Cyber attacks on hospitality sector: stock market reaction

Abstract

Purpose The paper aims to analyze the impact of cyber attacks on stock returns of companies operating in the hospitality sector. The fast development of information and communication technologies has been posited as both an opportunity and a challenge to the United Nations Global Sustainable Development Goals. Digital technologies are significant tools for sustainable development, but if they are not addressed appropriately, they can potentially hinder the progress toward sustainability. Among negative impacts, it is necessary to consider cyber risk, a major concern today, in particular for industries which work with sensitive data, such as tourism businesses. Hospitality businesses have to adequately manage cyber insecurity and digital privacy issues, to prevent losses and contribute to socioeconomic sustainable growth. Design/methodology/approach Using event-study methodology, the paper provides empirical evidence on the effect of announcements of 170 information security breaches on the market value of firms operating in the hospitality sector in the past five years. Findings The study focuses on identifying potential threats of cyber attacks for the economic value of listed companies. The authors find that negative market returns occur following announcements of cyber attacks suffered by hospitality companies. Adequate investments in technology for cyber security and staff training are relevant in the hospitality sector to reduce cyber risk. Originality/value The paper contributes to identifying potential threats of cyber attacks for the economic value of listed companies operating in the hospitality sector. The analysis is carried out by collecting an original sample of global cyber attacks from newspaper announcements sourced from the LexisNexis database.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on travel cryptocurrency and stock market performances: an event-study approach

“…The event study approach has been used to investigate the impact of non-corporate events such as disease outbreaks or natural disasters on stock markets (Singh et al , 2020) and has appeared in hospitality and tourism research for some time (Arcuri et al , 2020; Chen et al , 2007; Kim et al , 2020). This study differs from previous studies in two respects.…”

Exploring the Role of Cybersecurity in Enhancing Digital Trust of Egyptian Travel Agencies

“…Bazazo et al, (2019) has found the significance of cybersecurity for mainly protecting digital bases in all important tourist facilities. Also, Arcuri et al (2020) concluded that cyberattacks negatively affect the economic value of hospitality companies. While Ruzic & Matika (2020) have concluded the impacts of cybercrime security threats on Croatian business institutions in tourism.…”

“…Today cyber risk draws more attention, particularly for fields that deal with sensitive data like tourism businesses. That issue put emphasis on managing cyber insecurity and digital privacy to protect from losses (Arcuri et al, 2020). Cyberattacks lead to critical financial, As well, nearly more than $500,000 were costed to recover from a security hack in more than 5500 companies from different fields in 26 countries around the world (Kaspersky, 2018).…”

Cyber risk and cybersecurity: a systematic review of data availability

“…Another example of data collection on the impact of cyberattacks is provided by Sornette et al (2013), who use a database of newspaper articles, press reports and other media to provide a predictive method to identify triggering events and potential accident scenarios and estimate their severity and frequency. A similar approach to data collection was used by Arcuri et al (2020) to gather an original sample of global cyberattacks from newspaper reports sourced from the LexisNexis database. This collection is also used and applied to the fields of dynamic communication and cyber risk perception by Fang et al (2021).…”