This one has many variants, but in its simplest form goes like this: you’re in your hotel room, when the front desk calls you up to apologetically ask you for your credit card information. Unfortunately, the system has wiped all card information and so they need you to give them all your info… again.

Of course, if you go down to the front desk, you’ll find out that everything is fine. Whoever you talked to was not the general manager or owner, or even the front desk. This is the Hotel Card (Re)Verification scam and the whole purpose of it is to trick you into giving your credit card details so they can charge things to your card.

This is not a new scam, but as long as there are tired travelers who may not be thinking clearly, there will be this type of scam.

There are fancier forms of this, usually an insider job or compromised system of some type - so for example, if you’ve just extended your stay or requested something, a scammer may have interecepted the information - usually by having access to the hotel/motel’s internal systems - and can use this as a way of convincing you that they are legit and that you are talking to a trusted person.

How to protect yourself
If for some reason you get a call like this, tell the caller that you’ll go to the front desk. If you are unsure of the legitimacy, you can go down to the front desk as you said you would, but this is not required.