HolidayDaysForUnder200Pounds.com was re-registered today as were the fraudulent sister-sites: UnbeatableHolidays.com, SunMedResorts.com, and HolidayRez.com. HolidayEZ.com, however, is still active as of this posting. It resembles one of those crappy search pages that have been known to appear on the displays of high-jacked computers. It comes complete with a pop-up that our machines blocked and we recommend you not explore.

“The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) has warned people to be careful about buying trips online. The organisation [sic] advises people to check it own Web site or that of other affiliated organisations [sic once more] like ATOL – (Air Travel Organisers’ [sic – it’s the British spelling, okay?] Licensing to make sure any holiday firm is bona fide.” – This is quoted from Reuters.

The simple request, “find online travel agency,” delivers “about 99,100,000” results in 0.23 seconds. You may agree that this is a disgusting number of results. Interestingly, Travelocity.com comes in at number one over Expedia although it’s Internet rating is 303 against Expedia’s better rating of 212. Before Google lists Expedia in the results, FunJet and AppleVacations appear to the searching surfer.

On travel scams, CruiseCritic.com and HomeBasedTravelAgent.com and TravelSense.org offer further stories and advise about avoiding and identifying scams. The main theme is that if it seems too good to be true, it often is.

But then there are sites offering trips to New York and Las Vegas starting at $70. There are combination packages at unheard of low prices. What’s a traveler to do? You can verify most anything on the Internet with a quick visit to any number of sites including www.dot.gov for air travel, www.ahma.com for the American Hotel and Motel Association, www.arda.org for time-share stuff per the American Resort Development Association, www.fmc.gov for the Federal Maritime Commission to do with cruise ships and www.ASTAnet.com for the American Society of Travel Agents.

Protect yourself as you would protect several hundred of your hard-earned dollars. If Google search results are any indication, other online travel services are coming up loudly to compete with Expedia and Travelocity quickly. Scams are either mixed in or not far behind. By the way, ASTA (like ASTAnet.com above) also happens to be the old name of a favorite resort of ours in Barbados. We got great rates to it; if you’re interested, blindly send $1237 to Dinarius.com and we’ll get back to you. We’ll tell Elvis (really) to make you a cozy table on the patio.