Holiday rental fraud: is this a real Airbnb?
Holiday home fraud peaks in spring and around summer: a beautiful house, a sharp price, and a landlord who “gladly gives a discount if you transfer directly”. On arrival day someone else is in the house — or nobody.
The listing is on Airbnb, Booking, Marktplaats or Facebook. The house often really exists; the photos are copied from another listing. The trick is in the payment: outside the platform, by bank transfer, “to save the service fees”. Sometimes with a copied payment page that looks exactly like Airbnb.
With a booking platform the rule is simple: anything you pay outside the platform is not covered. That is exactly why the scammer steers you there.
How to spot it
- 1Paying outside the platform.“Send me an e-mail, we will arrange it without Airbnb fees.” The discount is the bait; the protection is gone.
- 2A copied payment page.A link by e-mail to “airbnb-payments.com” or “booking-secure.net”. A real payment happens in the app or on airbnb.nl / booking.com itself.
- 3Too cheap for the location and season.A villa with a pool in August for the price of a studio: comparing elsewhere takes two minutes.
- 4New account, no reviews, unclear owner.Or reviews all written in the same week.
- 5Photos from somewhere else.Search the photo via Google Images. Same house on another site under another name? Then at least one of the two is fake.
- 6Pressure to decide fast.“There is one other candidate”, “book today or it is gone”.
A real example, taken apart
- Deposit by transfer before any contract: the money is gone once it is gone.
- “No agency fees” is the reason to take you out of the protected environment.
- The photos turned out to come from a rental site with a different owner.
What you do
- Book and pay within the platform.Airbnb, Booking, a landlord with a recognised trade body. Anything outside the platform: no.
- Check the photos and the address.Google Images for the photos; Street View for the address. Does the house, the surroundings, the number of floors match?
- Call the landlord.A real owner can answer questions about the house without a script. Ask something specific: where do you park, where is the nearest supermarket.
- Pay with protection.Within the platform, or otherwise by credit card. Never a deposit by transfer to a private person you do not know.
- Scammed? Report to the platform, the bank and the police.The platform can close the listing and the account; the bank can try to freeze the payment.
Never do this
- Transfer a deposit to a private account for a house you did not book through a platform.
- Click a payment link from an e-mail “from Airbnb” or “from Booking”.
- E-mail a copy of your passport to a landlord. Identification runs through the platform.
Dossiers of this kind
1,088 dossiers in our database match this kind — counted by what they are, not estimated. A few:
See what is being checked now →
Questions people ask
Airbnb or Booking also asked me to verify via a link. How do I know that is real?
Open the app or the site yourself. Every real request is also there, in your messages. Nothing there? Then the e-mail was fake.
The owner wants to send a rental contract. Is that a good sign?
Not necessarily: a contract is a PDF anyone can make. Protection comes from where you pay, not from a document.
Can I get my money back after a fake booking?
Paid within the platform: usually, through the platform. Credit card: via chargeback. Transfer: only if the bank can freeze it quickly. See Scammed — what now?.
Paste it into the checker. Thirty seconds, and you know what others already saw.