Malicious pranksters have cost a restaurant thousands of pounds after booking almost every table for its busy Sunday lunch.
Alistair Myers, co-director of Rafters at Riverside House, in Derbyshire, said staff became aware of the stunt as they checked bookings ahead of the service.
They were shocked to find 80% of the tables had been booked with fake phone numbers and email addresses - enough for 109 seats.
Alistair later learned the electronic bookings had been made using two devices and he is planning on going to the authorities.
He said: “This cyber-attack has been damaging as Sunday is one of the busiest days of the week. It’s horrendous. It’s upsetting.
“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 knocked our confidence.
“The restaurant does courtesy calls to basically confirm the booking for the week ahead.
“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.
“And as we started going down, it became a handful of wrong phone numbers, so we became suspicious.
“We then realised this Sunday we had 23 bookings in total, which equated to 109 people that weren’t actually booked.”
Alistair said his concerns were first raised at the 14-bed hotel and restaurant - which holds two AA rosettes and is listed in the Michelin Guide - last weekend.
He said the provider that runs his booking services was able to confirm all the reservations were made within a few hours and came from two IP addresses.
Alistair said that he and his staff are now in a rush to re-book the restaurant for what is one of their busiest and most profitable serving times.
He said: "Our Sunday lunch is £34 for two courses, £42 for three.
“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 £5,5000 at the top, and it could have been more if we’d not caught it.
“They pretty much targeted it around Sunday lunch, so 80 percent of the bookings were on Sunday lunch.
"It’s definitely a targeted attack.”
Alistair said that following the stunt, he has now been forced to impose a deposit of £10 per person for each booking at the restaurant.
