2,300 Cyber Attacks on Vacationers in Just One Week: How Travelers Can Protect Themselves from Danger

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The summer brings the vacation season – and with it, numerous cybercriminals come into play. They want to lure you into traps with phishing offers. Here’s what you need to know to protect yourself.

Many people book their vacations online. As shown by the Federal Statistical Office, there were 60.4 million bookings in Germany alone in 2024 on platforms like Airbnb, Booking, and Tripadvisor. However, the convenience of online bookings also comes with risks. Cybercriminals are specifically targeting vacationers.

How Vacationers Are Attacked by Cybercriminals

This is revealed by a study from Check Point. In May 2026, there were about 2,300 cyber attacks weekly in the travel sector. Compared to the previous year, the number of attacks has increased by 24 percent. A look at other sectors shows that travelers are being specifically targeted. During the same period, the overall number of cyber attacks across all sectors only increased by two percent.

In May 2026, cybercriminals registered around 47,300 domains intended to mislead travelers in their search for vacation offers. These domains often resemble real addresses of hotels, booking portals, or travel agencies. In one case, Check Point discovered a domain from which 210 variations with sequential numbers were registered. All of them aim to mimic the real site and encourage users to provide data or extract money for fake offers.

Domains such as “booking-jp.com” or “booking-cn.com” were also discovered, which are designed to appear as country-specific domain variants of the travel portal. According to Check Point, only a portion of the domains have been activated so far. Many have only been registered but do not yet lead to websites. Apparently, the cybercriminals are waiting for a more lucrative time to start the vacation season.

To protect yourself from such scams, you should never click on links in dubious advertisements or emails that redirect you to tempting offers. Instead, always manually type the websites of vacation portals into the browser's address bar. Especially when vacation deals set supposed time limits, you should be suspicious. The cybercriminals aim to pressure you unnecessarily into not missing the offer. Before entering sensitive data, always double-check the URL of the website. As Check Point emphasizes, even a single letter can make the difference between the correct site and a phishing attack.