Taj gift card message for Valentine’s Day is FAKE, tweets the hotel

Jan. 31: A fake message created in the name of Taj Hotels is doing the rounds in social media since the last two days. The message has become so viral in WhatsApp that many has started to believe it to be true.

The WhatsApp forward comes with the text: “I received a gift card from TAJ Hotel and finally got the chance to stay in TAJ Hotel for 7 days for free.” The message comes along with a link. When clicked on the link, a message pops up stating: “TAJ EXPERIENCES GIFT CARD TAJ Hotel sent out 200 gift cards to celebrate Valentine’s Day. You can use this card to stay for 7 days at any hotel in TAJ for free. All you have to do is open the correct gift box. You have 3 tries, good luck!”

On opening it, the user is then guided to some more steps and ultimately the user must then click on any random box and try its luck to see if they have won the gift card. If the player wins the gift card then, it will ask the player to go to the next page to redeem the card. There it will ask the player to forward the message to either five groups or 20 individuals on WhatsApp.

It has come to our notice that a website has been promoting a Valentine’s Day initiative, offering a Taj Experiences Gift Card via WhatsApp. We would like to inform that Taj Hotels/IHCL has not offered any such promotion. We request to take note of this and exercise due caution.

— Taj Hotels (@TajHotels) January 30, 2021

The message became so viral in social media that the Taj Hotels ultimately had to give a clarification in its twitter handle. The hotel chain said that they have not offered any such card. Taj Hotels in its twitter message wrote, “It has come to our notice that a particular website has been promoting a Valentine’s Day initiative, offering a Taj Experiences Gift Card via Whatsapp and other social media. We would like to share with our patrons that Taj Hotels or IHCL has not offered any such promotion and has no connection with this URL/Web Address and domain. We request our patrons to take note of this and exercise due caution.”