Legality of using an alias to book and pay for hotels and restaurants
 

I travel mainly within the UK on business.
I use a nickname/assumed name/alias (whatever you want to call it) for all business for the company, and my company ID has my nickname on on it instead of my real name.

I'm wanting to get a company debit card with my nickname on it rather than my legal name.

1) can I do that?

2)can I then buy things such as hotel rooms under my alias without providing my real name?

EDIT:
there's no fraud or anything unscrupulous going on

In many countries you must present yout passport/ (official) ID at check-in. So in this case it isn´t possible. If you get such a credit card is a question you should ask your bank. Personally I doubt it. There is (at least in some countries) a difference if a pen name is registered in the passport.

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Obscure2k
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Luxury Hotels and Travel

Restaurants? Definitely not illegal. Obviously if you don't make a reservation, they don't even know your name. You can show up and pay cash completely anonymously. And if you need reservations, there's nothing stopping you from setting up an Opentable account with a throwaway email address and fake information.

Hotels? Obviously varies by local laws. I'd generally say no for international travel, due to the fact that many countries require foreigners to register with their passports. For domestic U.S. travel, I'd suggest you can get away with it at certain places, although using a debit card always raises eyebrows and potential complications. I'd probably stick to motels and stay cash-based for this.

If there's no fraud or anything unscrupulous going on, why the need for secrecy? ;) I've already assumed that someone on top-secret government work wouldn't be on Flyertalk asking this question, and would already have the credentials needed to travel with an alias.

Why?

Having an affair?

I have a friend with a large extended family. Many of them share a long complicated surname that always gets convoluted. Other relatives have a different last name completely. They get together a lot and different people make restaurant reservations. They just always reserve under the same easy name. I can't remember exactly but it's something like Brown. Everyone knows to just ask for that table when the arrive. Seems logical to me.

Hotels? I know they have a way when working with celebrities who often either on a different name.

I have one friend who's a partner in a family company. She used her married name personally, but her family name professionally. I'd guess she books hotels under the legal name, I'll have to ask. I actually know a number of people who's names have changed through marriage/divorce, etc. Pretty much all of them still continue to use the name the profession knows them by. But again, in those cases you can easily book under the name that's on your ID.

This was the first thing I thought of, but I guess I always assumed that the hotel knew the person's name, and an alias was used internally so that people couldn't phone up and harass the celebrity. (Along with other processes to get celebs into and out of the property safely, etc.) Never the celebrity carrying fake ID, which is a criminal offense in many places.

I would ask the opposite question: Why can a person not have privacy and anonymity when choosing where to spend their money?

You might argue that a hotel needs your identity to guarantee you don't, say, smash the place to bits, but there's other ways to handle this situation (say a third party that covers liability for a member) without compromising privacy.

For me it's not a question of privacy to hide activities that I'd rather not be let known. But I do have a problem with hotels making copies of passports and other forms of IDs. Ever wonder how that information is handled? Almost all hotels have terrible data security practices and your information can very easily be stolen. Creating fake identities from there on in your name becomes much easier from there. I've been in brand name hotels (e.g., Marriott) where I've seen piles of copies of guests' passports on the desk. I could have easily walked away with a few of them without anyone noticing. I make a stink every now and then at various hotels around the world. But I need to sleep, so I inevitably give in.

I would assume something like anonymous hotel or restaurant reviewer...

My wife is a long time investigator, pretty sure she will find you whether you like it or not. Short of paying in cash and not ever carrying a phone, she will find you. But for regular travel including hotels and restaurants, why the need to have an alias? I"m about as boring as it gets, 100% confident nobody cares about me.

Is the nickname the first or last(surname) name? Or both?

For people from non English speaking countries who work/live in English speaking countries is not unusual to have an anglicised first and/or last name that does not 100% match a passport

You already do have it at restaurants. Only problem there would be trying to pass a credit card with a fake name on it, which is probably some type of fraud or bank crime in many jurisdictions.

I would suggest that a hotel owner has a right to know who's staying in the hotel, given the potential liability involved, and clearly many governments collect this information too. But I do agree with the point about hotel infosec. If a huge company like Marriott can't take care of my passport information, why would I expect some mom & pop joint with a photocopy machine to be able to do it?

I interpreted OP as truly attempting to travel under a false identity. If it's just a nickname vs given name thing or anglicized vs not anglicized, with no intent to deceive, then there are probably some simpler processes to handle that.

1) - unlikely. KYC and similar money laundering/anti-terrorism checks are going to require you to disclose your legal name, DOB, address etc. No bank (even the pre-paid, reloadable card folks) are going to risk their regulatory licenses to put a fake name on a card and you'll probably fail the identity check in the first place.
2) - in the UK - sure. No law against it. How you pay is a different matter as few hotels are going to let you check in without a valid credit/debit card which - for the reasons above - is likely to have your real name on it.