The World Cup Is 29 Days Away. Here Is What Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com Are Doing to Stop Guests From Getting Scammed.

Airbnb says it blocked 157,000 fake listings from ever appearing on its platform in 2023 and removed another 59,000 that slipped through. That was before generative AI made creating convincing fake rental listings faster, cheaper, and harder to detect. Now the FIFA World Cup is 29 days from kickoff across 11 U.S. cities, three Canadian venues, and three Mexican host sites. The question for the estimated 380,000 guests planning to book through Airbnb alone is blunt: are the platforms ready?

The answer is complicated. And for the hundreds of thousands of legitimate hosts in World Cup markets, the stakes cut both ways.

The Fraud Risk Is Not Hypothetical

Major sporting events have always been magnets for accommodation fraud. During the Qatar 2022 World Cup, limited STR supply (only a few hundred Airbnb listings existed pre-tournament) pushed desperate fans toward off-platform arrangements where fraud thrived. A federal grand jury indicted two men for running an $8.5 million double-booking scheme through Airbnb and Vrbo, involving over 10,000 reservations across nearly 100 properties in 10 states. Both defendants are now pleading guilty.

The FTC’s December 2025 analysis puts the broader picture in focus. Consumers reported nearly 65,000 rental scams between January 2020 and June 2025, totaling roughly $65 million in losses. The median loss per victim was $1,000. About half of recent reports originated from fake ads on Facebook, not from the major platforms. But the platforms are where trust is built and broken.

Travel scams have surged 500% to 900% in 18 months, according to Booking.com’s own data from 2024. Generative AI can now produce polished listing descriptions, realistic property photos, and fabricated reviews at scale.

What Airbnb Is Doing (and What It Is Not)

Airbnb has been the most vocal about its World Cup preparations. The company published a dedicated safety announcement in May 2026, and the specifics are worth examining.

Airbnb says it has deployed more than 13,000 specially trained support agents available around the clock for the duration of the tournament. Its reservation screening technology, which blocks “potentially higher-risk bookings” before they can be confirmed, is active across all of North America. The company says its dedicated Law Enforcement team has “proactively connected with hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.”

On the fake listing front, Airbnb’s machine learning system evaluates each listing against “hundreds of risk signals” including host reputation, template messaging, and duplicate photos. High-risk listings are blocked entirely or delayed for manual review. The platform also strips contact information from descriptions and messages until a reservation is confirmed, forcing scammers to operate within monitored systems.

Every booking during the World Cup includes AirCover for guests, covering host cancellations, check-in failures, and listings “significantly different than advertised.” Airbnb will attempt to rebook the guest or issue a refund. Guests have 72 hours from discovering an issue to report it.

But AirCover has well-documented limitations. As we reported in our investigation of AirCover complaints, the gap between the promise and the experience can be significant. Rebooking “depending on availability at comparable pricing” during a World Cup, when 380,000 guests are competing for limited inventory, is not the same as rebooking on a quiet Tuesday in October.

What Airbnb is not doing: publishing response time commitments for fraud reports. No public SLA exists for how quickly a reported fake listing is investigated and removed.

What Vrbo Promises (and Where the Fine Print Gets Interesting)

Vrbo’s approach centers on VrboCare, which evolved from the earlier Book with Confidence Guarantee. VrboCare covers four categories: internet fraud on Vrbo’s platform, hosts denying entry without justification, properties with undisclosed “material defects rendering the property unusable,” and wrongful refusal to return deposits.

The platform has tightened its trust signals. A “Loved by Guests” badge now requires a 9.4 or higher rating. Premier Host demands a 99% acceptance rate, 0% cancellation rate, and 9.2 or higher average. Those are real standards.

Here is the caveat that should matter to every guest booking a World Cup stay through Vrbo: the type and amount of relief provided under VrboCare is, in the platform’s own words, “entirely up to Vrbo.” The guarantee is explicitly not a satisfaction guarantee or a money-back guarantee. Vrbo decides what you get. That could mean alternative accommodations, a partial refund, or nothing beyond the standard cancellation terms.

Vrbo has not published a World Cup-specific safety plan or staffing commitment comparable to Airbnb’s. No public announcement about additional agents, enhanced screening for high-demand markets, or proactive law enforcement coordination. The silence is notable, especially given that Vrbo’s parent company, Expedia Group, has significant resources to deploy.

Booking.com Has a Timing Problem

Booking.com enters the World Cup period with a significant trust deficit. On April 13, 2026, the platform confirmed a data breach that exposed customer reservation details including names, email addresses, phone numbers, travel dates, and accommodation specifics. Booking.com has declined to reveal how many users were affected.

The breach enabled what security researchers at Norton have labeled “reservation hijacking.” Criminals use real booking details to impersonate hotels or guest services, contacting travelers with messages that reference correct property names, dates, and personal information. Victims report scam communications that are nearly indistinguishable from legitimate messages because they contain accurate reservation data.

