AI Agents Transform Travel Booking While Raising Cybersecurity Risks

AI agents such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude are revolutionizing the travel industry by automating flight bookings, hotel reservations, and itinerary planning. This shift presents significant opportunities for travel brands, including enhanced conversion paths and streamlined customer experiences. However, it also introduces cybersecurity challenges, as the same automation can be exploited for scraping data and executing fraud.

The travel industry faces a dual challenge: enabling legitimate AI agent activity while preventing malicious bot actions. Traditional bot detection methods are insufficient, as they often block legitimate AI agents that represent valuable customers. For instance, DataDome’s threat research team found that 80% of AI agents do not properly declare themselves when accessing websites, complicating the detection process.

Three critical threats facing the travel industry include agent takeover and account fraud, where compromised AI agents can make unauthorized bookings; inventory hoarding and price manipulation, where malicious actors scrape data to manipulate market dynamics; and loyalty point abuse, where bots exploit loyalty programs for financial gain. According to the 2025 Global Bot Security Report, over 90% of travel websites are not fully protected against these simple bot attacks.

Travel brands like Dohop have successfully implemented DataDome to combat these threats, reducing bot traffic by 70% during peak seasons and blocking over 3 million malicious requests in a single month. Similarly, Rail Europe has utilized DataDome to protect against scraping bots, discovering that 30% of its incoming traffic was malicious.

Implications for Travel Brands

To thrive in the agentic commerce era, travel brands must distinguish between legitimate AI agent activity and malicious automation. This requires real-time behavioral analysis and intent-based trust management to ensure that genuine customers can access services without unnecessary friction.

Brands that successfully navigate these challenges will benefit from increased visibility, improved customer experiences, and stronger partner relationships, while those that fail to adapt risk losing competitive positioning and customer trust.

• Dohop: A B2B travel platform that uses DataDome to protect its systems and maintain trust with airline partners.
• DataDome: A cybersecurity solution that helps travel brands block malicious bot traffic and protect their online presence.
• Rail Europe: A company that aggregates train tickets and uses DataDome to defend against scraping bots and credential stuffing attacks.