Eye For Travel Summit - Criminal damage

Tim Sparrow from e-commerce payment company Cybersource did a good job of bringing to life the graveyard slot with a presentation about fraud.

Fast forward seven months and Travolution could share with you findings from its dedicated study into the travel sector. The paper is currently a work in a progress.

A few specifics did slip in. Sparrow said that the move to e-ticketing, as mandated by IATA with a 31 May 2008 deadline, would lead to more bookings being taken online, opening up more possibilities for fraudsters. ‘Small margins means fraud is a real profit killer,’ he warned.

Staying with airlines, he also revealed that, contrary to competition laws, a dozen airlines were “unofficially” sharing information about fraudulent activity. One regulatory objection to this is the possibility of “competitive blacklisting” – airline x could effectively give airline y a list of supposed dodgy customers who airline y would refuse to book.

Airlines forming unofficial cartels? Surely not.

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

Fraudulent information

A survey of consumers about identity theft appears to have been taken out of context in some quarters.

The study by GB Group found that the travel sector languished in the lower reaches of the trust table when it comes to protecting the financial details of individuals.

Apparently only 6% of those survey trusted a travel company to "keep client details safe from the potential risk of ID fraud".

This compares very unfavourably against the likes of banks (52%). Other untrustworthy sectors included gambling companies (4%) and mobile phone operators (9%).

This has inevitably triggered some hand-wringing about how online data is handled. We are not in the business of defending the sector we write about, but to lump web usage as the trigger for such concerns misses the bigger picture.

Indeed, a call to GB revealed that the survey was conducted to learn what people feel about how well companies protect their personal information per se, not just those details submitted online.

Nevertheless, it seems travel companies need to do a lot more to convince those questioned in this particular survey about how stringent they are with ensuring no-one gets their hands on valuable information.

However, recalling our survey last year of 3,500 members of the public, as part of the Travolution Generations project, and a vastly different picture emerges - especially when it comes to the online element.

To the statement "I worry about the safety of my bank details when booking online", we got this response.

• I don't know - 4%
• Strongly agree - 15%
• Slightly agree - 27%
• Slightly disagree - 27%
• Strongly disagree - 27%

So that's 54% disagreeing, then.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

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