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Booking.com cancels $4K hotel reservation, offers same rooms again for $17K
- tantalor 11mo ago> The company says the cancellation was approved under its standard policy permitting properties to void bookings in "rare cases where a property identifies a clear rate error." Following Go Public's questions, Booking.com told Mann it would honour her original booking and cover the price difference — allowing her to keep the same four bedroom unit at no additional cost. Sounds like booking.com made a mistake in applying the wrong policy, and is trying to cover up for it instead of admitting their liability.
- twoodfin 11mo agoRight! This is fundamentally the risk of being a broker: You think you will have X available for $Y, sell it, only to discover that X will cost you $Y + Z. Without that risk you’re not functioning as a broker and shouldn’t be rewarded as one.
- jeroenhd 11mo agoThey're paying out to cut back on the negative the media attention. The underlying problem, that hotels are capable of canceling bookings so they can ask for extortionate rates when events nearby take place, still remains. I'm not sure whose fault this is, really. The person buying the reservation knew this deal was too good to be true, the hotel should've fixed their prices if they want to charge 12k extra for a weekend, and booking should probably kick hotels that do this off their website. Booking.com is an absolute hell site for various reasons, but I'm sure the same conflict would've happened had the room been booked through the hotel's website.
- ArcHound 11mo agoLet's take a look at incentives. Booking.com has an incentive to cancel. The hotel itself has an incentive to cancel. The laws in place don't prevent this, especially when some contractual fine print is involved. Will this public case result in flood of people away from booking.com? Probably not. This is just a simple abuse of power, most easily identified by the question: "What are you going to do about it?" It seems the play is to tell the world. Congrats to this lady for getting her money/booking back.
- wslh 11mo agoThis is why consumer laws should be really hard and executed very fast, it's the balance to big companies and "perfect" markets.
- MichaelZuo 11mo agoWhy? There are plenty of full service travel agencies that offer to book guaranteed price reservations in pretty much any locale in most countries. There are some that even offer extra guarantees like a last minute cancellation by the hotel being refunded at double the cost, to ensure you can get a room elsewhere.
- wslh 11mo ago> Why? Because you live in an attention economy and the probability of using another service is pretty low. We can also develop our own travel agent with LLMs but that's an outlier of the market, and financially negligible. The problem is about power in the economy.
- MichaelZuo 11mo agoThis doesn’t make sense, how is your preferred range of attention expenditure even relevant? If a dozen different HN users expressed a dozen different preferred ranges… would there now have to be viable competitors at each possible step?
- Supermancho 11mo ago> This doesn’t make sense, how is your preferred range of attention expenditure even relevant? This is an ironic statement, insofar as it's myopic. The implication was clearly a monopoly by market availability (convenience), which is not a legal precept, but a sociological one. Comparing rates across all possible locales and vendors is impractical. This is part of what makes Amazon so successful. Sheer momentum.
- HPsquared 11mo agoI wonder what fraction of hotel income comes from peak times like this.
- xnx 11mo agoSpread the word: Never use booking.com (or other online travel agencies)
- netsharc 11mo agoThey're terrible, but according to the article the hotel requested the cancellation, and now booking.com has reinstated the booking and apparently paying the difference... seems like they're "the good side" here (or, paying to avoid the bad publicity). Eugh, I feel dirty defending them.
- mikeocool 11mo agoI wonder if the hotel would be less likely to cancel on a direct booking with the same mistake — when their brand would be more directly on the line.
- goda90 11mo agoYou can find a list of other companies owned by Booking Holdings here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking_Holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking_Holdings Priceline, Agoda, Rentalcars.com, Kayak, OpenTable, Rocketmiles, FareHarbor, HotelsCombined, Cheapflights, momondo
- no_wizard 11mo agoI constantly get recruiter emails from Agoda. Anyone ever work for them? They want to move me to Thailand which doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, considering I’d be asking for an American level salary regardless
- glitchc 11mo agoSince the hotel called her directly to inform her of the pricing error, I don't see that as the booking platform's problem. After all, the hotel is the platform's client. The same thing would have happened if she had booked directly from the hotel.
