Don’t Be Fooled by a Copycat Hotel Website

Summary

WSJ Tech News Briefing: “Don’t Be Fooled by a Copycat Hotel Website”
Release Date: April 1, 2025
Host: Julie Chang, The Wall Street Journal

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1. Introduction

In this episode of Tech News Briefing, host Julie Chang delves into two main topics affecting different sectors: the adoption of smart devices in dairy farming and the rise of deceptive copycat hotel websites. The discussion provides insights into technological advancements in agriculture and the challenges consumers face in the online travel booking space.

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2. Smart Devices in Dairy Farming

Enhancing Livestock Health Monitoring

Dairy farmers are increasingly utilizing smart devices such as internet-connected collars, ear tags, and leg tags on their cows. These devices aim to monitor the health and movements of livestock, potentially detecting diseases like bird flu, which has previously devastated poultry populations in the United States.

Bel Lin, WSJ Enterprise Tech Reporter, explains:

“[00:18] ...smart devices like Internet connected collars, ear and leg tags on their livestock to better track the health of their cows...”

These technologies help farmers manage individual animals more efficiently, reducing the need for extensive manual labor. The devices analyze vast amounts of data to identify any deviations in a cow’s behavior, signaling potential health issues that may require veterinary attention.

Market Growth and Adoption Challenges

The livestock monitoring market, while not yet a $2 billion industry, is experiencing a steady growth rate of approximately 7% annually. However, adoption remains a challenge due to factors such as:

• Farmer Awareness: Educating farmers about available technologies and their benefits.
• Cost Justification: Ensuring that the investment in technology is financially viable for farmers.

Bel Lin highlights the industry's potential despite these hurdles:

“[03:03] ...it's growing at a nearly compound annual growth rate of 7 point something percent...”

Impact on Labor and Connectivity Issues

Smart devices have started to replace some manual labor roles on farms. Bel Lin notes:

“[03:36] ...trackers have replaced a few humans...”

However, complete replacement of human oversight is unlikely due to the essential role of “cow sense”—the intuitive understanding farmers have regarding their livestock’s well-being. Additionally, connectivity issues in rural areas pose significant barriers:

“[04:23] ...if you don't have Internet connectivity... the collars are worthless, and the data is worthless.”

Farmers must rely on stable internet connections to ensure data from smart devices is effectively utilized.

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3. Beware of Copycat Hotel Websites

As summer approaches, Julie Chang shifts focus to the travel industry, warning listeners about the proliferation of fraudulent hotel booking websites that mimic legitimate hotel sites to deceive consumers.

Identifying Deceptive Booking Sites

Victoria Craig, WSJ Travel Columnist, advises travelers on spotting fake hotel websites:

“[06:24] ...look at the total price. And then shop around and see if there's a big variance between prices. And if you see a big variance, that's a big red flag.”

She emphasizes the importance of booking directly with hotels to avoid middlemen who may introduce hidden fees and inflexible booking terms.

Common Tactics of Fraudulent Sites

Victoria Craig explains how these copycat sites manipulate search engine rankings and use misleading URLs to appear as legitimate hotel booking portals:

“[09:04] ...they use keywords like guest or reservation in the URL...”

This tactic makes it difficult for consumers to differentiate between genuine and fraudulent sites, often resulting in significant financial losses due to exorbitant fees.

Consumer Protection and Recommendations

Despite efforts by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and hotel associations to combat these fraudulent sites, the problem persists. Victoria Craig suggests several precautionary measures:

“[08:20] ...take your time when booking... call the hotel, ask if this is your website.”

By verifying the authenticity of the booking site and directly communicating with hotels, consumers can protect themselves from falling victim to deceitful practices.

Economic Impact and Industry Response

The persistence of copycat hotel websites despite regulatory actions underscores the need for ongoing consumer education and stricter enforcement. Victoria Craig remarks:

“[08:20] ...the FTC cracked down on them in 2017, but yet they still are around...”

She advocates for increased awareness and vigilance among travelers to mitigate the risks associated with these fraudulent platforms.

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4. Conclusion

This episode of Tech News Briefing provides valuable insights into how technology is transforming dairy farming by enhancing livestock health monitoring and addressing the evolving challenges in the travel industry with deceptive hotel booking websites. By leveraging smart devices, farmers can achieve greater efficiency and health management, while travelers are urged to remain cautious and informed to avoid fraudulent booking sites.

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Notable Quotes:

• Bel Lin on the purpose of smart devices:

  “[01:28] ...more for farmers to figure out if their animals are in optimal health when they're read for breeding and if anything unusual is going on.”

• Victoria Craig on the risks of copycat sites:

  “[07:24]...where you get into trouble is they charge extra fees...”

• Victoria Craig on consumer vigilance:

  “[09:48]...take some time... take five minutes and say, is this your website?”

