Some Spanish families are currently living a nightmare after realising they have been scammed out of their holiday and are now facing the possibility of telling their children that their dream Disneyland trip is not happening after paying thousands of euros for holidays they say were never properly booked.

More than 400 customers have now joined together after claiming they were left without their trips and without the money they had paid to a travel agency in L’Escala, Girona. Some families say they handed over more than €9,000 for their holidays, others had been saving for months, even years or had bought trips as Christmas or Three Kings presents for their children, only to discover that the flights, hotels or attraction tickets they believed they had paid for were never made and were nonexistent.

Families arrive at departure date without bookings

Several customers say they only realised something was wrong when their travel dates approached, one of the most painful parts of the situation has been the effect on children who had been promised a special family holiday. For some parents, the Disneyland Paris trip was intended as a Christmas present. Their children were expecting to visit the theme park, stay away from home and enjoy a holiday that their parents had carefully planned and paid for.

Instead, families were left trying to establish whether their reservations actually existed. One customer contacted the airline directly to check her booking and was reportedly told that she was not the airline’s customer, the travel agency was. That left her with a simple question: if she had paid the agency for the trip, where were her tickets?

Some families paid more than €9,000

The amounts involved vary between customers, but some families say they paid several thousand euros for their holidays. One family had paid around €3,070 for a Disneyland Paris trip, others say they paid more than €9,000.

For most families paying these amounts, replacing a cancelled holiday at short notice may be impossible, particularly during school holidays when flights and hotels can cost considerably more. The money may also represent months of savings, parents who had organised trips around their children’s birthdays or Christmas presents are now having to deal with a situation they never expected when they made the booking.

More than 400 customers join forces

As complaints mounted, more than 400 people affected by the situation connected through social media. The groups have allowed customers to compare what happened with their own bookings and discuss how much they paid. Some say they received explanations or assurances before eventually discovering that their travel arrangements were not in place.

The customers are also trying to establish how many bookings were affected and how much money was handed over in total. The number of people involved means the dispute extends far beyond one family’s cancelled holiday.

Customers paid before receiving their travel documents

According to customers affected by the case, they were expected to pay the full cost of their holidays to the agency. Tickets and other travel documents were then supposed to arrive shortly before departure, with some customers expecting to receive them around a week before they were due to travel. That meant some people had already paid thousands of euros before discovering a problem.

By the time they began contacting airlines, hotels or other companies directly, their departure dates could be only days away. For a family travelling abroad, that leaves very little time to arrange a replacement holiday. One customer who contacted her airline directly was told that she was not its customer because the booking had been made by the travel agency. The discovery left her having to find out whether the reservation she believed she had paid for actually existed.

Disneyland dreams become a financial problem

Disneyland Paris is among the trips booked by affected families. For children, a Disneyland holiday can be one of the most anticipated presents they receive, for parents, it can involve a substantial financial commitment. One family had planned its trip as a Christmas present for the children.

Instead of preparing for the journey, the family was left trying to establish what had happened to the holiday and the money paid for it. For the affected customers, the immediate concern is no longer simply whether they will get to Disneyland or take their planned holiday. They want to know whether their money can be recovered.

Investigation into suspected fraud

The situation is being investigated as a suspected fraud, while affected customers are seeking answers and trying to recover the money they paid. The full financial value of the bookings has not yet been established. More than 400 people have now connected over the case, with individual losses ranging from thousands of euros to more than €9,000 for some families.

For parents who had promised their children a few days at Disneyland Paris, the disappointment is heartbreaking, for those who handed over thousands of euros that they had spent years saving, there is another concern that is harder to put aside: whether the holiday money they gave for will ever come back.

For people who love dogs but start sneezing, wheezing or itching whenever one comes near them, owning a pet can seem impossible. Now, two Beagles could offer a glimpse of a future in which a dog allergy no longer automatically means living without a canine companion. Bailey and Alfie are no ordinary Beagle pups, scientists have used gene-editing technology to remove the gene responsible for producing Can f 1, a protein that causes most allergic reactions to dogs.

The two female puppies were born in September 2024 after researchers edited dog cells in a laboratory and used them to create embryos. The embryos were then implanted into a surrogate Beagle. The result is two healthy dogs that do not appear to produce detectable Can f 1 in their saliva or fur. For people with serious dog allergies, that could eventually open up a possibility they have never had: living with a dog without suffering the usual reaction.

Two puppies at the centre of the experiment

The work was carried out by researchers at biotechnology company Kindred Companion Sciences, founded by geneticist Matt Walker. Walker has a personal reason for wanting to find a solution. He has a severe allergy to dogs, yet has been able to live with Bailey for around 18 months without experiencing his normal reaction.

Researchers tested samples from the genetically modified dogs alongside samples from other dogs. Walker reacted to samples from a poodle and a Goldendoodle during skin-prick testing, but did not react to samples from Bailey or Alfie. Laboratory testing also found no detectable Can f 1 protein in samples taken from the puppies. The research was published in The CRISPR Journal this month.

What makes these Beagles different?

Can f 1 is one of the main proteins responsible for dog allergies. It is produced in a dog’s skin and saliva and can spread through the animal’s fur, bedding and the surrounding environment. The researchers used CRISPR gene-editing technology to alter the DNA responsible for producing the protein. That does not mean Bailey and Alfie are completely incapable of causing an allergic reaction. 

Dogs produce several different allergens, so removing Can f 1 does not remove every substance that could trigger symptoms. The researchers also need to test the approach in more dogs and with a larger number of people who have different levels of allergy. For now, Bailey and Alfie are therefore better described as dogs without the major Can f 1 allergen, rather than dogs guaranteed to be safe for every allergy sufferer.

