The main barriers to fully taking advantage of e-leisure
You may already be an active user of the online leisure activities mentioned earlier: social media, instant messaging, e-books, games, video tutorials on cooking, crafts, etc.
However, when it comes to registering, subscribing, shopping and booking online, many adults step back in using technology. This is mainly due to their lack of trust and concerns about privacy and security issues. Maybe that’s why you are not so eager to organise your trips online, despite all its advantages. If lack of confidence is your biggest concern preventing you from booking online, then you are partly right.
Online activities are increasing so fast that there is hardly anything you can not do online these days. Unfortunately, cybercrime is also on the rise. Although it is easy to book online, you should be aware of possible frauds that can lead to loss of money (such fraudulent techniques or activities are also known as scams).
Imagine you have booked a beautiful apartment with a sea view at a really good price, but you get there and find out that there is no such place and the website you booked on has disappeared, and the phone number provided doesn’t exist. It means that you became a victim of an online scam.
Some other popular hotel scams include fake hotel booking confirmations, email tracking, and fake hotel sales offers. In recent years, much customer data has been stolen from big companies, and hackers use this data to send emails that imitate big brand companies.
During the Covid pandemic and the emergence of new protocols, hackers exploited holidaymakers’ unfamiliarity with all these new procedures and enticed them to share personal data or download dangerous software.
Sometimes booking through third-party/intermediary online travel agencies (OTAs) also entails some risk.
Does this mean that despite all the advantages of booking online, you are right to do without it because you don’t run the risk of being cheated?
First of all, don’t forget that all kinds of frauds exist in the physical world as well, even more than online (pickpocketing, inflated bills from unlicensed taxis or transfers, wrong change, overcharging tourists in bars and restaurants, lost deposits, etc.), but that doesn’t stop us from travelling. We know how to be careful and avoid these scams. The same goes for online safety. Below we will give you tips on how to browse and book safely.
Another barrier to using technology can be the difficulty of using the website (poor colour contrast, letters or buttons too small, vocabulary difficult to understand, foreign language, advertisements displayed, confusing layout, etc.), especially if you have some kind of disability or temporary limitation.
Nowadays, more and more companies want to reach out to as many people as possible, which obliges them to develop their websites following certain accessibility guidelines. Further in this unit, we will also pay special attention to this issue and provide you with some tools that will make it possible to better navigate the website even if it doesn’t seem to have some accessibility features.