Restaurant says it could ‘lose thousands’ after bogus booking prank

The owners of a fine-dining restaurant have warned they could lose as much as £5,500 after almost all of its Sunday lunch service tables were reserved under bogus bookings.

Staff at Rafters at Riverside House in Derbyshire, which holds two AA rosettes and is listed in the Michelin Guide, became aware of the stunt when checking bookings for this coming Sunday.

They found that 80 per cent of the tables, which seat roughly 109 people, had all been reserved under fake phone numbers and email addresses.

They later learned that all of the bookings had been made using two devices on 3 January.

Alistair Myers, a co-director of the restaurant, said the “cyber-attack” had left him “nervous and anxious”.

“This cyber-attack has been damaging as Sunday is one of busiest days of the week. It’s horrendous. It’s upsetting,” he said.

“I don’t believe I have any enemies in the hotel, I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s pathetic more than anything.

“We’re grown people, with a reputable, amazing business and to have it done to us, it’s knocked our confidence.”

He said he is now planning to give this information to the police but worries that he could lose thousands of pounds.

“It does make you really nervous and anxious, but we’re just having to put it to one side.”

The restaurant, which is housed inside a Grade II-listed hotel building, first became aware of the bogus bookings when carrying out courtesy calls to confirm reservations for the coming week.

“As we were doing these, there were a couple that had wrong phone numbers, so we sent them an email to follow up, which bounced back,” Myers explained.

“And as we started going down, it became a handful of wrong phone numbers, so we became suspicious.

“We then realised this Sunday coming, we had 23 bookings in total, which equated to 109 people, that weren’t actually booked.”

Myers then got in touch with the provider that runs Rafters’ booking services, which confirmed that all the reservations were made in the same day and from two IP addresses.

Rafters is now trying to re-book the restaurant for Sunday, which is usually its “busiest and most profitable”.

“Our Sunday lunch is £34 for two courses, £42 for three,” Myers said, adding that he believes it was a “targeted attack”.

“Even if we averaged it at a very moderate £40 – because on Sunday some people go big on the wine – it would have cost us over £4,000.

“If we went at £50, it’s £5,500 at the top, and it could have been more if we’d not caught it.”

To avoid future mishaps, the restaurant will introduce a £10 deposit per person, which is taken at the time of booking.

“That should put off anyone who is not genuine to make these bookings,” Myers said.