As AI fuels a surge in travel scams, here’s how you can protect yourself

His dad didn’t sweat the loss, which occurred over a decade ago. But since then, the stream of travel scams has become a flood, posing pitfalls that range from fake websites to phishing emails, phoney vacation listings, and hacked loyalty points.

The Association of Canadian Travel Agencies and Travel Advisors, along with other industry groups abroad, has warned about a proliferation of scam and fraud attempts over the past several years as artificial intelligence tools expand the range of criminal opportunities.

Online travel giant Booking.com said in 2024 that AI had fuelled an increase in travel scams of between 500 and 900% over the previous 18 months. That same year, Flight Centre Canada told The Canadian Press it worked with Google and other search engines to take down more than 200 fraudulent listings on impostor websites in just one month after the search results began appearing in online queries for the travel agency.

Too-good-to-be-true travel deals often signal fraud

Kalinowski, a financial educator at the Credit Counselling Society, says would-be customers should be wary of online ads that link to third-party platforms posing as a hotel or airline. “Scams are becoming more prevalent. People from all different segments and classes and cohorts of life fall for them. It’s not a question of intelligence,” he said.

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Some fraudulent websites take photos and information from hotel, airline, and cruise sites to create the impression customers are booking through those same companies. “If you book from one of these sites, there’s no guarantee you’ll get the room you paid for, and you may not find out until you arrive at the destination—and by that time, your money is likely gone,” 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 there’s just nothing there when you arrive on the other side,” Kalinowski said.

Other telltale signs of a travel scam include deals that appear too good to be true, high-pressure sales tactics, and requests for payment outside usual methods, such as wire transfers rather than payment through the Airbnb app, for example.

Kalinowski recalls one ad, supposedly for Southwest Airlines, that bundled those first two red flags—a tempting offer and urgency—together by offering free flights to the first 500 people who booked via a particular website. “I don’t know when the last time you had a free flight was,” he said. “It’s been a long time for me.”

Other potential tells include a request to pay via gift cards or cryptocurrency, rather than going with secure payment methods such as credit cards, which often offer protection if something goes awry.

How to protect yourself when booking travel online

To guard against scams, travellers should take care to visit a hotel, airline, or cruise line’s actual site by typing it in directly or at least double-checking it rather than clicking on an ad. They can also book through a well-known travel agency. Customers can find further peace of mind by contacting the provider—the airline or hotel, for example—afterward to verify a booking.

To steer clear of bogus vacation rentals, consult reviews and do a Google Street View search to check the address, said Pat Pellegrini, CEO of consumer research firm Vividata. A reverse image search can also reveal if those photos of a sumptuous beachfront patio are copied from another site.

“There’s a lot of bad players, so it makes you have to do a lot more work,” Pellegrini said. Among those bad actors, loyalty points remain a prime target, often via AI-driven phishing attempts. “The odds of you getting a phishing email that’s looking for your credentials, and they’ll just keep trying to throw stuff at you until they get through, are very high,” Pellegrini said. “Loyalty points have been taken in the same manner.”

Phishing—emails, texts, or calls that trick victims into handing over banking details or other sensitive information—saw an especially big surge in recent years, according to Booking.com. Phishing messages are often identifiable by their use of urgent or threatening language, requests for financial info, and spelling or grammar mistakes.

For those who do get scammed, report it to local police, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, and the platform that hosted the scam—Google or a short-term rental platform, for example—advises RateHub, an online comparison site for financial products. Victims should also reach out to their bank or credit card company as soon as possible to try to freeze the payment as well as any compromised accounts, and to monitor for suspicious transactions. Victims can then notify credit bureaus to flag possible changes to their credit file.

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