Companies need to take the lead in policing scam websites
Travel scams hit the headlines when two bogus villa rental sites were shut down by police after they were reported to Action Fraud. The sites had been accused of scraping real images and copy from legitimate operators’ websites and setting up a Google pay-per-click service to lure in customers.
Most significantly, when the owner of Villa Plus reported the websites, they were not taken down for weeks.
For travel operators, this is a hugely worrying trend, and something that it feels can only get worse. Abta reported in January that travel fraud is up 425% year-on-year and costs holidaymakers £11.5 million, according to stats from the City of London Police.
So what can we do to help protect our customers? For most UK travel companies, January and February is the busiest period of the year, and at Interhome we’ve certainly seen a major spike in bookings, so this is a particularly vulnerable time for our customers.