- r0fl 11mo ago
- philipwhiuk 11mo agoYeah this is common. If they have advance info of an event, they price it up. If you have advance info, they screw you over when they find out. I had this on Airbnb.
- bpodgursky 11mo ago> When Mann booked the accommodations, Formula One organizers hadn't locked in the exact race dates. So she covered her bases — reserving the same four-bedroom unit for two possible weekends in May 2026, both with free cancellation. > Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules. Let's be real here. Booking.com is not the only side stretching the terms of service to the limit to extract maximum value. This speculative booking and cancellation also drives costs up for other consumers who book reservations with honest intent by pulling a bunch of units off the market. It's hard to blame Booking.com for wanting to stick it to her.
- kuschku 11mo agoHow's she stretching the terms of service? Free cancellation is an upcharge (often a significant one), which she paid for, and made use of. It would have been easily possible for booking.com and the hotel to offer rooms at two price points and make the conditions clear ahead of time: - High price (guaranteed room) - Low price (based on availability, if F1 is that week you'll get the choice between paying an upcharge, cancellation, or moving the booking to another date)
- istultus 11mo agoThere's nothing morally wrong with not knowing when you want to take a holiday in advance and acting accordingly to cover your bases. What an interesting sentiment... The only thing wrong with what she did was not to read the fine print and realize that paying for free cancellation meant paying Booking.com to pay on her behalf rather than directly paying the hotel.
- fred_is_fred 11mo agoI know it's not a popular opinion but at this point I think anyone who books through a 3rd party basically gets what they deserve. There are no end to horror stories here and with the modern internet there's no reason to use them. In 2002 it was a different story. It may not have prevented this situation but the 3rd party bookers take a cut from the provider and offer you absolutely nothing in return. Just book direct.
- the_sleaze_ 11mo agoI often get better deals through 3rd parties, and more often than not a better experience. Booking has stood by me before whereas the little seaside hotel barely has a working phone much less a computer with a person that can operate it. I have no doubt Booking is fully liable here but for the vast majority of interactions they reduce friction.
- brk 11mo agoI think it depends on the kinds of places you regularly book at. When I read your first sentence I thought "that is the exact opposite of my experience". Then when I read your second sentence I realize we're probably not using 3rd parties the same way. I primarily book 4 star and up properties, that is just how I prefer to travel. For those kinds of places you'll often get a worse net experience when booking through a 3rd party (I've tried in the past). Upon check-in, it is made clear that your "discounted rate" doesn't qualify you for certain perks (loyalty points, check-in bonus like a free drink, etc.). I'm also not too worried about a name-brand property screwing me over. But for a little "seaside hotel" kind of place, I can see where having a large 3rd party booking agent on your side could be valuable.
- mr_mitm 11mo agoI travel a lot to many different places including small villages. I'd like to take advantage of a rewards program, but the places I travel to often don't have one of the large chains. These booking services allow me to get bonus points. I thinks that's a good reason, besides the superior convenience of having a unified interface. I rarely had any issues with them either. I once mentioned that while checking in at a family owned hotel, and they said they appreciate that the booking service allowed them to compete with larger chains on that front.
- jchip303 11mo ago[dead]
- seydor 11mo agoThe monotonic rise in global demand for tourism for decades remains a mystery to me.
- Macha 11mo agoWorldwide economic growth means more people are able to afford tourism more often, and more access to media and the internet means people are more aware of places and events to travel to
- conradojordan 11mo agoYou gotta love capitalism, such a blessing for humanity...
- glitchc 11mo agoHave you tried the others?
- powerclue 11mo agoI have. Relied more on my common peers but also people came together to tend for one another. Definitely preferred it over capitalism.
- conradojordan 11mo agoChinese socialism seems to be doing fine, wouldn't you agree?
