Travel sites pay for search: each fare or room query can cost a fee to a booking system or a supplier. When most searches come from scrapers, the business pays to feed its competitors. And seats, rooms and loyalty points are all worth stealing.
What bots do to travel sites
- Scrape fares and rates. Aggregators and competitors run searches around the clock; the look-to-book ratio climbs and the supplier bill with it.
- Spin seats and rooms. Bots start bookings and abandon them at payment, holding inventory so it looks sold, or to manipulate prices.
- Take over loyalty accounts. Miles and points are cash to a fraudster and are rarely checked by their owners.
- Abuse promotions. New-member offers and vouchers claimed by scripted sign-ups.
The signs
- Search volume that grows while bookings do not, much of it from datacenters.
- Searches that never loaded the search page, with machine regularity.
- Holds that expire at payment, from few devices, for the same flights or dates.
- Point redemptions right after a password change or a login from a new device.
Where to ask
- Search: answer
bot_highfrom cache only, never from the paid supplier; keep fresh results for people. - Booking hold: refuse
bot_high; givebota shorter hold. - Login and redemption: ask
botfor a second factor before points move.
Report completed trips as feedback: a traveller who flew or stayed is the best evidence there is that an account belongs to a person.