What Is Travel Fraud?
Anyone can fall victim to a holiday scam, where the trip you have booked turns out not to exist.
A holiday scam is where fraudsters use one of a number of methods to sell bogus travel packages, including:
- Fake online adverts and social media accounts
- Cloned websites made to look like a genuine travel agency
- Bogus sales calls
- Emails and text messages.
The scammers will often tempt you in with the promise of very cheap rates that massively undercut other, genuine, providers.
Some of the scams are very sophisticated, and will often be almost indistinguishable from the real thing, with stolen images of villas or hotels from genuine websites.
Fraudsters will ask you to pay for your holiday up front, either via bank transfer or money transfer services like Western Union, which are incredibly hard for the authorities to trace.
Once you’ve paid, scammers may immediately end communication with you, and you will quickly discover the holiday you’ve paid for doesn’t exist.
But sometimes, you may not find out you have been conned until you reach the airport, or the hotel or villa, and discover you are not booked on to the flight or your accommodation has no knowledge of your booking.
Holiday scams are particularly distressing because of the large financial losses, combined with missing out on the vacation you’ve looked forward to for months and worked so hard for.
We can help ease the pain by recovering your money as quickly as possible so you can afford to book another holiday.
How To Avoid Holiday Scams
Travel fraud is becoming increasingly sophisticated, but there are usually some tell-tale signs of a scam.
Here are our top tips to avoid holiday scams:
- Does your holiday look too good to be true? If so, it probably is. There is probably a reason why the holiday you are looking at seems suspiciously cheap – it probably doesn’t exist.
Search the flight and hotel or rental property on alternative websites, and if it is more expensive everywhere else, be very wary. - Book with official holiday sites, or direct with the airline or accommodation provider.
You can always tell a genuine, secure website because it will have the ‘https’ prefix, and display a padlock sign in your browser’s address bar. - Don’t be tempted to book outside the official site. Even on reputable sites like AirBnB, scammers are adept at mimicking real properties, and will ask you to contact them outside of the official website to arrange a better deal. This is often the sign of a fraud.
- Be very suspicious of cold calls, emails, texts or social media messages. Genuine holiday providers will not contact you out of the blue offering you a cheap holiday. And links sent in emails or via social media could send you to cloned websites or download a virus on to your computer.
- Check if the agency is registered with ABTA. Reputable travel agencies will be registered with the Travel Association, and you can check a list of their members here.
- Don’t pay by bank transfer or via a money transfer service. Pay by debit or credit card for extra protection.
- Beware scammer and popular events. Where demand is high for popular events overseas, scammers often pop up to offer tickets and packages at discount prices, sometimes even when the event is sold out. Be very wary and only book through official channels.
- Don’t be pressured in buying. If you are being hassled into paying quickly for a holiday, ask yourself why, take a pause and do more research.
- Hit the search engines. Check the reviews of your chosen accommodation, as well as the provider of the holiday. Who are they? What is their track record? If anything looks suspicious with the reviews, pictures, or descriptions, like poor spelling, look elsewhere.