Parks Victoria said its external bookings system remained temporarily suspended while measures were taken to ensure customer data is secure.

“Unfortunately, this means no new bookings can be made at this time,” it said. “It also means we are unable to change or cancel bookings.”

It said bookings would reopen only when Parks Victoria is satisfied the booking system is able to maintain the security of customer data.

In a statement on its website, Queensland Department of Environment, Tourism, Science, and Innovation urged customers to remain vigilant for suspicious communications.

“At this stage, we do not believe customers’ financial information has been accessed, as payments are processed separately through a secure system,” it said. “We are working with the provider to determine what customer information may have been affected and are contacting affected customers directly.”

It said any customer who received an unexpected email, text message or phone call claiming to be from the department and asking you to confirm or provide personal information, should not respond, click on any links, or provide any personal information.

For its part, Bookeasy said some personal information of its customers (such as name, address, email address or phone number) and booking information has or may have been accessed.

“Importantly, based on the status of our ongoing investigation, we have currently not identified any access to credit card details,” it said. “The nature of these incidents may mean that gaining certainty over what was accessed is not always possible … we want to be transparent with all our partners about what we know and provide information to support your customers.”

The company says that in recent times there had been an increase in scam attempts targeting the travel industry, and it recommended that its partners who may be impacted alert customers who have upcoming bookings to be aware of possible suspicious emails, WhatsApp or text messages.

Bookeasy said it was confident its containment efforts had resolved this issue and it had been working with an external third-party expert to validate those efforts.

“We first detected this issue in early November and immediately commenced an investigation,” it said. “Investigations of this nature can take time, and we wanted to ensure that we had accurate information about what occurred to communicate with partners, operators and customers.”

Bookeasy says it is aware of some suspicious activity that may relate to this incident, including some customers receiving phishing messages via WhatsApp.

The worrying hack comes just a week after a security breach at Australian booking management software provider RMS Cloud, which provides cloud-based property management and booking systems to more than 6,000 hotels, holiday parks and serviced apartments around the world.

Bookeasy says, based on its current investigations, there was no connection between RMS and the most recent hacking incident.

Major holiday park operators, including Reflections, BIG4 and G’day Parks, were understood to be among those who have been affected by the RMS breach.

• Do you fear you have been affected by this hack? Have you heard from one of the national parks authorities? Comment below.

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