Everyone planning a vacation wants a dream getaway... and a deal. Scammers take advantage of travelers with fake offers, bogus websites, and phony reviews. Before you book anything, make sure you’re dealing with a legit setup. One of the easiest things to do: Conduct a search of the company name alongside words like “fraud,” “scam,” “hoax,” and “complaint.” If there’s too much negative buzz, move on to the next option.
You know that feeling when you arrive at the vacation rental you’ve been looking forward to for months with your bags packed, ready to settle in and start your trip.
But this time, the door code doesn’t work. You pause, double-check the details, and try again. Still nothing.
It becomes clear there’s a bigger issue: the listing you booked through isn’t connected to the actual property, and your reservation wasn’t legitimate.
It’s an unexpected setback, especially when you were just hoping for a smooth start to your trip. The good news is, a few simple steps can help you book your next trip with confidence and keep your vacation on track.
Popular vacation and travel scams
In its 2025 Economic Impact Research, the World Travel & Tourism Council shared astounding figures for how much we’d all be traveling that year. Based on the previous year’s actual figures, the council projected travel would feed $11.7 trillion into the global economy and account for 10.3 percent of the world’s gross domestic product.
Figures like that attract scammers to vacationers, with vacation-related schemes like:
Fake booking sites advertising properties or flights that don’t exist
Fake travel offers through email, text, or social media ads
Fake travel agent chatbots
Fake influencer endorsements and reviews
Fake rates
In recent years, the scam sites and messages often gave themselves away thanks to pixelated photos, or crummy spelling, grammar, and punctuation. But now, AI can polish up even the fakest of the fake sites, emails, texts, ads, and reviews.
Red flags of vacation and travel scams
Before you get too deep in imagining your dream getaway, ask yourself the questions that tell you it’s time to get suspicious. Did the offer:
Come to you unsolicited?
Include rates that are too good to be true (and less than those commonly advertised)?
Advertise a last-minute deal for last-minute travel?
Promise a slew of freebies (or is it altogether free)?
Does the company:
Get only positive reviews?
Ask you to pay by wire transfer, person-to-person pay apps, gift cards, or crypto?
Say you need to book offline, perhaps via text, phone, or bot?
Offer no contracts, terms of service, or cancellation policies?
Have a different URL than the one you find when you search for the company independently?
List a phone number that’s different from the one on the vetted site?
6 tips to avoid travel scams
Think about how long we scroll through boards, feeds, and stories about dream destinations. Think about how long it takes to shop for the perfect bathing suit. We owe it to ourselves to spend at least as much time vetting our vacation bookings before we commit to them—especially if any of the red flags above start waving.
Here are some simple ways to fact-check a potentially fraudulent booking before it’s too late:
Look up public charter flights that originate in the U.S. with the U.S. Department of Transportation. Every year, they publish a chart of approved, licensed charters. By law, carriers can’t even advertise a flight until they have been approved.
Search for the booking company’s name to see if they appear in the Better Business Bureau’s Scam Tracker. The tracker allows consumers to self-report scams they encounter. While the listings haven’t been investigated, where there’s a lot of smoke, chances run high that there is fire/ Also enter the company’s name in search engines alongside words like “fraud,” “scam,” “hoax,” and “complaint.”
Do a reverse image search of the property. Take a screengrab of photos on the site, on social media, or in an email. Click on the camera icon in the Google search bar. Drag and drop the screenshots as prompted. Do several outlets use the same exact photos? Do other sites claim to manage or own the property? Is the location listed for sale on real estate sites? Duplication can mean a scammer has created a bogus listing or site using someone else’s images.
Enter the given address of the property into Google. Click on the resulting map and check out the Street View option. Does the property you see from the street match the one you’re investigating?
Check out the booking site, the travel company, or the property manager or host’s profiles on social media. Look for extremes: too many or too few followers, too many positive reviews (often sounding the same), or too few posts that date only a short time back. Do the images seem AI-generated?
Confirm the address and phone number. Look on the company’s site and in the messages you have received to see if the group has shared its address and phone number. No listings for customer service (chatbots alone don’t count) are a bad sign.
