Omni Hotels IT systems down since Friday, hitting bookings, payments, door locks

Luxury resort chain Omni Hotels & Resorts has had its computer systems knocked offline since Friday in what it has described as a "disruption," though sounds a lot like the MGM Resorts ransomware infection over the summer.

On April 1, Omni, which owns more than 50 properties across the US and Canada, confirmed the downtime via social media:

Neither Omni nor TRT Holdings, which owns the hotel chain, could answer The Register's specific inquiries about the IT outage, including whether it was due to a ransomware infection and when it anticipated restoring normal operations.

As of Wednesday, the corporation's phone systems weren't working, and a pre-recorded message tells callers: "We are currently experiencing technical difficulties."

Reportedly the chain-wide outage began on Friday and shut down reservation, hotel room door lock, and point-of-sale (POS) systems.

Don't worry: Bar still open!

On Reddit, guests at locations across the country confirmed systems were broken, noted that the bar was still open (at least in the Washington DC location) —  and reminded folks to be courteous to hotel staff, who were roundly praised for their grace in what was sure to be a rough Easter weekend. 

"Checking in on paper, no card machines work, even room keys do not work," said one hotel guest who was staying at the Louisville Omni. "Everyone has to be escorted to their room by an employee and the phones and Wi-Fi are down."

Another guest said getting into your room required texting the hotel staff to unlock the door, which took 30 minutes or more.

One Reddit user, who claimed to be a "low-level" Omni employee, said their hotel was only accepting reservations made prior to the outage. The whole situation is "a mess for every party involved. It has been a very stressful work weekend," the netizen vented on the forum.

"We all feel terrible for the inconvenience for all the guests and the stress of not knowing if we'll be able to earn an income during the downed server. For all of you staying at properties, and have chosen to stay, thank you – Omni will surely lose millions over this attack and lose loyal customers. I promise my property will do anything we can to make this inconvenience as smooth as possible."

While neither the resort chain nor its parent company have indicated that cybercriminals are responsible for the downed IT systems, the outage does draw many parallels to the MGM Resorts ransomware infection in September.

Scattered Spider, the crime gang believed to be responsible for both the MGM and Caesars Entertainment digital intrusions, reportedly bragged that all it took to break into MGM's networks was a 10-minute call hoodwinking a help desk.

MGM famously did not pay the ransom demand, then suffered nearly a week of outages, operational disruptions, and the wrath of angry customers. It later said the incident cost it about $100 million in losses, plus its stolen data was reportedly leaked not long after. ®