Fake Offers and Impersonation Calls Fuel Hotel Room Scams Amid Travel Season

Whether traveling for business or leisure, most expect hotel stays to be relaxing and stress-free. Unfortunately, hotel scams are becoming increasingly common, with fraudsters using phone calls to steal personal and financial information from travelers. For Communications Service Providers (CSPs), understanding how travel-related scams operate can help strengthen consumer protection efforts and better equip customers to recognize suspicious calls before they fall victim.

Free Hotel Room Scams

A common scam involves unsolicited robocalls offering free vacations, hotel stays or travel credits. These calls often claim to represent well-known hotel brands, resorts or travel companies and promise a complimentary stay at a luxury resort, free travel credits, airline tickets or even a cruise. Before the offer can be redeemed, however, they request a credit card number to pay a reservation fee, processing charge or administrative cost.

TNS recently observed a spam call offering a random free stay at an all-inclusive resort:

“Hello, this is Robert from Occidental all-inclusive hotels. The reason I’m calling is because I want to invite you and friends to come to the resort. What do you think about it?”

While the offer may sound appealing, calls like these are almost always misleading travel scams.  Legitimate hotel rewards programs and travel loyalty programs that do offer free stays and travel benefits are typically managed through official websites, mobile apps and customer accounts, not unsolicited phone calls. The safest approach is to pause, verify the offer independently and avoid sharing personal information over the phone. Also, use extra caution when the call is unexpected or encourages immediate action through approaching deadlines.

While hotels and their consumers have important roles to play in these scams, the CSPs have a part as well. As frontline defenders against fraud, CSPs play a critical role in protecting customers from hotel scams by deploying advanced call authentication, phone number reputation and spoof protection technologies. By identifying suspicious calling patterns, blocking known scam traffic and educating consumers about emerging threats, CSPs can help reduce the success of hotel impersonation scams, fake travel offers and other fraud campaigns that target travelers.

TNS Call Guardian® delivers industry-leading reputation profiling to identify call spoofing and unwanted robocalls in real time, helping CSPs protect businesses and consumers from scam calls as travel scams pick up. Analyzing more than 1.9 billion call events each day and leveraging Do Not Originate (DNO), unallocated, invalid and unassigned numbers alongside STIR/SHAKEN and advanced analytics, it helps detect and stop suspicious calls or texts from reaching consumers.

TNS Branding and Call Authentication Suite enables calls to display a verified name and logo, helping businesses stand out from scam attempts by increasing trust and transparency for consumers. Branded calling helps reduce spam labeling, minimize caller ID spam label exposure and improve answer confidence by providing rich call data directly on the incoming call screen, making it easier for subscribers to distinguish legitimate outreach from potential hotel room scams.

Stay informed, share awareness of the latest scams and explore our monthly  Scam of the Month updates.

John Haraburda is Product Lead for TNS Call Guardian® with specific responsibilities for TNS’ Communications Market solutions.

Call Guardian is a registered trademark for Transaction Network Services, Inc.