Is our desire to bag a bargain making people more vulnerable to travel and holiday scams? According to recent reports, hackers are increasingly targeting businesses utilising major holiday booking sites. Their method involves sending phishing emails to hotels, tricking staff into downloading malware onto their computers. The malware then scans for customers with reservations, allowing hackers to directly email these customers. Payments made by clients are directed to the hackers, rather than the intended hotel.

As more bookings are made online scams appear to be increasing in frequency. Figures from fraud reporting agency Action Fraud show that over £15 million was lost to holiday booking scams between April 2022 and April 2023 – a 41% increase on the previous year – with the summer months seeing the most scams reported.