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27th Jul 2021

Dublin pub hit with ‘about 50 or 60’ fake bookings on first day of indoor service

Stephen Porzio

One person had her name and contact details taken and used to make a fake booking.

Dublin pub Doheny and Nesbitt was hit with “about 50 or 60” fake bookings on Monday when indoor service resumed, according to its manager.

John O’Brien made the comments to RTÉ’s Liveline after host Joe Duffy said the show was hearing reports of anti-vaxxers making “dummy bookings” in pubs and restaurants that are offering indoor service to those vaccinated or recovered from Covid-19.

Caller Paula told the programme that someone had made a fake booking for Doheny and Nesbitt in Baggot Street using her details, including her name, phone number and e-mail address.

She said: “I don’t know where they got the details from… but the fact that they had them and they’d used them to impersonate me to make what turned out to be a false booking, to my mind… it’s despicable.

“It’s a malicious tactic to undermine the restaurant trade that are… bending over backwards to now reopen.”

O’Brien then told the show that the pub had “about 50 or 60” fake bookings on Monday.

However, unlike in Paula’s case, most of the bookings used names and phone numbers that did not correspond or had random names with publicly available numbers.

O’Brien said: “It’s making it harder for us. We’ve enough to be doing with the guidelines without having to do all this as well.”

The pub manager said taking credit card details or a deposit from people making reservations might be an option in the future to prevent fake bookings.