5 Common hotel scams you should be aware of
Hotel scam is a big problem in traveling industry. Suppose, while planning your trip for the next holiday, you decided to book your hotel room weeks prior to the trip. And finally the day arrives to go on vacation, and you reach your hotel with your luggage and ask for the room that you booked weeks ago, But when they deny any such booking, and now you have nowhere to go. This is a common hotel scam, and it can happen to you too. So to avoid being in such a pathetic situation, you can read some of the most common hotel scams below.
1) Hotel Cancellation scam
As described in the above example where hotel staff deny your booking, this scam generally happens during tourist seasons when there is a high number of tourists and a limited number of hotel rooms. In such a scenario, hotels increase their room rent and if they find someone paying higher than your booking amount, then they will cancel your booking. We have discussed a similar hotel scam in our Goa scam article. To avoid this scam it is better to stay in touch with your hotel before arriving there.
2) Bedsheet hotel scams
In this hotel scam, during check out when you are about to leave your hotel room and paying for your food bill then staff ask you to pay an extra amount saying that you have made some permanent marks on their white bedsheet. And they won’t let you leave the hotel without paying the extra charges for the bedsheet, you can argue with them but due to the lack of evidence you have to pay them fine. And this is how you get scammed.
To avoid this scam it is better to check your bedsheet at the time of check in, and if you find any stain or tear in your bed sheet, notify the room service and ask them to change it.
3) Food Menu scams
This scam usually happens in hostels or in hotels with very cheap room prices. You book your room seeing that it has a very low price as compared to its competition, but you forget to see its menu, which by the way nobody checks before booking a room. So they charge you too much on the food and you end up paying a high amount of money for such a cheap stay. So it’s better to check the menu of the hotel or the hostel before booking your stay.
4) Fake booking websites
This is another common online booking scam. According to Times of India, recently about over 100 tourists got scammed by cyber criminals due to booking their hotel in Puri through fake hotel booking websites. Generally these criminals create fake hotel websites offering you high discounts and great package deals. If you get lured by these fake websites, you end up paying a good amount to these scammers for nothing.
5) Free coupon scam
This generally happens in tourist areas, where someone approaches you distributing “FREE COUPONS/SCRATCH CARDS”. In which there are many exciting prizes like : winning iphone, tv, bike and a ‘FREE STAY’. And when you scratch it you will get free stay (because it is always a free stay on those scratch cards). So that was their technique to get someone to stay in their property, and they will make money in the names of various taxes. Which is usually more than the average stay price in that locality. So it is better to avoid getting into such traps.
So this was a short list of 5 hotel scams you should know. Apart from this there are some important point one should keep in his/her mind before making any kind of booking:
- Always use reputed websites and apps to book your rooms online.
- Always read the hotel cancellation policies, sometimes they don’t provide you any refund if you don’t like your room at check in.
- Read reviews of the hotel online, it is better to start checking the reviews with 1 star.
- If there is any deal which is too good to be true, consider it as a redflag.
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