Booking scams: Helping guests helps hoteliers
With 15 million deceptive bookings last year, hoteliers must educate and assist guests who were victimized by booking scams.
Although online booking scams are a problem that should be resolved by the hotel industry as a whole, they also can cause headaches for individual front-desk employees at properties.
According to research from the American Hotel & Lodging Association, 15 million deceptive bookings were made in 2015 at a cost of roughly $1.3 billion.
So what should you do when prospective guests walk through your front door believing they’ve booked and paid for a stay only to find out they’ve been scammed? Sources said the answer to that question can be a difficult one, but it requires a delicate balance of education, compassion and long-term thinking.
Maryam Khan Cope, VP of government affairs for AH&LA, said one way these rogue websites operate is by taking photos from a hotel’s website and claiming to offer bookings to that particular property