Advantage members to join reporting system to fight fraud

By Harry Kemble

22/05/2023

Home » Advantage members to join reporting system to fight fraud

Advantage members will be encouraged to join an intelligence system where they can report fraud incidents from this summer.

The name of the system, launched by Prevention of Fraud in Travel (PROFIT), has deliberately not been revealed to prevent it being accessed by hackers.

Members will be able to anonymously share information on the platform about how they were scammed to understand how to fight fraud.

Details about the system were announced during a workshop at the consortium’s conference in Benidorm as PROFIT Chairman Barry Gooch said getting the police to investigate reports of fraud was currently ‘a postcode lottery’ due to a lack of fraud detectives in some forces.

He said there are 800 fraud detectives across 43 police forces in the UK and some forces don’t have any in their ranks.

Last year, 24,805 reports of fraud led to just 219 court cases.

Advantage Chief Operating Officer Paul Nunn said members would start being added to the system in the summer.

“The idea is to get as many members as we can to sign up,” he said. “The system has been signed off by the police so that we can proactively fight fraud.

“We’re doing what we can to mitigate against fraud in travel. If members see any odd bookings or behaviours, then they can go into the system and report it.”

Barry said ‘hundreds’ of companies were part of the system, including other consortia.

“Smaller organisations tend to be more of a target for fraudsters,” he said. “The assumption is they’re not very diligent and you’re more vulnerable if you’re a small company.”

Figures released this week by Action Fraud reveal more than £15 million was lost to holiday fraud in the past year.