East Coast Conferences has been informed that at least one third-party company based in the UK is targeting conference speakers and attendees with a fraudulent travel and hotel booking scheme. The company is calling and/or emailing conference speakers and attendees and falsely claiming it is the “official” housing bureau and/or authorized by East Coast Conferences to book hotel accommodation for the conference. This is entirely FALSE. The emails will often contain accurate information regarding the conference dates and venue. East Coast Conferences is the only organisation authorized to book accommodation on behalf of conference speakers and attendees.

Please be aware that third-party companies may make a number of FALSE and FRAUDLENT claims about the conference designed to obtain your credit card information, including:

• There are issues with your hotel reservation for the conference;
• The hotel room rate for the conference has increased and/or rooms are running out and must be booked through the third-party company as soon as possible;
• Hotel rooms for the conference can only be booked through the third-party company;
• That the third-party company can get you a cheaper room rate than the conference organizers; or
• Hotel rooms for the conference are sold out and that they can help find you alternative hotels.

Please be aware that this is a SCAM designed to obtain your credit card information and/or make fraudulent charges to your credit card. Please exercise extreme caution if contacted by a third-party organization making these claims. The representatives of these organizations can be extremely pushy. We recommend that you do NOT give these companies your credit card number, personal information, or any details about your hotel reservation. We have heard that conference speakers and attendees that have given their credit card information to some third-party organizations have incurred substantial credit card charges (cancellation fees, service fees, etc). Additionally, the hotel room reservations are not made and the attendees are left without hotel reservations for the conference. If you receive a phone call or email from a third-party organization making any of these claims, please forward the information to jayne@eastcoastconferences.com.au