Bot Voyage!

In this episode of the Thales Security Sessions podcast, host Steve Prentice speaks with Grainne McKeever of Thales about the growing threat of bad bots in the travel industry. Drawing on insights from the 2025 Imperva Bad Bot Report, Grainne reveals that travel has now overtaken retail as the most targeted sector, and explains more about how these bots perform malicious activities like scraping pricing data, spinning airline seats, and committing loyalty fraud through credential stuffing. The conversation explores how AI has made bot attacks cheaper and more accessible, threatening both large platforms and smaller travel agencies. Grainne outlines key defensive strategies and emphasizes the importance of being proactive, as AI also empowers defenders—but only if they're prepared. The episode is a wake-up call for the travel sector to take bot threats seriously.