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Produced by Jess Jupiter and supervised by Emily Martosi. For more updates, stay tuned to The Wall Street Journal’s Tech News Briefing.

Transcript

[Comcast Business]

With leading networking and connectivity, advanced cybersecurity and expert partnership. Comcast Business helps turn today's enterprises into engines of modern business. Powering the engine of modern business powering possibilities. Restrictions apply.

[Julie Chang]

Welcome to Tech News briefing. It's Tuesday, April 1st. I'm Julie Chang for the Wall Street Journal. Dairy farmers are putting a little extra flare on their cows to help track their movements and possibly detect bird flu and other ill illnesses. Plus, copycat hotel sites that charge hefty fees have been popping up online. Our travel columnist will tell you how to avoid dubious resellers. Up first, Dairy farmers are putting smart devices like Internet connected collars, ear and leg tags on their livestock to better track the health of their cows. The devices could help detect diseases like bird flu, which has spread to cattle after wiping out millions of America's chickens over the past few years. Farmers say they hope the devices will help manage individual animals with less manual labor. WSJ Enterprise tech reporter Bel Lin has been following the story and she spoke with her colleague Victoria Craig. Here's their conversation.

[Dawn Gilbertson]

A wearable device that helps farmers spot possible bird flu Just explain how this device works.

[Bel Lin]

The device is typically a collar or an ear tag can also be a tag that goes on the legs or the tail of the cow. And it's sort of akin to a wearable that you and I would wear, maybe like a Fitbit or an apple watch. But for cows and for cattle, they are less designed to help you track your steps and figure out if your heart rate is where it's supposed to be on a workout, but more for farmers to figure out if their animals are in optimal health when they're read for breeding and if anything unusual is going on. It's been trained on a vast amount of information from number of cows, looking at their positions and movements and looking to see if there's even a deviation in whether or not the cows are acting the way that they normally are. Any deviation from that behavior indicates that something might be wrong. And then what's important to note is that the collars or the ear tags are not meant to actually identify diseases. It's meant to kind of say, hey farmer, you might want to take a look at your cow.

[Dawn Gilbertson]

And it can be used not just for cows, but other animals too.

[Bel Lin]

They can be used for other animals, but in terms of the overall livestock monitoring market, it's really cows that are in need of this technology because there's so many aspects of a cow's health that need to be tracked. What I most often hear is that cows are sort of like professional athletes. And so they're performing their best, they're giving us their best milk when they are at their optimal health. And that's why they need to be checked regularly.

[Dawn Gilbertson]

And this is not a small market. This is a really big booming business monitoring livestock. How big of a market are we talking?

[Bel Lin]

Yeah, it's not quite a $2 billion market, but it's growing at a nearly compound annual growth rate of 7 point something percent. And so it's a growing market, but it's limited by things like farmer adoption. Farmers do need to be aware that technologies exist and have to be able to make the justification that the technology is worth it.

[Dawn Gilbertson]

The big question I think is will this eventually replace a need for humans to do whatever this technology is doing? And you did talk to a farmer who said that that has actually been the case on his farm. Trackers have replaced a few humans.

[Bel Lin]

That's right. Yeah, it is. One of the big headline goals of these smart devices is that when you don't need as many eyes and ears on every single animal in your herd, then you can save a lot in terms of the manual labor required. But humans can't be replaced altogether by these wearables because there's something called cow sense. Cowsense is basically this intuition that farmers have to say, something's going on with my cow, I need to get a veterinarian in here to take a look. And so that at this point can't be replaced. But it's certainly scaling back the number of manual hours and labor that this particular farmer requires.

[Dawn Gilbertson]

And another farmer also talked to you about issues with connectivity with some of the devices, like what happens if they fall offline or a portion of that tracker population isn't working. How do the farmers adjust to that or how do they work through it?

[Bel Lin]

It's a barrier to adoption as well, where if you don't have Internet connectivity in this very rural part of your farm, then you can't get the data synced back up to the cloud in either direction. So essentially the callers are worthless and the data is worthless. And so that's one of the challenges that dairy farmers across the country have faced because they are in actually more spread out locations than their fellow crop farmers who are also using precision technologies, but do tend to be in a little less far flung areas. And so they really have to wait until the Internet's back online in order for, for the data to connect both in and off of the cloud.

[Julie Chang]

That was WSJ's Victoria Craig speaking with reporter Bell, Lynn Coming up, Thinking of booking a hotel for an upcoming trip? Beware of copycat hotel websites posing as real hotel sites. We'll tell you how these dupes have been ripping off consumers after the.

[Comcast Business]

With leading networking and connectivity, advanced cybersecurity and expert partnership, Comcast business helps turn today's enterprises into engines of modern business Powering the engine of modern business powering possibilities. Restrictions apply.

