His father has not felt the pain of the loss that occurred over a decade ago. But since then, the stream of travel scams has turn into a flood, bringing pitfalls starting from fake web sites to phishing emails, fake vacation deals and hacked loyalty points.
The Association of Canadian Travel Agencies and Travel Advisors, together with other industry groups abroad, have warned of a rise in fraud and attempted fraud lately as artificial intelligence tools expand the range of criminal opportunities.
Online travel giant Booking.com said in 2024 that AI had led to a 500% to 900% increase in travel scams over the past 18 months. That same 12 months, Flight Center Canada told The Canadian Press that it had worked with Google and other search engines like google to remove greater than 200 fraudulent listings on scam web sites in only a month after the search results appeared in online queries for the travel agency.
Travel deals that appear too good to be true often indicate fraud
Kalinowski, a financial educator on the Credit Counseling Society, says potential clients needs to be wary of online ads that link to third-party platforms posing as a hotel or airline. “Scams are becoming more and more common. People from all segments, classes and walks of life fall for them. It is not a question of intelligence,” he said.
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Some fraudulent web sites take photos and knowledge from hotel, airline and cruise web sites to make it appear that customers are booking through the identical firms. “If you book through one of these websites, there is no guarantee that you will get the room you paid for, and you may not find out until you arrive at your destination – by which time your money will likely have already been used up,” Toronto-Dominion Bank warned in a post about travel scams on its website.
Fraudulent postings on vacation rental platforms pose similar risks. “You’ll think you’re booking an Airbnb or VRBO, and when you get to the other side there’s just nothing there,” Kalinowski said.
Other telltale signs of a travel scam include offers that appear too good to be true, high-pressure sales tactics, and requests for payment outside of usual methods, comparable to bank transfers as an alternative of payments through the Airbnb app.
Kalinowski recalls an ad, ostensibly for Southwest Airlines, that bundled the primary two red flags – a tempting offer and urgency – by offering free flights to the primary 500 individuals who booked through a selected website. “I don’t know the last time you had a free flight,” he said. “It’s been a long time for me.”
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Other potential clues include asking people to pay with gift cards or cryptocurrency slightly than choosing secure payment methods like bank cards, which regularly offer protection if something goes mistaken.
How to guard yourself when booking travel online
To protect themselves from scams, travelers needs to be careful to go to the actual website of a hotel, airline, or cruise line by typing in directly or not less than double-checking as an alternative of clicking on an ad. You may book through a good travel agency. Customers may be much more reassured in the event that they then contact the provider – for instance the airline or the hotel – to verify a booking.
To avoid fake vacation rentals, seek the advice of reviews and do a Google Street View search to confirm the address, said Pat Pellegrini, CEO of consumer research firm Vividata. A reverse image search may reveal whether these photos of a beautiful beachfront patio were copied from one other website.
“There are a lot of bad players, so you have to work a lot more,” said Pellegrini. Among these malicious actors, loyalty points remain a primary goal, often via AI-driven phishing attempts. “The likelihood that you will receive a phishing email that looks for your credentials and spends so much time trying to throw things at you is very high,” Pellegrini said. “Loyalty points were deducted in the same manner.”
Phishing – emails, text messages or calls that trick victims into revealing banking details or other sensitive information – has seen a very sharp rise lately, in response to Booking.com. Phishing messages can often be identified because they use urgent or threatening language, ask for financial information, and contain spelling or grammatical errors.
Anyone who’s scammed should report it to local police, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Center and the platform that hosted the scam – comparable to Google or a short-term rental platform – recommends RateHub, a web-based comparison site for financial products. Victims also needs to contact their bank or bank card company as soon as possible to try and freeze payment and any compromised accounts and monitor for suspicious transactions. Victims can then alert credit reporting agencies to see possible changes to their credit file.
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