Riskified Analysis Finds Travel Fraudsters Are Adapting Faster Than Traditional Signals Can Keep Up, With May Flight Risk Up 32%

New Travel Industry report reveals sophisticated fraud rings are exploiting trusted customer behaviors across flights, hotels, and travel platforms

New York, NY – August 17, 2026 – Riskified (NYSE: RSKD), a global leader in ecommerce fraud and risk intelligence, today released new findings from its Travel Industry Insights report, revealing how sophisticated fraud rings and AI-enabled fraudsters are evolving their tactics across airlines, hotels, and online travel platforms. Riskified’s analysis shows that fraudsters are increasingly adapting their behavior to resemble legitimate travelers, making traditional fraud indicators less reliable and creating new challenges for travel merchants.

Riskified’s analysis of hundreds of millions of travel transactions across flights, hotels, and land transportation found that flight fraud risk increased through the first five months of 2026, with May 2026 marking the sharpest year-over-year increase at 32% compared to May 2025. The findings show that sophisticated fraud activity is not limited to predictable travel peaks, with organized fraud rings continuously adjusting their methods throughout the year.

Riskified’s travel network includes more than 60 travel merchants and has processed $828 billion in cumulative travel transactions across flights, hotels, and land transportation as of June 2026. This extensive visibility highlights how fraudsters are challenging long-standing assumptions about what legitimate travel behavior looks like.

Presented inRiskified’s latest Risk Rundown, “Booking scams are taking off,” the data reveals several key shifts in travel fraud patterns:

• Traditional identity signals are changing: While billing-name-to-passenger-name mismatches remained 2.5x riskier in 2025, flight transactions where the billing name matched the passenger name saw a significant increase in risk since November 2025, reaching more than 30% above the January 2025 baseline.
• Last-minute bookings remain a major challenge: Flight purchases made less than seven days before departure were 2.3x riskier than other bookings, creating a challenge for merchants balancing fast customer experiences with fraud prevention.
• Fraudsters are targeting valuable travel accounts: Loyalty programs, rewards points, and stored customer information remain attractive targets, with fraudsters monetizing compromised accounts by selling points for cash, redeeming them for gift cards, or using them to fund fraudulent bookings.
• Sophisticated fraud extends beyond the transaction: Fraudsters are using compromised identities, devices, and accounts to execute high-value purchases across travel and related industries.

“Each year, we analyze fraud trends across the travel industry, and it’s striking to see how quickly attack vectors evolve as fraudsters adapt to the signals merchants use to identify risk,” said Jeff Otto, CMO at Riskified. “A behavior that may have historically indicated a trusted customer can become a target for exploitation once fraud rings learn how to replicate it. Travel businesses need intelligence that continuously adapts to changing fraud patterns while helping them deliver seamless experiences for legitimate travelers.”

The analysis also highlights unique challenges across other travel categories. In hotels, July and August generated the highest revenue but also carried the highest potential fraud-loss exposure. Fraud activity can increase unexpectedly, with April 2025 identified as the riskiest month, 20% above the yearly average. Luxury properties were particularly targeted, with five-star hotels representing the riskiest segment overall.

Riskified also observed increased abuse of both consumer and travel provider accounts on travel platforms, where fraudsters use phishing, breaches, or other methods to compromise verified accounts. These stolen identities can provide access to guest communications, reservation details, and trusted platform relationships, making fraudulent activity more difficult to detect.

As travel continues to expand globally, merchants face increasing pressure to maximize conversion while managing increasingly sophisticated fraud. Riskified’s travel intelligence combines network-level insights, customer behavior analysis, and transaction data to help travel businesses make more accurate decisions throughout the customer journey.

Learn more about Riskified’s Travel industry expertise at Riskified.com.

Report Methodology

The findings in “Riskified Travel Industry Insights: Flights, Hotels & Land Transportation” are based on Riskified’s analysis of travel transaction data from a sample of travel merchants across its global merchant network, including airlines, online travel agencies, hotels, and land transportation providers. The analysis includes full-year 2025 data and 2026 year-to-date trends.

The analysis covers hundreds of millions of travel transactions across the Riskified network. identify fraud attempts based on a curated set of transactions with the highest probability of fraud, combined with confirmed chargebacks. Risk Level is used as an internal benchmark to analyze fraud trends and changes over time.