Skift Take
Hotel apps and loyalty programs involve a lot of guest data — and potential vulnerability to foreign hackers. Just ask Marriott. Radisson’s Americas breakup aims to beef up guest data security.
The Radisson hotel empire is more complex these days than it was a year ago, and the company’s Americas CEO is finally explaining why.
Radisson Hotel Group and Radisson Hotel Group Americas have many of the same brands but now operate as two separate companies with separate loyalty programs, technology infrastructure like reservations and property management systems, and websites. Radisson Hotel Group Americas covers North, Central, and South America while Radisson Hotel Group operates in the rest of the world.
Company leaders initially touted the separation earlier this year as one aiming to deliver an "even more personalized experience” for loyalty members and never really gave a clear answer when contacted twice previously by Skift this year. But it all boils down to wanting to protect the data of U.S. citizens from Chinese cybersecurity risks.
“It's really driven by the U.S. government wanting to make sure that the data of all U.S. citizens is fully protected from leaving the United States [and] from being accessed from outside of the United States,” Radisson Hotel Group Americas CEO Jim Alderman said in an interview with Skift. “They wanted to make sure that we had completely separate systems. And that was really the primary Herculean effort that went on was completely separating the two companies.”
The previously fully intact Radisson was owned by a Chinese state-owned firm, Jin Jiang
