5 On Your Side investigation reveals Expedia's verification process fails to detect fraudulent listings

Can travelers trust third-party booking sites? After local travelers unwittingly fell victim to a fake hotel scam on sites including Expedia, Travelocity and Hotels.com, 5 On Your Side decided to test the company’s vetting process. How did Expedia do? It failed the test.

Von Weston, a paralegal at White and Stradley, contacted 5 On Your Side after several people showed up at her law firm’s door claiming they had booked a hotel room at the office.

"We’ve had to turn away at least 10 people," Weston said.

Scammers used the firm’s address in a fake hotel listing published on popular, third-party booking sites: Travelocity, Hotel.com and Orbitz.

"We’re looking at it, it shows our address, and I’m saying, 'We’re not a hotel,'" Weston said. "One man even asked, 'Do you have any rooms upstairs?' And I had to tell him, 'We are not a hotel!'"

Despite Weston’s efforts to alert Expedia Group, which owns Orbitz, Travelocity and Hotels.com, the fake listing remained active for weeks, leading her to question the platform's commitment to preventing fraudulent activities.

"They kept saying we need your itinerary number," Weston said. "We told them we don’t have one."

"We’re telling you it’s a scam."

Expedia Group eventually took the listing down, telling 5 On Your Side, "We have a dedicated team that checks for fraudulent or suspicious properties." However, given the fact that several people were scammed over the listing, WRAL 5 On Your Side felt that statement warranted further testing.

So, the 5 On Your Side team logged into Expedia Group’s portal where hotel owners can publish their hotels and created the "WRAL Azalea Garden Hotel." The fictitious listing is a nod to the azalea garden located on the WRAL grounds in Raleigh. The fictitious hotel’s address is the station's address, and the phone number and email connected to the account belonged to WRAL 5 On Your Side reporter Keely Arthur.

As 5 On Your Side went through the weeks-long posting process, they waited to see how long it would take Expedia’s dedicated team to call the bluff. If, at any point, Expedia Group had checked the address, Googled the name of the hotel, or done any background check on WRAL News, they would have realized the listing was fake. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and within a month, the listing was live.

The moment the site went live, WRAL 5 On Your Side contacted Expedia Group to take it down, but it took days. In that time, Myriah Hunsley, of Colorado, booked the hotel using the "book now, pay later" feature. 5 On Your Side immediately contacted her to make her aware of the situation.

"It looked legit," Hunsley said. "It had a name and an address, and then I got a phone call from you saying it was not. You’d think because they are on one of those big-name sites that they are going to be vetted and legitimate. I really didn’t think that I needed to worry about being scammed by anything."

It was only after the listing was taken down, and 5 On Your Side informed Expedia Group of the experiment, that Expedia got on the case. Expedia then sent an email to 5 On Your Side, stating they were "unable to authenticate the property." Remember, this was after the fake listing was already published and booked.

Following the incident, Expedia Group’s media team told 5 On Your Side, "We detect and prevent the vast majority of attempted fake listings, which are rare on our platform." But how rare? Expedia Group is global; you can find a hotel through their sites just about anywhere, and in Raleigh alone, two of the listed hotels never existed.

When 5 On Your Side asked what Expedia Group would do to better protect travelers from fraud, the spokesperson told WRAL News that they want customers to hit the "report a property" button if they notice something suspicious on a listing, putting much of the responsibility to spot fraud on the consumer.

Lynn Minges, president and CEO of the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association, told 5 On Your Side that consumers will have the best luck booking directly through a hotel’s website. She added that if the price is lower on the third-party site, customers should call the hotel and ask for a price match.