EU calls Booking.com's scam defenses "absolutely substandard" and opens a fraud probe

The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into Booking.com under the Digital Services Act (DSA), saying the platform is not doing enough to stop fraudulent listings and phishing. According to RTE and The Register, an EU official described the company's efforts as "absolutely substandard". The probe is at the opening stage: no findings and no penalties have been announced.

What the Commission is examining

The Register reports three strands:

• Fake and non-compliant listings. An EU spokesperson described people "portraying themselves as the owner of premises and putting it up for rent while they are not the real owner." Travelers pay, arrive, and find the property is not available to them.
• Phishing and account takeover. Scammers take over a real host's account and contact details, then message guests asking for extra payments. The Commission is also asking whether guest and business data is protected well enough.
• Ad labelling. Whether listings that rank higher because the host pays a higher commission are clearly marked as advertising.

Booking.com is designated a very large online platform, a category the DSA holds to stricter risk-assessment duties. Violations can bring fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover. Reuters, as carried on Investing.com, also covered the announcement.

The numbers officials cited

The Register says officials pointed to Booking.com's own June 2024 admission of a 500 to 900 percent jump in travel scams over the previous 18 months. They also said that in the Netherlands alone there were more than 1,000 fraud notifications in the first part of 2026, with damage of 82,000 euros, a tenfold increase on the year before. The official added that reports like this come "almost from all member states." These are the Commission's figures as relayed by those outlets; we have not independently checked the underlying data.

This is not the first step. In September 2025 the Commission sent Booking.com, Apple, Google and Microsoft requests for information on scam risks, including fake accommodation listings. Moving from a request for information to a formal investigation is what changed today.

What Booking.com says

A company spokesperson told The Register it is "cooperating fully with the European Commission" and that security and protection of personal information are top priorities.

What it means if you are booking a trip

The probe is about Europe, but the scam pattern is the same on any large booking site, and the winter and holiday booking window is open now. The officials described a specific sequence; the first item below comes from them, the other two are our own general cautions:

• A message from a "host" asking for an additional payment after you have already booked. The officials said the follow-up is often that the property "is not yet available" and a further payment is needed.
• Any request that moves the conversation or the payment away from the platform itself.
• A listing where the host cannot be verified as the owner, or a price far below comparable properties.

Practical steps: check that a message really appears inside the booking site's own messaging, not only by email or text; keep the confirmation and the platform's payment record; and if you are asked for money you were not told about at checkout, contact the platform through its official help page before paying. Pay by credit card where you can, since card issuers generally offer a dispute process. Check your card's terms for specifics.

For travelers the near-term change is nothing: investigations of this kind take time, and the Commission said it expects "a more diligent risk assessment" from Booking.com in future. It named abuse of the reservation system, faster removal of reported listings, license checks and changes to host onboarding as examples. If those happen, they would show up on the platform before any fine does.

Sources: RTE; The Register; Reuters via Investing.com; European Commission. This is travel information, not legal or financial advice.