How Much is Fare Scraping Costing the Travel Industry?
Tags: Cybersecurity, Airlines, Technology, Scraping, Business

Scraper bots make up the worst of bad bot traffic for the travel industry, with sites witnessing over 90% of traffic attributed to fare scraping. Whilst this activity can be benign or even used for positive means, if uncontrolled it can impact top line revenue, bottom line profits and customer experience.

In a recent webinar, Netacea’s Head of Threat Research, Matthew Gracey-McMinn, and Enterprise Sales Manager for Travel and Tourism, Graeme Harvey, were joined by Ann Cederhall, Travel Technology Specialist at LeapShift.

The panel discussed the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the travel and tourism industry, the damage of fare scraping and excess web requests on travel booking sites, and how travel companies can take back control of their look-to-book ratio.

Catch up on all the key takeaways below or watch the full webinar on demand here.

What is the look-to-book ratio?

The look-to-book ratio is the number of requests made per booking on an online travel site.

Requests can be made by humans or bots, and the lower the look-to-book ratio, the better. A low look-to-book ratio means conversions are high from genuine customers browsing the website. However, scraper activity can cause look-to-book ratios to exceed several thousand. A high look-to-book ratio inflates the number of requests versus the number of conversions.

When scraper bots pull information from a website, they create excess web requests which, in turn, negatively impacts your look-to-book ratio. Increased competition driven from the pandemic, and the popularity of dynamic pricing, means this is fast becoming a top threat for the travel industry.

How does fare scraping work on travel booking websites?

In travel, web scraper bots are mainly used to collect fare and availability information by rival companies and aggregator sites, used for price comparison.

But also targeting travel booking sites are scraper bots, used to discover and publicize the availability of products and services such as flights, hotels or car rentals.

Attackers advertise the scraped information at lower price points on a secondary site, motivated by the financial reward of charging commission, stealing personal data, or generating advertising revenue.

Scraping is also often used to gather the data needed for more sophisticated or damaging attacks such as ticket spinning or denial of inventory. Preventing malicious scraper bots can cut out these further attacks early as the attackers do not have the data they need to progress.

‘The attackers who were working in travel have moved out of the space over the last year, but they are now coming back with new skills and techniques learned from other industries [during the Covid-19 pandemic].’ – Matthew Gracey-McMinn, Head of Threat Research at Netacea

What damage is inflated look-to-book ratios causing to travel companies?

‘The cost for an airline of having excess transactions — of having pricing systems being queried — can be very substantial, and also uncontrollable.’ – Ann Cederhall, Travel Technology Specialist at LeapShift

Excess traffic caused by aggressive scraping and high look-to-book ratios negatively impact airlines and travel companies both on their bottom line and on their technical performance.

Business costs

Additional costs (up to millions per year) to third-party services like Metasearch engines and GDS booking fees, which charge based on traffic volumes

Extra costs for SIEM and anti-fraud solutions, again which charge based on traffic volumes

Loss of pricing visibility leading to competitive pricing disadvantage

Misleading analytics from inaccurate number of website viewers interested in a certain product

Loss of ancillary revenues (or “add-ons”) e.g., hotels, travel insurance and car hire

Technical costs

Excessive infrastructure costs (up to 50%) used to serve bots

IT teams stretched to deal with bots away from daily tasks

Slowed website performance leading to negative user experience

Costly downtime in extreme cases

How to prevent scraping, excess transactions and high look-to-book ratios

The travel industry is one of the most severely affected by bad bots and has been since the advent of online travel. As bots grow in sophistication and volume, it is crucial for travel websites to accurately detect and bad bots without affecting good bots necessary for the steady running of your website, and genuine users’ experience.

As Ann Cederhall concluded in the webinar:

‘It’s all about control.’

Download the full guide: Fare Scraping and Excess Transactions: The Real Cost to the Travel Industry

The post How much is fare scraping costing the travel industry? appeared first on Netacea.