Holiday Inn Express in Exton is among several franchisees that are suing InterContinental Hotels Group over a cyberattack that occurred five months ago, writes Catherine Stupp for The Wall Street Journal. 

On Sept. 6, IHG detected unauthorized activity on its system and notified franchisees that its online reservation technology would be down. According to hotel owners, the system remained down for several weeks, disrupting bookings and making staff look for workarounds to find reservations and charge guests. 

“We had major issues where people were not able to book, bookings were really bad, revenue had dropped, customer scores were really bad because everyone was complaining,” said Rich Gandhi, owner of Exton’s Holiday Inn Express and other IHG properties. 

The hotel lost a major corporate account due to data security concerns along with two employees who quit due to their workload doubling or even tripling. 

Hotel owners filed a lawsuit against IHG in September, alleging that the company failed to “adequately invest in data security, despite the growing number of well-publicized data breaches affecting the hospitality and similar industries.” 

IHG has now asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit. 

Read more about Holiday Inn Express in The Wall Street Journal.