- istultus 11mo agoTrue! Thankfully under Socialism there wouldn't be a Grand Prix in the first place, and the Hotel would be government-run and only house Party members during special events anyway.
- powerclue 11mo agoI think you might be under informed... this is how authoritarian communism has worked, historically. But Socialism covers a massive umbrella of different ideas beyond just authcom ideas. Social democracy, democratic socialism, anarchism, syndicalism, authoritarian single party rule, council communism, etc etc. Socialism also isn't the only system that isn't capitalism either. Capitalism is a relatively recent invention, perhaps 300 years old.
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- hypeatei 11mo ago
- dec0dedab0de 11mo agoI generally search on the aggregate sites, but book directly with the location. Unfortunately, there are some smaller BnBs that only take booking.com Although, this article reminds me of people on slickdeals complaining that they got caught trying to buy a type-o.
- imdsm 11mo agoJust to add to the dynamic for those too busy to read: > When Mann booked the accommodations, Formula One organizers hadn't locked in the exact race dates. So she covered her bases — reserving the same four-bedroom unit for two possible weekends in May 2026, both with free cancellation. > Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules. I wonder if this changes our perception of things. If you book two dates and then cancel, are you not also part of the problem? Perhaps if you didn't go for the free cancellation, then it should be a fair two way lock in, if you commit, we'll commit etc. Still not as bad as when Jason Manford finished a show, turned up at the Village Hotel in Bournemouth, and because he checked in late, they'd given his room to someone else.
- guipsp 11mo agoThe hotel can just not offer free cancelation
- j45 11mo agoThe irony, hotel industry is among the cheapest.
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- stavros 11mo ago> I wonder if this changes our perception of things. If you book two dates and then cancel, are you not also part of the problem? If the website said "you can cancel for free", why would I consider myself part of the problem? If the website said "you can book, but we could cancel your booking for any reason, including because we can rent it to someone else for more money", I wouldn't consider the website as part of the problem either. As it stands, only one of those two things was prominently mentioned on the website.
- 11mo ago
- meindnoch 11mo ago"When Mann booked the accommodations, Formula One organizers hadn't locked in the exact race dates. So she covered her bases — reserving the same four-bedroom unit for two possible weekends in May 2026, both with free cancellation. Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules." And then Booking.com cancelled her booking, in line with Booking.com rules. Shit goes both ways.
- stavros 11mo agoFunny, I've never noticed "we can cancel your booking for absolutely any reason we want" under the "free cancellation" text. It's almost as if one is shown really prominently, and the other hidden under a mountain of text. But I know nobody would consider the two equivalent, so I must be mistaken. Right?
- mx7zysuj4xew 11mo agoIf the booking can be cancelled at any point for any reason then what is even the point of booking to begin with. If the booking isn't fixed untill you showed up on the exact date at the hotel front desk then wouldn't that make making prior bookings moot
- stavros 11mo agoVery much so, and that's why they should pick between "all bookings are final" and "we prominently tell customers we can cancel bookings at our discretion", with nothing in-between.
- dghlsakjg 11mo agoThe rules -- as described in the article -- don't really jive with what you are saying. Booking or the hotel reserve the right to cancel for clear pricing errors with the example cited from their own terms being a $1 room. They do not claim a right of cancellation for arbitrary reasons. It isn't at all clear that this is the same class of error. $4,500 that she paid is the normal price for the room, not a pricing error. Their "error", if it can be considered a pricing error, is that they accepted a booking without factoring in that the dates were possibly an event weekend where they could deviate from their normal pricing. I don't accept the excuse of "it turns out that we can make more money than the standard rate we charged you" as an error, and I don't think any reasonable judge or arbitrator would see it that way either.
