Challenges
- A multi-billion dollar airline faced relentless scraping from unauthorized Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) — up to 99% of traffic on key endpoints was bots.
- One OTA scraped for virtual interlining without compensating the airline for its data feed.
- When travelers ran into problems with OTA-booked travel, they blamed the airline — a poor experience and brand image issue.
Results
- Discovered the unauthorized OTA and shut down its scraping.
- Improved site speed and stability by 30%, enabling a smooth site experience that encourages booking direct.
- Supported a top company goal of owning its customer relationships.
Adversaries exploit bot-driven attacks to scrape fares, interfere with dynamic pricing, and harm customers by taking over accounts and stealing rewards.
The Growing Threat Landscape
1.2%
of an airline’s revenue is lost to web and mobile fraud.
Airlines are tempting targets due to vast amount of sensitive customer and payment data handled.
Source: International Air Transport Association
Problems Airlines Face
Stock hoarding — Bots buy up inventory and release unsold reservations at the last minute
Inaccurate metrics — Bot traffic pollutes the data, skewing conversion rates and demand forecasts
Scraping — Excessive PSS and API queries to keep up with dynamic pricing raise costs
Loyalty/rewards fraud — Attackers obtain points to fraudulently book travel for themselves or others
Account fraud — Fake account creation and ATOs steal customer data and loyalty/rewards points
The Solution
Kasada integrated with the airline for a 30-day Proof of Concept period to prove its efficacy vs. the current CDN-based bot mitigation vendor.
Business Impact of Kasada
- Improves site experience and protects the brand
- Reduces web infrastructure and SMS costs
- Reduces loyalty/rewards points fraud
- Delivers clean data for analytics that reflects real customers
