My guess, as someone who's done quite a bit of work in the web application field, is that when they "web enabled" their existing reservation system, they hadn't fully considered the ramifications of "exposing" the comments field to clients on the web, and discovered there may be some things in the field that they don't want the clients to see, or that there was confusion on the parts of the hotels or the reservation center around whose comments were whose (client vs. staff).

Just a guess!

Chris