- injidup 11mo agoIt's simple. Booking.com will fuck you over and have all sorts of fine print to cover themselves. However I can simply recommend if they do something like cancel a confirmed booking don't bother contacting customer support. Simply get on Facebook and start swearing and causing a huge fuss till they sort it out. They will tell you 100 times that they are very sorry and they would love to help but they just can't and they feel horrible about it all but "the policy" forbids them doing anything that could smell like genuine customer service. Simply raise the temperature of agitation just as this customer did and eventually booking.com will buckle. I had exactly the same case. I had a non cancellable room booked for an event and a week or two before the event it was cancelled and booking tried to claim they were not an agent, they were not part of the contract, that they cared very deeply. Customer support in English cost 1€ per minute and they kept putting me on hold. Eventually I just went to Facebook and asked GPT to start incrementally generating more and more offensive posts direct at their social media account. It's much cheaper than their customer support line and it actually reaches someone who can do something.
- renewiltord 11mo agoI don’t know why everyone is saying you shouldn’t use booking.com. The story is that the person booked two weekends and canceled one. The hotel canceled the other and upcharged. Then booking.com paid the $13k difference? I don’t know. This makes it more likely I’ll use booking.com. If they booked directly with the hotel they would just lose the room. With booking.com they’re big enough that making a fuss in the media gets you a $17k room for $4k. I’m taking that deal every single time haha.
- brk 11mo agoI think the only reason Booking.com paid the difference is because this was becoming a story. To assume that is their standard policy would probably be a bit naive.
- renewiltord 11mo agoYeah but the hotels never do this. If you had booked with the hotel you’d just be out a room. That’s because booking.com has a bigger blast radius. No one cares if the Happy Fun Hotel Toronto does something because the fragmentation means that brand means nothing.
- hudo 11mo agoMy booking.com latest experience: booked big appartment for 4 people. Arrived to destination (Bristol, UK), and apartment already had guests inside. Tried contacting landlord, no reply. Called booking com, they offered acommodation 30km from the city centre, and its already 11pm, no way to get there. Had to pay our own hotels, and we never got money paid to booking. One neighbor of that apartment said they often double book! Seems booking com doesn't care.
- oniony 11mo agoI recently had a hotel try to scam me through the official Booking.com messages. Knew my phone number (they also WhatsApp'd me), me booking dates and email address (got more attempts via email). Spoke at length with Booking.com and, despite using them virtually weekly for fifteen years, they did not give a crap and then stopped responding to my emails. All I wanted them to do is get the hotel to refund my booking about two weeks before the date as I no longer felt comfortable staying somewhere that would leak my details. I will not use them again, just like I do not use Travelodge any more since they repeatedly double-booked my rooms. I feel like, eventually, I'm going to run out of brokers to use. Perhaps I just need to book direct with a handful of hotels.
- anonzzzies 11mo agoThis happens more often and especially late at night you really don't want shit like this, so indeed, I will not use booking.com. When I had this with other services, they just fixed it, at their expense, booking doesn't even fake that they care at all.
- stickfigure 11mo agoI have found that it's always better to book directly with hotels. The price is the same or better, but more importantly, it's waaaay easier to make changes or cancellations without the middleman. And rentalcars.com is a flat-out scam. I had to dispute CC charges with them when I showed up on scene, there were no cars, and rentalcars wouldn't refund it. Always book with the rental company directly.
- crazygringo 11mo agoDefinitely not my experience -- I find the price is usually better with aggregators. The hotels sell rooms full-price on their site, and only release cheaper prices to budget aggregators. Often times the cheapest hotel deals are only available as part of a flight+hotel package where the cheaper price never gets revealed at all, because they never reveal which actual proportion of your package goes to the airline and to the hotel (hint: it's usually the hotel that gives the discount, even if the package is advertising a "$0 flight"). You're right about it being easier to change/cancel, for sure. But it's not also cheaper -- it's the opposite. You're generally paying more for that. This is why when you travel for business and plans change and someone else is paying, book direct. Whereas when you're traveling for fun but on a budget with fixed dates you know won't change, use a budget aggregator.
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- potato3732842 11mo agoThis is how the hotel industry works. This isn't just a booking or expedia thing. If the hotel knows they're gonna sell the house they'll shit-can "cheap" reservations that were made a long time ago. Even if Booking.com or whatever middleman online travel agency you're using doesn't facilitate this, the hotel itself will do it. Every time there's a big event somewhere a bunch of people who booked before the event was publicized get bit by this.