Booking.com says it uses AI-driven fraud detection to flag “suspiciously low” prices and maintains a Review Guarantee ensuring only verified guests can leave reviews. But the platform has not issued any public statement about enhanced security measures specifically for the World Cup, and has not disclosed what additional steps it has taken to protect users whose data was compromised. For a platform that reported its own data showing travel scams had risen 500% to 900%, the silence before the largest sporting event in North American history is difficult to explain.

The Host Side: When Fraud Sweeps Catch Legitimate Operators

For STR hosts in World Cup cities, platform fraud enforcement creates a secondary risk that gets far less attention. Aggressive anti-fraud algorithms do not distinguish between a scammer who just created a listing and a legitimate host who raised prices to reflect genuine World Cup demand.

Hosts report that sudden price increases, even justified ones, can trigger automated review flags. New listings created by first-time hosts responding to Airbnb’s own $750 World Cup hosting bonus are particularly vulnerable to false positives in systems designed to be suspicious of new, unreviewed listings.

When a listing is flagged, the appeal process is where legitimate hosts feel the pain. Airbnb does not publish average resolution times for listing disputes. Host forums document weeks-long waits for reinstatement. During a compressed event window like the World Cup, a listing suspended for five days could mean losing the entire revenue opportunity.

What hosts in World Cup cities should do right now:

• Verify your listing information is complete and current. Accurate photos, updated amenities, and a verified address reduce your risk of being flagged by automated systems.
• If you are raising prices for the World Cup, do it incrementally. A 300% overnight price spike looks identical to fraud behavior from an algorithm’s perspective. Gradual increases starting weeks before the event establish a documented pricing pattern.
• Maintain your response rate and review history. High-engagement accounts with established track records receive fewer automated flags.
• Document everything. If your listing is flagged, timestamped records of your property, guest communications, and pricing rationale give you material for an appeal.

For a detailed look at how each of the 11 U.S. host cities is regulating short-term rentals during the tournament, see our city-by-city World Cup STR enforcement roundup.

Guest Guidance: How to Spot Fake Listings in World Cup Host Cities

The FTC, FBI, and multiple consumer protection agencies have issued World Cup-specific fraud warnings. Here is what the guidance distills to for guests booking STRs in host cities.

Book only through the platform. Never complete payment through wire transfer, cryptocurrency, Zelle, Venmo, or any off-platform method. Legitimate hosts will not ask you to switch to personal websites. This single rule prevents the majority of vacation rental scams.

Verify before you pay. Reverse-image search property photos. Check whether the listing address corresponds to a real property using Google Street View. A property with five vague five-star reviews posted within the same week is a red flag.

Be skeptical of pricing outliers. A three-bedroom apartment in downtown Miami during the World Cup final listed at $150 per night is not a deal. It is a trap. Far-below-market pricing is one of the most reliable indicators of a fraudulent listing.

Report immediately. If you arrive and the property does not exist, contact the platform first. Then file with the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and the FBI at IC3.gov. The 72-hour AirCover reporting window starts when you discover the issue.

If you want to check whether a market’s STR supply numbers are consistent before booking in an unfamiliar World Cup city, the StaySTRA Analyzer provides market-level data that can help you gauge whether the supply in a given area matches what you see listed on the platforms.

What Still Needs to Improve

Three platforms. Three different approaches. One common gap: none of them publish enforceable response time commitments for fraud reports.

Airbnb’s 13,000 agents and machine learning screening represent a genuine investment. But value depends on what happens when something goes wrong at 11 PM on match day in a city where every alternative listing is booked. Without published SLAs, guests are trusting a promise without a timeline.

Vrbo’s VrboCare has the right categories of coverage but gives the platform unilateral discretion over relief. During a World Cup, “entirely up to Vrbo” is not the same as “you will be rebooked.”

Booking.com’s April data breach created a fraud vulnerability that intersects directly with World Cup travel. The platform has not publicly addressed how it is protecting users whose reservation data was exposed.

And the broader industry problem remains: cross-platform fraud. A scammer blocked on Airbnb can list the same nonexistent property on Vrbo or Booking.com within minutes. No platform-to-platform data sharing exists to prevent this. As our reporting on platform accountability gaps documented, when enforcement happens in silos, fraud simply migrates. Until the platforms share fraud intelligence, the system has a hole that no individual company’s AI can close.

We do our best to keep our reporting accurate and up to date, but situations evolve and we are only human. Always verify current details directly with local officials and sources before making decisions.

If you are evaluating a short-term rental investment in a World Cup host city, understanding platform reliability is part of the due diligence. The StaySTRA Analyzer gives you the market-level data to assess supply, demand, and revenue fundamentals before committing capital. Our DSCR financing guide breaks down how to structure the numbers.