Mum forced to cancel holiday after falling for £4,000 Airbnb scam
A family was left devastated and they were forced to cancel their holiday after falling for an Airbnb letting scam.
One mother of three had to cancel a family holiday only hours before they were due to fly after learning she had been scammed out of £4,000. Emma Last, 48, and her husband Zak, 51, were due to fly out to Majorca for an eight-night family holiday in August last year. However before jetting off, Emma realised the villa they had booked did not have their official reservation - as they had actually booked it through a scam website.
Emma from Chorley, Lancashire, told PA Media the realisation was "awful" as her children had their suitcases packed and were "excited" to go. She added: "Devastated children is the word – one didn’t speak for a day."
After saving up for the trip for a year, the mental health and wellbeing strategist started looking at holiday options on Airbnb in July 2023, specifically family villas in Ibiza or Majorca to accommodate her parents and her three children. After finding three options, Emma and her family did their “due diligence”, checking the villas existed using Google Earth, and they reviewed all the information provided.
Emma eventually recovered the £4,000 that was lost - but she is still out £1,700 for her flightsWhen they clicked on the Airbnb listing, there was a note that said they needed to check via WhatsApp whether their chosen dates were available – and Emma proceeded to do this, sending a message to the number provided. Emma then received a response from “Lyda from Travel Villas”, along with a link, confirming the property was available for the requested dates – August 7 to August 15, 2023 – at a discounted rental cost of 600 Euros (£511) per night.
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The message said: “Please send us your email so we can send you the PDF Brochure of the villa with all the details regarding the photos, services, location and terms of the booking.” After some back and forth, Emma was then advised that she was “pre-approved to book” and her reservation “will be confirmed instantly once a payment is made”. The message on WhatsApp continued: “Free cancellation policy within 24 hours prior (to) check in. Full refund back.”
A link then took her to what appeared to be a Booking.com “portal”, and she was offered a 10% discount, which “reassured” her the booking for the villa was legitimate. This website was actually fake, and had nothing to do with Booking.com. Emma’s mother, Julia, made the £4,120 payment on July 30, and Emma paid for the flights with Ryanair, which cost £1,722.98 in total for the seven guests.
She subsequently received a booking confirmation email from “Puerto Soller Villa”, along with a message on WhatsApp, which said: “Now everything is in order with the payment.” The message continued: “The check (in) is flexible 10am to 19pm. After 19pm, you can do it by yourself with a key passcode. If you have any special requests, such (as) renting a car, boat, catering, we can help you without any problem. Thank you and we look forward to hosting you.”
Emma wants to share her story to help prevent others from being scammedEmma sent follow-up messages about their flights on WhatsApp and asked for more information about the check-in process – but after receiving no responses over the following days from her texts and calls, she started to panic.
With a taxi due to take her family to the airport at about 11am on August 7, she set an early alarm and said she called Barclays for advice, as she had booked her flights with her Barclaycard and she had travel insurance with them. Emma was potentially going to take the chance and board the flights, as she thought they could try to book a hotel upon arrival if they could not access the villa, but then she received a distressing phone call from her mother.
They realised that fraudsters had copied information and pictures from another website called Oliver’s Travels onto a fake website called “Travel Villas”, pretending they were letting agents, and it was all a scam.
Emma said: "I felt stupid, I felt really stressed about trying to get the money back, I felt devastated for my children and my husband. You save up, you plan, and the thing is, I work really hard. I’m a small business owner and I do so much for others, I give back to everyone else, and in my world the majority of people are amazing people. It just disappoints you that there are people like that in the world.”
Emma said Barclays advised her that she could put in an insurance claim for the un-used flights, as she would be covered when booking using her Barclaycard, and this gave her some “reassurance”. She said the high street bank also told her she could not transfer the flights at the time – but when following up later on, she said she was told that the bank was unable to consider her claim.
The reason given was that her “circumstances are not included under any of the specified incidents for which (her) policy would provide cover”. Emma subsequently complained due to the “poor advice” she was given. Barclays has since apologised and admitted that she had been “misinformed”, offering £100 for “the distress and inconvenience that this has caused”.
Although Emma and her mother did eventually manage to get the £4,120 back for the villa scam, she is still more than £1,700 out of pocket for the flights as Ryanair was not at fault. Now, despite initially feeling stupid, angry, and disappointed in herself for making the “wrong decision”, Emma wants to share her story to help prevent others from being scammed.
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She said: “We did do some due diligence, but are there some learnings out of it? Absolutely. If they ask you to go off the site and into WhatsApp, don’t do it, if they ask you to pay on a different site, don’t do it. I have worked on my own mental health, and I’ve got all these tools in my kit bag because of the work that I do, but what really worries me is other people … the impact it can have on you, it can be devastating.”
An Airbnb spokesperson said: “This listing was removed from the platform as soon as it came to our attention last July, and we are in touch with the guest to offer our support. We encourage and remind users to stay on Airbnb to communicate, book and pay to help ensure they’re protected by our policies, processes and 24/7 support, including AirCover.”
A Barclays spokesperson said: “We have every sympathy with our customer who was the victim of a scam when booking their holiday accommodation. Our customer arranged the flights separately from the booking of the holiday accommodation, choosing to use their corporate credit card to complete the payment for the flights. The financial protection provided with Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act only applies to purchases made using a personal credit card, rather than one related to a business account.
“We were alerted to the accommodation scam on the day the flights were due to take place and we encouraged our customer to speak to their airline regarding their situation.”
The Mirror has contacted Booking.com for comment.
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