Are you going to book a hotel room soon? Due to the fact that tourists and business travelers are sometimes seen as the easiest targets, keep your personal information secure. Hotels give con artists a quick route to their objective of trying to part a guest from their money.
7 Common Hotel Scams to be Aware of
You would think that you could see a scam coming from a mile away, but con artists nowadays are becoming more skilled.
As we’ll demonstrate, even ordering a pepperoni pizza to be delivered to your hotel room might have unavoidable implications.
1. Fake Website
When booking hotels online, be sure the website is trustworthy. It’s common knowledge that scammers create fake web sites to entice victims into giving them their credit card information.
Verify the booking site’s validity once more. Before making a reservation, check the website for spelling problems and other minor flaws.
2. Fake Food Delivery
It could seem like a fortuitous discovery to come upon a random delivery menu or leaflet in the hotel, but it might just as well be a fraud. Verify the authenticity of the menus that were left in the hotel room.
After a day of travel or adventure, eating in may seem like a tempting alternative, but you run the risk of getting food from a place that doesn’t even exist. Fake menus with phone numbers that lead callers to the scammers rather than the hotel or a legitimate company are often distributed to rooms by con artists. Over the phone, they will obtain the caller’s payment card information, but they will never deliver meals.
Do some research before opting to get takeout. Ask the front desk personnel at your hotel for recommendations for supper beforehand. They are aware of what is around and where previous visitors have found success.
Doing a fast Google search is certainly beneficial if you want to place an order from a flyer. There is a good possibility that the restaurant is real if it can be found on Google Street View or review websites like Yelp.
3. Late Night Front Desk Calls
It’s possible for someone pretending to be the front desk to telephone hotel guests in the middle of the night.
The caller requests credit card information and claims that there is a problem with the credit card on file. They may claim that the payment was declined, that they need to re-verify payment information, or that they have lost all of the financial information and must conduct an audit by a certain date.
In order to save you any bother, the con artist will offer to obtain your credit card information over the phone. A legitimate hotel employee, on the other hand, will always request payment for any charges at the front desk and will never call you at strange hours of the night asking for your credit card information.
Make all payments in person. Always report any calls of this sort to the hotel administration.
4. “Free” Wi-Fi Connections
Free internet connection is frequently promoted as a perk of staying at a hotel, but it also gives con artists a foot in the door. Even if the network seems legitimate, free public Wi-Fi connections should be avoided.
The promise of free internet connection lures tourists into wireless internet “skimming”. This frequently occurs in the hotel’s public spaces. Although it is free to use, the connection is not secure.
The con artist just creates a hotspot with the name “Free Wi-Fi” in a hotel, park, or other well-known public location. Any data you use after initiating the connection—including websites visited, passwords entered, credit card numbers, etc.—will be transferred straight to the host/computer. scammer’s
Make careful you use the right network, which typically requires a password, such as your room number, if you’re staying at a hotel that offers free Wi-Fi. To avoid misunderstanding, ask a front desk employee.
If you travel frequently, it’s important to take into account the function that lets you use your smartphone as a hotspot on some phone carriers. It will cost you a few dollars more, but it’s cheaper than having your identity stolen.
5. Checkout Scam
The front desk of a hotel always requests a form of payment to be kept on file, such as a credit or debit card, for incidentals when guests check in. However, customers have the option to pay in another way, like cash, at the register.
Regardless of the payment method, obtain a receipt. This gives you a record of all charges made throughout your stay, so you may contest any charges made to the credit card on file if that should happen and have the receipt to support your claim.
Use the form of payment that was saved when you checked in as the strongest defense against fraud at the point of sale.
Using a credit card is preferable than using a debit card. If your number is hacked, using your debit card gives access to your checking account and might make contacting the bank to resolve the issue more difficult.
6. Paid for Beachfront, But You Can’t See the Beach
It’s possible that the view from your hotel room isn’t exactly what you expected.
Nothing tops off a tropical getaway like a glimpse of the beach from your hotel balcony. You frequently pay more to guarantee that you will be able to see the dawn over azure waters.
Some hotels do boast sea views, but they don’t actually look out onto the beach. Between you and the water, there can be a marina, a motorway, or a strip mall. Although it might not ruin your idyllic holiday, nobody likes to be lied to.
Before you visit, visit. A fantastic tool for determining where your hotel is located is Google Street View. Before they even arrive, it enables visitors to enjoy a 360-degree tour of the hotel’s façade. A website like TripAdvisor, where many visitors share pictures of the view from their rooms, is a good place to look.
7. Spending a Fortune on the Hotel’s Bottled Water
Beware the hotel minibar!
There is water everywhere around, but none of it is drinkable. The decision of whether or not the water is safe to drink can be difficult when traveling to a nation with questionable water regulations.
The problem is that some hotels are capitalizing on these anxieties. Even though the water is safe to drink, the hotel personnel may issue a warning in some nations. This encourages visitors to purchase the expensive bottled water in the minibar.
Even worse, the water may occasionally be provided without a price tag, leading visitors to believe it is free. Unfortunately, you only realize that the bottled water is not free until you receive the charge at the register.