(Un)Secure Booking: Security Risks Within Facebook Groups Accommodation Reservations

Authors

Mihaela Franjić
University of Maribor, Faculty of Tourism
Barbara Pavlakovič Farrell
University of Maribor, Faculty of Tourism
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0258-8656

Synopsis

The tourism industry has significantly reshaped with the development of ICT and the Internet. In the contemporary digital world, most tourists utilise Smart Tourism Technologies services to search and book their travels, pay for services, and discover attractions at destinations. The level of security is a significant factor affecting the tourist experience since tourists employ technology to obtain information in all stages of their travel, especially in the first phases, and trust that it is reliable and truthful. Among the most known threats are fake profiles, identity theft, personal data theft, AI fraud, and others. Facebook, a pioneer in social media, hosts various groups related to promoting tourism (advertisements, tourist communities, reviews) or tourism offers (transportation, accommodation, guided tours, equipment sales). There are increasing cases of Facebook booking scams, where users are paying money for tourism services but ending up without paid service. Therefore, this paper focuses on the booking phase by analysing providers' actions within Facebook groups regarding popular tourist destinations such as Amsterdam, Milan, Prague, Istanbul, London, and Dublin. By analysing written and visual content and carefully reviewing group posts and requests, we identified signs of potential security risks that users should be aware of when searching for providers.

Author Biographies

Mihaela Franjić, University of Maribor, Faculty of Tourism

Mihaela Franjić is a teaching assistant and a researcher at the Faculty of Tourism, University of Maribor in Brežice, Slovenia. Her research interests extend beyond Tourism to include artificial intelligence, informatics, statistics, digital transformation, user experience and protected areas. Additionally, she teaches more than twenty different courses, with a particular focus on social media and tourism security. Everything that affects tourists and their safety is a highly interesting and largely unexplored topic, especially when it comes to sharing personal data online and communicating with others.

Brežice, Slovenia. E-mail: mihaela.franjic1@um.si

Barbara Pavlakovič Farrell, University of Maribor, Faculty of Tourism

Barbara Pavlakovič Farrell is an assistant professor and a researcher at the University of Maribor, Faculty of Tourism, Slovenia. Her work and research fields cover various aspects of tourism, destination management, sustainability, industrial tourism, communication, and safety & security in tourism. She graduated in communication studies, developed her public relations skills in several organisations as a PR practitioner and continued her career in academia. Her published works include scientific articles, books and book chapters about industrial tourism, HR, safety and security in tourism, sustainability and renewable sources, and conference contributions about the mentioned topics.

Brežice, Slovenia. E-mail: barbara.pavlakovic@um.si

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Volume

44th International Conference on Organizational Science Development: Human Being, Artificial Intelligence and Organization, Conference Proceedings

Pages

221-234

Published

March 19, 2025

Series

Razvoj organizacijskih znanosti

Categories

Copyright (c) 2025 University of Maribor, University Press

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

(Ed.). (2025). (Un)Secure Booking: Security Risks Within Facebook Groups Accommodation Reservations. In 44th International Conference on Organizational Science Development: Human Being, Artificial Intelligence and Organization, Conference Proceedings (Vols. 44, pp. 221-234). University of Maribor Press. https://press.um.si/index.php/ump/catalog/book/962/chapter/283