Booking accommodation has high risk for fraud both online and offline

airbnb web page screen shot.
Screen capture of an Airbnb web page.

Scam artists have many ways to deceive travelers when they are booking accommodation. You might think that it is only online where the risk of becoming a victim of fraud is real, but that’s not the case. A survey discovered that making reservations on the phone still comes with higher risk. Altogether 1 in 10 travelers admitted that they have been scammed when booking a hotel or as a consequence of booking an accommodation.

When the world moved online, so did criminals. They learned new tricks of the trade so well that today, large online travel and accommodation services like Booking.com and Airbnb are facing so skillful fraud schemes that both the services and travelers are worried for a reason. Cyber criminals can even buy a ready-to-use toolkit for scamming travelers who have made reservations on these online services.

One of the key things that the survey by Adyen uncovered is the continuing success of telephone scams. It can be something simple such as someone calling you, telling he or she is from the hotel or from the online booking service you used. There is a problem with your reservation that can be easily solved if you instantly pay a requested amount of money. If you are willing to do it, criminals will collect the payment and disappear. That is just an example of many possible variations of scams on the phone.

The result is that travelers worry about fraud when booking. 71% of travelers are concerned about the risks of being cheated with their travel reservations.

How would travelers like to pay then? The top answers were paying when checking in to a hotel (43%) or booking directly with the hotel’s online service (36%).

Klaava travel team has reached the same conclusion years ago, although only after being drastically let down by major online services like Airbnb and Booking.com. So, when making reservations, we use all relevant online services to identify the accommodation we want, and then we book it directly with the proprietor.

In addition to customers, travel businesses seem to be a lucrative target for criminals according to the research. Over a third (38%) of businesses said that fraud attempts increased in 2024. The really troubling thing is that 7% of travel businesses said they’d fallen victim 15-20 times. Perhaps they should do something about it – in the end, it is us travelers who pay the bills.

Adyen’s research obtained information from 31,000 customers and 7,600 businesses in 19 markets.

Travolution reported.