
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In brief
The hotel system is the heart of the business: reservations, room allocation, prices, invoicing and often the control of the door locks all hang on it. The booking channels are also connected to it, so that availability and rates are passed on automatically. If the whole thing fails, you cannot check anyone in, programme a key or draw up a bill, while bookings keep coming in that you cannot see. The loss is therefore operational before it becomes financial.
On the data side, a hotel stands out through the combination of payment details, identity details and stay details. You are required to keep a guest register, so you record for every guest who they are and when they stayed where. That information about stays is sensitive in itself, quite apart from the payment details you keep for guarantees and no-shows. In the event of a breach, the report to the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (the Dutch data protection authority) within 72 hours applies and, where the risk is high, the duty to inform guests, including guests from years ago.
So look critically at how long guest data stays in the system. An archive going back ten years increases the size of a breach without producing any benefit. Insurers ask about retention periods, about the separation between the guest network and the business systems, and about the storage of card details. Answers that are not correct affect the duty of disclosure under Article 7:928 of the Dutch Civil Code and the consequences of this in Article 7:930 of the Dutch Civil Code.
The structure of the cover in three parts, with an overview per situation below.
Immediate help
Incident response
Specialists who look into it within hours.
24/7 reporting line
Forensic investigation
Recovery and restart
Your business
Own damage
What the incident costs you yourself.
Data recovery and reconstruction
Business downtime
Ransom under consideration
Towards third parties
Liability
Claims from customers and data subjects.
Claims after a data breach
GDPR notification costs
Legal assistance
What is covered
Situation
Cyber
AVB
BAV
Ransomware brings your systems down
Yes
No
No
Data breach involving personal data
Yes
No
Sometimes
Costs of notification and informing those affected
Yes
No
No
Fraud through a falsified payment instruction
Sometimes
No
No
Administrative fine from the regulator
No
No
No
Hardware that is physically damaged
No
No
No
This overview is general in nature and is not personal advice. What is actually covered, including exclusions, limits and the excess, is set out in the policy conditions and the insurance card (verzekeringskaart) of the insurer; you receive both before you take out cover. Taking out cover without advice? Then read what execution only means for you.
Where things go wrong in practice
Four points that make the difference between a policy that pays out and one that does not.
Keys and access are part of the incident
If the card locks hang on the same system as the administration, an outage means that guests cannot get into their rooms and that you can no longer check anyone in. Ask your supplier to set out in writing how the locks behave during an outage and whether there is an offline emergency mode. Also put a manual procedure in place, because no policy will solve this part of the loss for you.
Booking channels keep running during the outage
Availability and rates are passed on automatically to external channels. If that link stops working, you may end up overbooked or, conversely, keep rooms empty that could have been sold. That loss does not automatically fall under interruption cover, because technically turnover has continued. Discuss explicitly how loss of turnover is calculated in a partial failure of the distribution chain.
Your guest archive determines the cost of a breach
The largest item after a data breach is not the recovery but establishing who has been affected and informing those people. If you keep the entire history of stays, that means guests who slept here years ago and whom you have to reach by email or letter. A retention policy that clears out old data reduces that item directly and is viewed positively at the acceptance stage.
What falls outside the cover
Not covered are fines of a punitive nature, replacing or upgrading your lock system afterwards and physical damage to equipment, which belongs under the business contents cover. Loss of turnover caused by an ordinary fault at a booking channel without an attack is usually excluded as well, as are intent and wilful recklessness under Article 7:952 of the Dutch Civil Code and incidents through vulnerabilities you knew about.
What does your premium depend on?
Number of rooms and annual turnover. Determine the basis for calculation and the loss for each day the hotel cannot run normally.
Size of the guest archive. How many years of stay and payment data you keep determines the size of a possible breach.
Locks linked to the hotel system. Without an offline emergency mode, an outage immediately becomes an operational problem in the building.
Storage of card details. Whether you keep guarantees against no-shows yourself or they sit with your payment service provider makes a considerable difference.
Number of sites on one system. A central system for several locations means that one incident strikes everywhere at once.
Network separation of guest wifi. The guest network must be kept apart from the business systems. This is usually a condition of acceptance.
Insurers weigh these details differently. That is where your saving is.
How we arrange it
You request a quoteWe take stock of your situation, your risk and your wishes.
We compareseveral insurers, on premium as well as conditions.
You receive a proposalWith an explanation of the differences and the exclusions.
We arrange the switchIncluding cancellation, so there is no gap in cover.
Customers rate our service on four aspects: personal service, service delivery, availability and the outcome. The reviews are collected and published by NH1816 and come from customers who have actually taken out a policy with Finass Advies B.V. or reported a claim.
Do we have to inform guests from years ago after a breach?
If their data was still in the system and has been affected, and the risk to them is high, the duty to inform applies to them as well. The forensic investigation determines which data was actually accessed. This is precisely the reason to clear out old stay histories actively. It reduces both the costs and the reputational damage.
Our guests cannot check in. Does that count as interruption?
If the cause is covered and the outage lasts longer than the waiting period, the lost turnover falls under the interruption cover. Additional costs of staying open, such as agency reception staff or issuing keys by hand, fall under the additional costs item only if that is included. Ask about it separately in the quote.
Our booking channel has been hacked, not us. Who reports the breach?
That depends on the division of roles in your agreement with that channel. For the data held in your own system you are the controller and you report it yourself. Set out contractually the period within which the channel must inform you, because your own 72 hours starts running as soon as you become aware of the breach.
Does our business interruption insurance cover the turnover we lose through this?
As a rule, no. That cover requires physical damage to insured property as the cause of the interruption, such as fire or water damage. A hotel system taken down digitally does not meet that. The interruption cover of cyber insurance is intended for that, with its own waiting period and its own indemnity period.
Finass Verzekert is a trading name of Finass Advies B.V. We advise on and arrange non-life insurance on the basis of an objective analysis of several insurers, and receive commission for this from the insurer, which is included in the premium. You pay no separate advice fee. Before you take out cover, we establish your wishes and needs.
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