New AHLA Research Reveals Online Hotel Booking Scams Are on the Rise, Duping Consumers, Translating to Nearly $4 Billion Each Year

the American Hotel & Lodging Association | June 14, 2017

Washington, D.C., June 14, 2017 – Every 60 seconds, Americans make 500 hotel bookings online. And new research reveals that online scams and fraudulent sites are on the rise. In 2015, just six percent of American travelers reported having booked on what they believed was a hotel's official website, only to find they had booked on a fraudulent site – websites that use a variety of marketing tactics to mimic hotel websites but are not, in fact, affiliated with the hotel. Just two years later, the number of travelers reporting that same experience has nearly quadrupled to 22 percent. Today, that amounts to 55 million hotel book...