Airlines worldwide have faced numerous data breaches, compromises, and loopholes resulting from outdated management systems and technical issues.
According to IATA, airline fraud costs approximately $858 million per year. Security threats come in various forms, including employee fraud, phishing schemes, fake customer accounts, fraudulent travel agencies, and triangulation schemes.
Ticket booking fraud directly impacts revenue and exposes vulnerabilities. Fraudulent activities in group bookings can cost airlines millions of dollars, which becomes unsustainable over time.
Let’s see the common types of revenue fraud in group bookings
1. Employee Fraud
Airline employees who know the loopholes of the system will exploit the bookings for their personal benefits. The employees may book group tickets for their friends or family members at the expense of the airlines leaving no trace.
2. Fake Travel Agencies
When a traveler requests a group quote, the unregistered travel agencies may book/cancel the flights, release fabricated stories, and have fake credit cards/ bank accounts. They impersonate the original and tie up with different travel agencies fetching their user accounts leading to personal information misuse.
3. Dark Web
This type of fraud is non-traceable and airlines will usually have no idea how attackers gained access to this information. With both ad hoc and group bookings done online, data leaks and misuse are susceptible to fraud and attacks. Airlines will mostly be in the dark on how long and what types of information they got access to.
4. Stolen Loyalty Miles
Fraudsters steal unused loyalty points/miles from business travelers or affluent individuals and utilize them for their own benefit. Group bookings, which involve higher costs and consequently higher earned loyalty miles, result in substantial revenue loss for airlines.
Recommended steps to be taken by airlines to secure their revenue for group bookings
1. Integrating a booking system
A single-platform integrated booking system is so much easier as every group booking activity can be tracked and monitored. It is an end-to-end centralized system where group bookings are handled from start to end. An airline revenue management system also reports and detects any suspicious activities. Moreover, the airline staff has complete authorization control to stop or process any steps.
2. Implementing group policies
Group policies act as an extra layer of protection against any unfavorable activities to the airlines. Manual tracking of group policies is extremely difficult and vulnerable to many data points. A group policy engine will allow you to configure diverse group policies such as regional, request types, air routes, seasonal policies, profile types, etc., resulting in 100% compliance.
3. Multi-level authentication
All the vulnerable points of the airline can be added to a multi-layer authentication or 2-step verification at certain points to prevent unauthorized usage. The airline can maintain the session limitation to terminate inactive sessions when not in use. The airline staff can fortify their security measures and block all the compromised emails while they can launch a full-scale investigation to ensure the safety of passengers and customers.
It is easier with the airline revenue management system to initiate remedial measures.
These three steps have the potential to prevent 90% of revenue fraud in airline group bookings, assuming a robust system is in place.
Conclusion
News of revenue fraud and system vulnerabilities spreads rapidly. Our airline revenue management solution, GroupRM, has been developed by travel tech experts at Infiniti Software Solutions, who have taken various security scenarios into account, including fake payment information, fraudulent travel agencies, scams, loyalty fraud, and safeguarding against 90% of revenue frauds.
Talk to our experts to know how GroupRM will protect the system – Schedule a demo.
