City

How safe is online hotel booking?

Spread the love

It’s not surprising that people who never booked hotels online before are hesitant to do it for the first time, especially in this era of cybercrime and online fraud. So, here in this article, we will review if there’s really something to be worried, and what measures one should take to be safe while booking hotels online. But before we start, click this link city break (dot) deals for fantastic hotel booking offers, and it’s one of the best sites when it comes to hotel deals. So, without wasting any more time, let us get started.

city break

First of all, let me clear one thing – online hotel booking is absolutely safe, as long as you’re doing it the right way. And what are those? Let us find out.

  1. Make sure the site is well known and reputable: Do not fall prey to the fake websites that impersonate itself to be a legitimate site. Be watchful, because there are a lot of such sites that offer scam deals. People who are not aware or do not do online stuff much, are the easy targets of such frauds. There’s one golden rule need to be followed here – if it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Hence, do not believe a not so popular site that offers you unrealistic deals.
  2. Watch out for https protocol in URL: If you’re booking from a reputable booking site, it will have https in its URL, not http. It’s something that all of the major shopping sites that involve credit card processing must have due to security protocols, so if a booking site has a URL without the secure https, then you must stay clear of such websites because the chance of fraud from that site is relatively higher. Having said that, having https protocol as part of the domain doesn’t automatically rule out fraud, keep reading here to know more.
  3. Watch the domain for the typo: It’s a very common trick, which sometimes makes even the savvy people fool. The fraudsters register domains which sounds like a popular website, but it has a typo in the domain. For example, Google is the most popular search engine, but “Google” is not. Similarly, Booking dot com is a popular hotel booking site, but “booking” dot com is not. So, when you’re booking hotels online, type the URL manually on the browser, and make sure there’s no spelling mistake before you hit the enter.
  4. Do not click a link from a suspicious SMS or email, period. Though this is 2019 and people are relatively much more aware than before, still such scams are going on. This is actually human nature, which is being exploited by cybercriminals. We often act lazy and do not do our due diligence before clicking a link from a suspicious email, which is definitely a bad practice when it comes to online safety. So, do not click any such link no matter how legitimate the link seems to be – always type the main domain manually. Apart from redirecting to a fraud site, such links can carry malicious viruses, malware, etc. which could essentially steal your account passwords, credit card info, private documents, and many more.