Booking.com - what a scam

Used to use them a fair bit for holidays back in like 2010, I guess that's always half the problem is you then go back to a site you've had a good experience with and then find it's been sold and operating under shady practices.


Seems booking a holiday isn't quite a quick task these days! Not only do you have to spend hours finding the country, best time/availability, the hotel, and then an airline to fly with. But you then have to turn into an investigative journalist to check whether the hotel is real.
 
Semple said:
Used to use them a fair bit for holidays back in like 2010, I guess that's always half the problem is you then go back to a site you've had a good experience with and then find it's been sold and operating under shady practices.


Seems booking a holiday isn't quite a quick task these days! Not only do you have to spend hours finding the country, best time/availability, the hotel, and then an airline to fly with. But you then have to turn into an investigative journalist to check whether the hotel is real.
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There’s probably an emerging market for people who are subject matter experts in the travel industry going out and doing all of that investigative work, brokering deals, packaging it all up, and selling it on.
 
We've just tonight booked accommodation through Booking.... Has always been fine for us but I've noticed a lot of poor press on them recently.

What are the better alternatives?
 
Had 2 night stay booked through Booking last year.

Good rate, close to where we wanted to be (walking distance) and offered private off-road parking.

Got there and whilst the hotel room was fine there was no parking at all without resident permit and the nearest public car park was 5-6 mins away & cost me an extra £30.

Spoke to the hotel manager and he said they've told Booking NUMEROUS times to remove the parking from the listing as they've never had it & they get it in the neck all the time.

Submitted a complaint and got absolutely nowhere.
 
Used them loads. Particular with the free cancellation / pay on check in option often months in advance. Never had an issue.
 
Vandle said:
Used them loads. Particular with the free cancellation / pay on check in option often months in advance. Never had an issue.
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Same here, i use them a lot and never had issues. I almost always use the pay on check in or full refund options.

I will also check if it is cheaper elsewhere, sometimes it is slightly cheaper on the hotel website. But often, it isn't refundable going directly to get the same price.


Then at the end of the day you are trying to balance scamming hotels with ineffective Booking.com. In the OP's the main issue is the hotel is scamming and lying. You would hope Booking would be more helpful, but the OP would be in an even worse position if they booked with the hotel directly .

And unless you are booking a chain hotel, most independent hotel's website scream of being highly insecure
 
Never had an issue, used them quite a lot.

Actually no that's a lie, in 2018 I booked a guesthouse in Hong Kong with pay at the property.
The property tried to charge the card I had on my account on the day of arrival, couldn't get it to work, and cancelled my booking, leaving me stuck in Hong Kong with no accommodation on one of the busiest public holiday weekends of the year (Tomb Sweeping Day)

I think that time it was the accommodation that was problematic rather than the Booking.com process though
 
Do they also list flats for rent? A few years ago before moving, my flat buzzer sounded and the person on the other end was a guy with his daughter. They wanted to speak to someone as they had paid a deposit for a flat in the building but had stopped receiving communication.

I went down and they showed me some photos, which I told them was a neighbours flat who definitely were not trying to rent it out but had unsuccessfully tried to sell after a divorce. The scammers had lifted the photos from the estate agent/property search website like Zoopla.

Turns out they found the listing on Booking.com which I found weird, I didn't think they listed rentals, so my initial question to them was "is it a fake site?" Turns out it wasn't based on what they showed me and the SSL certificate.

Whilst I didn't understand why they would put a deposit down on a place without viewing it (explained by the fraudster telling them the place was popular/would be snapped up if they didn't), I did feel sorry for them.
 
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I've used their site a fair bit to find properties but then booked elsewhere as their prices have always been more expensive.
 
Diddums said:
Turns out Booking.com has been sold to some chap in Pakistan who now runs the place, and anyone can list a hotel on there and just blag whatever they want.
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Not saying Booking.com isn't crap but have you a source for this? As far as I can find it's owned by a large Incorporated company in the US.
 
Kyle009 said:
Not saying Booking.com isn't crap but have you a source for this? As far as I can find it's owned by a large Incorporated company in the US.
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There is no source, it's complete rubbish.

Booking.com are a huge tech company, that yes act as an aggregator but are a huge provider in this space (lots of brands people likely dont even know about) - but this comment actually made me chuckle.
 
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From using Booking.com for years I've just recently started using Google maps to find hotels, since it seems to scrape every provider and display the lowest price available. Half of the providers I've never heard of, the last couple I used were Trip.com and Traveleuro, both cheaper than the main providers and cheaper than going direct to the hotel and it's worked fine.
 
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