- drra 11mo agoTravel industry especially OTA behemoths like booking or expedia live by exploiting all possible quirks of the systems. For example they could snap super cheap airline promo fares but manipulate it to keep it in an open state for months similarly to how agents wait till the payment clears. Would be than sold with massive profit or abandoned close to flight date without any penalties. Apparently they rotted enough for start blatantly cancelling hotel bookings.
- jwr 11mo agoI've been making reservations recently and I think there is a huge imbalance in power. All bookings in popular places or on popular dates are NON REFUNDABLE. As in "click and you will never see any of this money again" non-refundable. Very non-refundable. If I have to cancel, I lose all my money. At the same time, hotels can cancel for little or no cost. They do not lose money. I don't know what the right solution is, but I have a feeling this should be regulated at least a little bit (EU, take notice): I'd say totally non-refundable bookings should not exist. You should always be able to get at least some of your money back before the date the service starts. And if the other side cancels, they should pay a penalty, at least the same as the penalty I have to incur, possibly more to prevent schemes like the one described above.
- r0fl 11mo agoThis is simply not true. Most hotels have refundable rates if you pay a bit more. Show me 3 hotels that have non refundable dates.
- Zigurd 11mo agoWe had the beginnings of a solution: The [Edit]CFPB. Oh well. If it makes you feel better we're building the libertarian paradise.
- averysmallbird 11mo agothink you mean the FTC.
- ryaniscool 11mo agoThe price search is great, booking not so much. I've been burned twice on bookings and I think I've used it four or five times. It's sad and ridiculous. By burned, I mean not getting the room I paid for. At this point, I'll use it to search then just go to the hotel site directly to book.
- bigums 11mo agoJust recently had an issues with Booking.com. I made hotel and rental reservations through them for an event I went to. My car rental was for 11:00am, but my flight was delayed and I got to the car rental (Sixt) at 7:00pm. Sixt gave my car away and were sold out. Because I went through a third party, their policy is to reserve the car for an hour past the reserved time. Mind you, I prepaid for the car in full. I contacted Booking, and they said I had to wait until after the reservation return date to open a ticket for a refund. I did that, then they said I waited too long and they couldn’t confirm that my car was unavailable. I tried to escalate, they said our decision is final and the ticket is closed. They haven’t responded since.
- edarchis 11mo agoGood to know, you're not the first I hear complaining about this. I'm pretty sure that if you tell them that you're initiating a chargeback, it'll magically resolve itself.
- holoduke 11mo agoI vowed to never book at booking. They use dark patterns and are therefore a parasite. I really wish them to go bankrupt with all the responsible ones going too. I really don't understand they we as a so called caring society accept behavior of these kind of companies.
- chasd00 11mo agoMy ultimate trump card for all these reservation systems is my wife. She understands every single aspect of every single reservation system and rewards program that I almost feel like we’re ripping off airlines, hotels, car rental etc every time we travel.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 11mo agoCould you give sone examples? Like in this case, would she be able to keep her reservations,or a big refund?
- saaaaaam 11mo agoI once booked what I thought was a hotel room via Booking.com but when I arrived it was a “serviced apartment” in a residential complex - so an Airbnb basically. But the way it was presented on the platform made it really difficult to tell it wasn’t a hotel. Only problem was when I arrived there was already someone in it and they weren’t leaving. At first Booking.com told me it was my problem and they would refund me and I could book somewhere else. But to get the refund I needed to prove that I couldn’t get in (how? They weren’t clear) and then book somewhere else and then send them all the details and they would “consider my request”. I wasn’t doing that. No chance. And apart from anything else there were no hotel rooms available because there was a big conference going on. The nearest available rooms were about 30 miles away. In the end - after an hour or so on the phone with an escalating series of people one of them (I think to get rid of me) stupidly said “if we could find ANY hotel room in town we would book it for you like a shot - but there are none”. “Ah ha!” I said. “There is a hotel room - but it’s a suite in the Hyatt Regency - and it’s £2100 for the night. I bet you won’t book that!” Amazingly, they did. The suite was larger than my flat. And a complete waste because I only needed it for that night and was checking out at 6am. Though it did include a bar and restaurant credit worth nearly as much as the original “room” I’d booked. They are a completely chaotic company. And after that I never used them again.
