Dutch hotels hit by data breach exposing customer information

Hotels in the Netherlands were affected by a data breach that reportedly led to the theft of customer and reservation data, NOS reported Tuesday.

"In the Netherlands, at least one hundred hotels have been affected. But reports are also coming in from Belgium and Ireland," said Tim Vissers, managing director of Hospecs, which operates hotels and provides services to the sector.

Vissers noted that several dozen messages have been sent to hotel customers each day in phishing attempts asking them to pay for their reservations, warning that the number could rise to thousands.

"There are several layers between making a reservation and confirming a reservation, including those for recording a reservation and determining a price. The leak appears to be in one of those systems," he said.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority said it is investigating the leak as Hospecs is collecting data to map which hotels have been affected and what data was stolen.