Marriott President and CEO Arne Sorenson explains the unexplainable:

> We have withdrawn our petition to the FCC on cybersecurity – an initiative we thought was the right thing to do. However, in the face of disagreement from both regulators and our customers, we see that the effort was doomed. > > This issue has been a complex one, and one that has opened Marriott to much criticism – the most painful of which has been the misunderstanding of our intentions. We wanted to protect the security of Wi-Fi use for conferences at our hotels – it had nothing to do with individual guest use of Wi-Fi or personal Wi-Fi hotspots. > > In fact, we have led the industry in offering millions of customers free Internet access. In October, we announced that Marriott Rewards Members – a membership that is free and open to anyone – would have free Internet when they book direct. That message has been drowned out by the noise with the FCC. > > Cybersecurity is a major concern across the business world and, certainly, in our industry, where guests and conference-goers rightly expect that any hotel-provided connection be secure. We are in a pitched battle against hackers who are at work daily trying to fool consumers – sometimes by setting up a Wi-Fi network that seeks to lure conference-goers into a site intended to steal passwords or other valuable data. To prevent that from happening and to further improve security measures, professionals like the one on this site link can be consulted.

To me, the logic is simple. If you care so much about the security of your guests, make internet access free for all your guests. All of them. The Marriott Rewards program is free, fair enough. And if you required guests to sign up to get free access, that would be reasonable. It gives you some level of (really, the illusion of, but that’s just a quibble) control over who is on the network. But if you take money from anyone, if internet access is a revenue line item for you, then you are simply blowing smoke.

My 2 cents.