Xi caught in the act; Vegas economy looking up

If Donald Trump wants to get tough on Chinese President Xi Jinping, he may just have been handed an excuse courtesy of Starwood. Indeed, White House retaliation may already be teed up like a golf ball at Mar-A-Lago. According to HotelsMag.com, “Marriott International is now facing the possibility that the [2014-18] hack may be attributed to Chinese who potentially may have been using the data for the country’s government intelligence services and the military, according to multiple sources.” Passport data was among the information plundered during the long-undiscovered hack. Investigation of the hacking has found similarities to other Chinese data raids, although China may have been only one of several culprits. “Think of the depth of knowledge they could now have about travel habits or who happened to be in a certain city at the same time as another person,” said former FBI official Robert Anderson. “It fits with how the Chinese intelligence services think about things.”

“One clue pointing to a government attacker is the amount of time the intruders were working quietly inside the network,” added Michael Sussmann, late of the Department of Justice‘s cyber-security branch. “Patience is a virtue for spies, but not for criminals trying to steal credit card numbers.” Federal options for payback include ” an executive order intended to make it harder for Chinese companies to obtain critical components for telecommunications equipment,” according to the New York Times. Why Starwood? “Marriott is the top hotel provider for American government and military personnel,” reports the NYT.

Barack Obama thought he’d turned off the data spigot in a 2015 agreement with President Xi but the Chinese have kept on merrily siphoning information. According to former Obama advisor Lisa Monaco “passport information would be particularly valuable in tracking who is crossing borders and what they look like, among other key data.” Part of the incentive to do so is to identify American spies — or perhaps to turn vulnerable citizens into Chinese intelligence assets. To add insult to injury, Marriott is refusing to foot the bill for passport replacement, preferring to sit unconcerned atop its mountain of tainted profits. Ironically, the Chinese would be stealing data from themselves had the Obama administration not discouraged Anbang Insurance Group from purchasing Starwood in 2015. While we hope Trump exacts a pound of flesh from Xi, Starwood and eventual buyer Marriott are ultimately at fault for leaving valuable data vulnerable to theft for five years.

* 2019 is looking much better for Las Vegas than 2018, according to Credit Suisse analyst Cameron McKnight. This is due to an 11% upsurge in convention bookings for the first half of the year. “Our forward convention data is strongly correlated with Strip RevPAR growth,” McKnight writes. So expect to pay more for a hotel room next year. Success comes at a price.

Other indicators favor Las Vegas, including the rate of people quitting their job, up to 5% in October. As McKnight puts it, “a high Quits rate is an indication that the labor market is tight and that job market confidence is high. The Quits rate leads Las Vegas revenues by 3 months, with strong significance … The labor market remains extremely tight, with 1.17 job openings for every job seeker.” On a lighter note, “The Flamingo Las Vegas will debut the largest dedicated Bunk Bed Suite in the US in February 2019, as part of ongoing renovations.”