Digital Crosstalk

Hotel guests beware: There be pranksters about!

Posted by Brian | Filed under hotels

The next time you stay in a hotel and the phone rings, listen carefully to what the person on the other end of the telephone has to say – you may be the unwitting victim of a new craze.

Hotel prank calls swept across the United States throughout June and July, where pranksters would call random hotel rooms, make up an excuse to the occupant to stay in the room and then get them to trash it! Included among the numerous pranks to be played on unsuspecting hotel guests are:

• A caller in Arkansas posing as a sprinkler-company employee persuaded a motel employee to do more than $50,000 in damage as part of a “test” of the motel’s emergency alarms.

• In Daphne, Alabama a caller ordered a guest to turn on the sprinklers for a non-existent fire. The end result was damage in excess of $10,000.

• And in Nebraska, a Hampton Inn employee was convinced by a caller to pull the fire alarm.  The caller later also told the employee that the only way to silence the alarm was by breaking the lobby windows. As a result, the employee enlisted the help of a nearby truck driver, who then drove his rig through the front door.

And now it appears theprankster craze has hit the United Kingdom, and the Independent newspaper carries a report of a couple who were targeted by pranksters with American accents. The callers asked the couple, who were staying at the Corus Hotel in the Lake District, to remain in their rooms due to a gas leak and were advised to place a wet towel along the bottom of the door and to break the room window.

However, the couple in question had the presence of mind to call the hotel reception and confirm the incident, to be told no such incident existed!

So next time you’re in a hotel room and the phone rings, listen for an American accent asking you to trash your room. If you get one, you might want to ask yourself if what you are hearing is indeed true, as you might not be on Candid Camera.

And whatever happened to simply putting itching powder in the bed, or replacing the Imperial Leather with dirty face soap anyway?

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Tags: corus, hampton inn, hotels, jokes, pranks