[Julie Chang]

Summer is just a few months away and folks may have already started booking hotels for their travels. If you're searching online, you've likely come across sponsored ads that make you think you're booking directly with a hotel. Well, check those links twice because there's a chance you're not. WSJ travel columnist Dawn Gilbertson spoke with Victoria Craig about the rise of copycat hotel sites and their enormous fees.

[Dawn Gilbertson]

So Don, I like to think that I'm a fairly savvy hotel booker myself, but even I've been duped by this kind of thing. How do you identify the travel agency sites and the actual hotel booking sites?

[Victoria Craig]

Click on it. There's not going to be any problem if you just click on it initially and if things don't look right. But the thing that you should really look at first is the total price. And then shop around and see if there's a big variance between prices. And if you see a big variance, that's a big red flag.

[Dawn Gilbertson]

Describe what the most meaningful difference is. Why should you prefer to book on a hotel's site versus another third party site?

[Victoria Craig]

I'm a big direct booker myself. I recommend it to travelers all the time because you really generally do not want a middleman when things go wrong in travel. We've all been on an airline, we've all booked a hotel and then we're like, oh, I need to change something or something changes and they're going to tell you you have to go back to where you booked it. So the issue there is if you book directly with the hotel or the airline, you have only one place to call and they have a little more control over what they can do for you.

[Dawn Gilbertson]

A lot of these sites will sort of force you into a non refundable rate. So once you realize that you didn't book where you wanted to book, it's too late. You can't do anything.

[Victoria Craig]

Well, yes, if you get your confirmation, you're happy with this price. You didn't maybe didn't read the fine print, you're happy with this price and then all of a sudden you're like, whoa, I booked a prepaid Room that's not changeable, not refundable. Now I must know, and a couple readers pointed this out to me, you can also run into some of these issues with the expedias and booking and price lines because you can save money. There's nothing wrong with prepaying for a hotel room unless you think there's a giant chance that you're going to change your plans because those are the lowest rates these days are the prepaid. But where these lookalike hotel websites, where you get into trouble is they charge extra fees. That's what you're not going to find on an Expedia or a Priceline or a booking.

[Dawn Gilbertson]

And this has become so ubiquitous, I suppose it has become very difficult for consumers to really spot the difference. If you put in say the hotel chain that you want to book in Google, this is likely to be one of the first ones that come up. It's become such a problem that the Federal Trade Commission and the hotels have teamed up looking into this as a problem.

[Victoria Craig]

They've been looking at this for years. The FTC cracked down on them in 2017, but yet they still are around Google a hotel. And chances are the first thing in your search list is going to be a hotel. That is not the direct booking site. Plenty of times it is Hilton. The big chains have money to pay up and then get first when the sponsored ads. But then there's these other players and people really, really, really need to be aware of this because the price difference can be huge. And once you book, if it's not refundable, you're out.

[Dawn Gilbertson]

And that was what I was going to ask is how has this become such a pervasive problem? Is it that these third party companies just have the money to pay to have their websites go up higher in the search rankings? What does it come down to?

[Victoria Craig]

I think that's reason number one. This one site that I kept coming upon over and over again, guestreservations.com and not every single hotel, but when you search a lot of hotels, it's the first one that comes there. And the way they trick you is they, they put like a keyword like guest or reservation in the URL. So you're looking at and you're thinking here's the name of my hotel. So they use the name of the hotel and then they use something like guest and then you're like oh, okay, well what's wrong with this? And sometimes there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Right. If the price difference is teeny tiny and you get there and your room is fine. But some of the examples that I found, the price difference was so egregious, there was absolutely no reason to book on the lookalike website.

[Dawn Gilbertson]

If the FTC is already looking into this but hasn't been able to do anything, how do you stop it?

[Victoria Craig]

That's a million dollar question, right? I mean, the hotel association says it's all about education. That's why I wrote the story. These ads are going to be out there until there's a further crackdown. But really the most important really thing I think for consumers to know, travelers to know is just take your time when booking. Unless this is something you've got a jet out of town for a funeral something, all bets are off, right? But really take some time. And you know, you can also call the hotel. I know it sounds so old fashioned in 2025. Call the hotel, ask what is. I'd seriously highly recommend that if you're gonna plunk down money for a week stay, even a weekend stay, before you click buy on an online site, take five minutes and say, is this your website? Because let me tell you, the hoteliers aren't happy with these sites whatsoever. First of all, they don't get any of that extra money. They don't get the money they're charging us all they get at the front desk. If people do realize this is some angry guests.

[Julie Chang]

That was WSJ's Victoria Craig speaking with our travel columnist Dawn Gilbertson. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Jess Jupiter with our supervising producer Emily Martosi. I'm Julie Chang for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.

[Comcast Business]

With leading networking and connectivity, advanced cybersecurity and expert partnership Comcast business helps turn today's enterprises into engines of modern business. Powering the engine of modern business powering possibilities. Restrictions apply.