This weekend I have the pleasure of fighting my way onto a discount airline seat with three kids more luggage than is really necessary and my amazingly tolerant wife keeping us all happy.

Of course this is the same journey many have planned or have ventured over the summer weeks. But with the cheap flights and option of booking your own villa from the web, how do you know when you arrive at your destination, the villa will be either there, rented to you or not double booked.

The holiday rental market is not particularly well regulated and owners can register a property for rental with the minimalist of checks being carried out on them. In fact, most sites don’t even check that the owner is who they say they are.

Worried? Perhaps you should be, but things are changing. More internet sites are getting wise to fraud against holiday makers and are implementing ID and Verification checks carried out by GB Group before the owner can advertise a property.

These checks are done in real time and exclude gangs who hit property internet sites consistently trying to advertise bogus properties. They gangs scrape pictures from other internet sites, write a fictitious itinerary of the place and post them.

But good anti fraud platforms with ID and authentication processes can eliminate almost all the criminals from committing fraud, stealing your money and ruining your hard earned break.

So if you have booked a villa like I have, make sure the advertising site does the kind of checks above, otherwise you may become one of the many holiday makers turning up to an empty plot, double booked villa or private address hoping for the best.

Smugly, I have booked mine through one of our customers, so now I only have the Spanish Traffic Control strike and the BAA airport strike to contend with. There is nothing like de-stressing on your summer break…

If you are off on holiday – have a good one!

John