The entire travel industry is shaddy. I used to work for a price comparison site for holidays that had a side business as a travel agent. It was well known that

The entire travel industry is shaddy. I used to work for a price comparison site for holidays that had a side business as a travel agent. It was well known that none of the prices listed were the real price. Even with a rather generous staff discount being applied the sales agent was one surprised that it was just x over the listed price. They would say you were buying a package holiday but in reality they were just doing bookings for you via the standard public website for everything but the hotel. They would take the hotel payment first and then look at the price for the flights by which point you're already sold what the company sells and you need to pay for the flights no matter what. They'll then suggest that you do the transfer booking yourself to save money but it'll literally be the same price. When I joined the first meeting my first day had people talking about how they got up at 2am and then 4am to make sure internal processes were still working. They had people who were barred from the office and were massive screaming matches if they came in which was mostly management yelling at people for talking to them. On the money laundering aspect, I doubt this since most gangsters are busy with other businesses such as running taxis and bus services that are mainly cash businesses while hotels are mainly internet and card payments and largerly coming from business accounts unless it's a tourist spot.