When you book a holiday online, you’re not just buying flights or hotel rooms—you’re placing trust in a platform to protect your money, your personal information, and your travel plans. For Booking.com, one of the world’s largest travel marketplaces, safeguarding that trust for millions of users daily is a massive responsibility. Increasingly, the company is turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to keep fraud at bay.
Using AI to Stay Ahead of Fraud
Online threats today go far beyond stolen credit cards. Platforms like Booking.com face everything from fake listings and phishing attacks to account takeovers and fraudulent reviews.
“We use AI for a broad range of safety and fraud risk mitigation use cases,” said Siddhartha Choudhury, Senior Product Manager at Booking.com.
Handling this scale requires serious computing power. Booking.com processes petabytes of data—from app activity and infrastructure logs to emails and customer messages. To tackle fraud effectively, the company blends off-the-shelf machine learning tools with custom-built AI solutions, creating a layered defense system that protects both travelers and property owners.
Balancing Cost and Performance
Running a global fraud prevention system isn’t just technically complex—it’s financially demanding. Cyberattacks evolve constantly, forcing Booking.com to strengthen its defences at pace. But better security often comes with higher costs.
“Due to evolving cyber threats, attacks are more sophisticated and the scale of data is increasing constantly,” Choudhury explained. “So the decision is: should we make things more cost-efficient, or should we make it even better performance wise?”
For Booking.com, the challenge is finding the right balance between cutting costs and keeping security one step ahead of attackers.
AI as a Partner for Human Experts
One of the biggest advantages of AI is its ability to act as a digital partner for human analysts. By moving much of its security infrastructure to the cloud, Booking.com has enabled faster, smarter monitoring.
“Multiple AI assistants are working in parallel for security analysts to improve their efficiency and reduce operational toil,” Choudhury said.
That means AI can sift through mountains of data in seconds, flagging suspicious activity so that human experts can focus on investigating the most serious threats.
Ethics and Trust at the Core
Giving AI the power to make important decisions comes with risks, so Booking.com emphasizes fairness and transparency. The company regularly audits its models for bias to avoid unfairly flagging certain users or groups. Human oversight remains central—major decisions involve a person, not just a program.
Choudhury also highlighted the importance of explainability: the AI’s decisions must be understood, not treated as a “black box.” Underpinning everything is a strong commitment to privacy and data protection, with user consent built in at every step.
What’s Next for AI in Security
Looking ahead, Choudhury believes the focus will shift from creating new AI tools to orchestrating existing ones more effectively.
“I expect more and more solutions will be designed but also expect them to be orchestrated in a way that will make departments much more efficient,” he said.
For Booking.com, the goal is clear: build a security system where different AI-driven tools work seamlessly together while balancing reliability, innovation, and cost efficiency.