Could allergy-free dogs become available?

That is the possibility the researchers are now exploring, if further testing shows that the gene-editing technique is safe and consistently reduces allergic reactions, it could eventually be used to develop dogs specifically for people who cannot tolerate the allergens produced by conventional breeds. The potential market would not be limited to families looking for a pet.

The researchers have also discussed the possibility of genetically modified dogs being used as service animals. But there are still major questions to answer before such dogs could become commercially available. Scientists need to establish whether removing Can f 1 has any effects on the animals’ health and whether the genetic change remains stable throughout their lives and in future generations. There is also the question of whether creating dogs specifically for allergy sufferers is ethically acceptable.

Would you want one?

For someone whose allergy has prevented them from owning a dog, the idea could be life-changing. A child who has always wanted a puppy but cannot safely live with one could potentially have a different choice, adults who have given up on owning a dog because of severe allergies could also find themselves able to consider it.

But genetic modification also changes the way we think about choosing companion animals. Bioethicist Arthur Caplan of New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine has raised concerns that commercially produced allergy-free dogs could make people less likely to consider animals from shelters, where dogs would not have been genetically modified to remove allergens.

There is also a more fundamental question.

If science eventually makes it possible to design dogs around particular human needs, how far should we go? For allergy sufferers, the appeal is obvious. A dog could finally become a realistic part of their lives rather than an animal they have to admire from a distance.

Bailey and Alfie are still part of an early experiment, not the beginning of a new breed available in pet shops. But they have already demonstrated something that was previously impossible: dogs can be genetically edited so they no longer produce one of the main proteins responsible for human dog allergies.

And that leaves a question for anyone who has ever wanted a dog but could not have one: If you could buy a genetically modified dog that was designed not to trigger your allergy, would you?

Imagine arriving in Rome after carefully planning your holiday, only to discover that the apartment you paid for does not exist, and that the apparently genuine Booking profile you trusted belonged to a completely different property. That is the nightmare facing travellers caught up in a sophisticated accommodation scam in Italy, where criminals allegedly took control of the online profile of a legitimate property in the Siena area and used it to sell bookings for a fictitious apartment in Rome.

The scam was well orchestrated as well as effective simply because the fraud did not begin with an obviously fake website or an unknown accommodation. Instead, the criminals reportedly exploited the credibility of a genuine property already listed on Booking, making the fake offer appear considerably more trustworthy to potential guests. The case has drawn attention to the increasingly sophisticated methods being used to target holidaymakers online, particularly at a time when travellers are making large numbers of bookings for summer trips.

A genuine Booking profile was allegedly hijacked

According to reports from Italian media, the criminals gained access to the Booking account of a real accommodation in the Siena area. They then used that legitimate profile to promote an apartment supposedly located in Rome. The accommodation being advertised to travellers did not actually exist, for someone searching for somewhere to stay in the Italian capital, however, there was little reason to immediately suspect that something was wrong.

The listing appeared through a recognised booking platform and was connected to an established accommodation profile. That gave the fraudulent property something many fake holiday listings struggle to obtain: credibility. The criminals were reportedly able to exploit that trust to generate a huge number of supposed reservations, with reports suggesting that the operation was handling around 200 bookings a day.

Travellers paid for an apartment that wasn’t there

The scale of the fraud is what makes the case extremely shocking. Rather than targeting one or two travellers with an isolated fake advert, the compromised account was reportedly being used on a much larger scale, potentially exposing hundreds of people to the same deception. For those who had booked, the danger was not just about losing money.

A traveller arriving in Rome without a genuine address, keys or host could suddenly find themselves in an unfamiliar city with nowhere to stay, potentially during one of the busiest periods of the tourist season. The incident also demonstrates why checking the name and appearance of a property alone is no longer necessarily enough to establish that an online accommodation is genuine.

Why the scam is particularly difficult to spot

Holiday accommodation fraud has become increasingly sophisticated, with criminals exploiting the familiarity and reputation of major booking platforms. Earlier this year, Booking.com acknowledged a cyberattack in which unauthorised third parties may have gained access to customer information associated with reservations, including names, contact details and other booking information. The company said banking information had not been compromised. 

The travel industry has also warned about a rise in fraudulent websites, phishing messages and attempts to impersonate Booking.com and accommodation providers. Security researchers reported a sharp increase in malicious websites connected to travel brands during the run-up to summer this year.  That makes the Italian case particularly worrying: the fraud relied not simply on copying Booking.com, but on exploiting a real accommodation’s existing presence on the platform.

What holidaymakers should watch for

Travellers should be particularly cautious if a supposed accommodation provider suddenly asks them to make a payment outside the normal Booking process, click an unfamiliar verification link or provide card information through email, WhatsApp or another messaging service. Booking.com has previously warned customers about attempts to impersonate the platform or individual properties, including messages claiming that a reservation will be cancelled unless payment details are confirmed.

The safest approach is to keep communications and payments within the official booking platform and to be suspicious of urgent requests for additional payment or personal information. A particularly cheap price can also be a warning sign, especially when combined with pressure to make a rapid payment.

The holiday that existed only online

The Siena case offers a particularly reminder of how much trust travellers place in booking platforms. For the people behind the fake Rome apartment, the attraction was not simply the money from individual reservations. It was the credibility attached to an existing property and a well-known platform. For the holidaymakers, meanwhile, the consequences could begin only when they arrived at their destination.

A booking confirmation can feel like the final guarantee that the difficult part of organising a holiday is over. But this particular situation proves that even an apparently legitimate online reservation can conceal something very different from what the traveller believes they have purchased. The apartment in Rome looked real on a screen, the problem was that there was nothing waiting for the guests when they arrived.