Professionally disguised rip-offLooking for holiday accommodation? Be careful of fake booking sites – here’s how to spot them!

February 13, 2026 around 10:08 Clock

Glossy websites and nothing behind them

The websites look serious at first glance: high-resolution images of dream holiday homes and a search mask that is usually found on booking portals. There is an impressive selection of holiday properties, an imprint, a picture of the supposed owner, contact details, seals – everything seems serious, even if you click through a little further.

It usually doesn't take long for the fraud to be noticed, but for many it is already too late – the money is gone, as is the website. But as quickly as they disappear, new ones appear, because these fake portals are a professional and lucrative business.

Money gone, but still no holiday home

The Association of German Holiday Home Agencies (VDFA) estimates the damage that holidaymakers have already suffered to be in the double-digit million range. They fell for fake sites and their supposedly professional appearance, paid thousands of euros – and ended up without a holiday home and without the money they had paid.

Reading tip: Find a holiday apartment or holiday home – this is how you can search online

Here's what you should pay attention to so you don't fall for fake offers:

To avoid falling prey to holiday home scammers, industry associations and consumer advocates have the following tips:

• Prices: If the holiday home is extremely cheap, alarm bells should ring. This is typical for fake offers, warns the Rhineland-Palatinate consumer advice center. The advice: Compare with other offers in the area. This provides information about whether the price can be realistic.

• imprint: If the website has no imprint at all – generally stay away! But as the example of the fake sites mentioned at the beginning shows: You cannot blindly trust even a supposedly reputable imprint with contact address, tax number and other information. Fraudsters sometimes shamelessly copy data from other websites. The advice: Check this data and, if necessary, ask associations, brokerage agencies or local tourism boards whether the provider and the property exist.

• Advance payment: A deposit of 10 to 30 percent of the travel price is common for holiday home bookings. However, according to consumer advocates, fraudsters often demand the total price in advance, sometimes via transfer services such as Western Union or Moneygram. The advice: don't go into it. If you do pay (for last-minute bookings, for example, the total price is often due straight away), then if in doubt it is better to pay by direct debit or credit card. In the event of fraud, the money can be refunded by the bank if necessary.

• seal: They should guarantee a certain quality and seriousness of the provider. Among other things, the German Holiday Home Association awards a seal. But of course fraudsters don't stop there and sometimes put a picture of the seal on their website. The advice: Click on the seal. Only linked seals are real seals, says Göran Holst. After clicking on them, you receive the information that the site rightly bears the seal.

Protection from reputable platforms

About one reputable brokerage platform It is therefore highly recommended to book in order not to fall victim to fraudsters. This is where the landlords are usually put through their paces.

In general: If in doubt, you should always book via the platform. In some cases, landlords offer holidaymakers to book the holiday home directly in order to save the service fees for the brokerage portal, which can easily amount to several hundred euros. But be careful: when you leave the platform, you also leave its protective mechanisms – if you get caught by fraudsters, the portal will definitely not give you any money back.

You can find an overview of reputable providers and warnings about fraudulent platforms, for example, on the website of the Association of German Holiday Home Agencies (VDFA).