Hotels and resorts in Southwest Florida are now increasing security features in order to protect their customers from scammers who attack hotel customers. Lots of cases have already been reported all over the country of con artists calling hotel customers during the night.
According to reports, the modus operandi involves scammers calling a customer in his/her hotel room during the night or when they think customers are already asleep. The con artist pretends to be a hotel employee and ask important information from the guest like credit card information. Scammers usually provide a lot of reasons to persuade guest to provide the information over the phone like computer crashes, processing problems, etc. The late night call is a strategy so scammers can coax crucial information while guests are probably sleepy, tired, or groggy.
Some hotels in Southwest Florida like the Best Western Naples Plaza Hotel already added security features like posting warning messages on the front desk to inform customers about the fraud. The hotels also directs outside calls into the hotel to the front desk first. If the customer confirms and wants to accept the call, they will transfer the call to the hotel room.
Hotels also imposed stricter rules like never revealing a customer’s name or a room number to someone unless the room owner previously notified the front desk that they are expecting someone.
So far, Collier County Sheriff’s Office has not received any report about customers being victimized by the scam although they already received reports from some hotels informing them that such scam is operating and some of their customers received such calls.
