Firms warned amid rise in reports of bogus travel websites

A high number of bogus travel websites have emerged since before Christmas, the industry’s anti-fraud body warns.

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A high number of bogus travel websites have emerged since before Christmas, the industry’s anti-fraud body warns.

They are either direct facsimiles of genuine websites or sites that use confusingly similar names and domain names as genuine companies.

Prevention of Fraud in Travel (PROFiT) is urging all companies to be vigilant and regularly check their own search terms. 

“We would advise that you use the Google search as well as the Google Adwords search when carrying out checks,” a spokesman said.

“It is our experience that many of these websites are set up with the sole aim of committing fraud against the consumer. 

“To this end they often show trade body membership names, logos, and numbers and also may show Iata and Civil Aviation Atol details.”

Any bogus websites should be reported to the police via actionfraud.police.uk/report_fraud