It’s exciting to hear that the SCBWI winter conference will be back in person in January 2023. For those who decide to attend and are unable to make use of the SCBWI hotel referral with conference discount rates or those who may just be traveling soon to visit family or leisure, please be aware that there are hotel scams out there.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert on this subject matter. I had a recent bad experience with one and while I will not be giving company specifics, I’ve pulled together a few tips based on hindsight, research, and an endless mental loop of replaying the events. Here are the warning signs I didn’t notice earlier that I hope someone else will before they spend any of their hard-earned money.
If you’re using a 3rd-party app to reserve your hotel, make sure it’s a reputable and trusted app. I began my journey by using a 3rd party app that I’ve used many times and still love, but I needed to communicate with the hotel to verify some aspects of my reservation. So once I found a hotel I was interested in, I did what I thought was the next logical thing: I did a web search for it to find their phone number. Only, the phone number I called was not the hotel phone number.