- matwood 11mo agoYeah, I either go directly to a hotel's website (using Google Maps to find it) or to AirBNB if I'm looking for an apt because of a bad experience with booking.com.
- saaaaaam 11mo agoFor this one the owner had actually added it to google maps as “Garden View Hotel” or whatever it was called. It was very confusing because I got dropped by a cab and then spent around 20 minutes trying to find the “hotel”. It was only when I double checked the confirmation email that I saw that to “access reception” I needed to “enter 87 on the intercom buzzer”.
- 11mo ago
- m4tthumphrey 11mo agoJesus Christ, this hit a little too close to home. I had booked a similar price hotel for a period of time during the World Cup next in Vancouver in June; 11 nights in total. I had only reserved it (via Booking.com) until today when I paid the balance. I have been worried about this happening to me ever since I booked it. The price I got was VERY good (considering the event).
- MajorArana 11mo agoThis was not a 'glitch'. A well functioning marketplace will have step-changes in 'fair value' when there are step-changes in the underlying fundamentals (i.e. 'uncertainty' becomes 'certainty'). Don't blame the woman. Booking.com has a free cancelation policy. In the financial markets, options cost money. There is an intrinsic underlying value. In this case, the woman was given a free option and she took it. She did the smart thing. Don't blame the hotel. Booking.com also offers a similar policy to the room providers - if the rate is clearly in error, they can cancel. The hotel likely operated in the same manner as the woman (i.e. they said "hey there's no penalty for requesting a refund... lets try it and see if we get away with it" or more sinister "hey Booking.com uses an automated system for these requests and any price discrepancy >50% is auto-approved by the system!"). While this feels adversarial, the hotel also did 'the smart thing' (... something about the "fiduciary duty to maximize value for the shareholders" ...) The issue: Booking.com approved the hotel's cancellation request for a room with a rate that was (likely) correct at the time it was booked. (Given the well established dynamics around market pricing around events) The policies of Booking.com led to this mess - ultimately Booking.com did the right thing by upholding the reservation and covering the difference.
- anonymousiam 11mo agoNot sure if they're still doing it, but American Express once had an "Assured Reservation Program", which I've used. It locks in your reservation and price, and Amex will go to bat for you if a hotel tries to pull a fast one like this. I've only leveraged it once, where a (Westin) resort hotel told me my room was not available when I arrived to check in. After I called Amex, The hotel ended up giving me a penthouse suite for the same price. "The Assured Reservation Program allows Cardmembers to contact a participating property or rental agency to make an Assured Reservation and guarantee the reservation by giving their American Express Card. The Assured Reservation Program is available to the following industries: hotel, trailer park/campground, vehicle, aircraft, bicycle, boat, equipment, motor home, and motorcycle rentals." https://www.americanexpress.com/content/dam/amex/us/merchant/merchant-channel/US_RefGuide_October_2018-Final.pdf https://www.americanexpress.com/content/dam/amex/us/merchant...
- twoodfin 11mo ago“Solving the Seinfeld Chinese restaurant problem”-aaS!
- aeze 11mo agoA few years ago I booked a hotel suite through Booking.com for a convention, about six months in advance and for a group of friends. About an hour before I checked in I got a message from Booking.com saying my reservation had been canceled. I called them and they said the hotel had canceled the reservation. They attempted to find another hotel upon request but there wasn’t one that would fit our group within 45 minutes of the convention center (the original was a block away). Without many options, I showed up to the hotel to attempt to check in anyway. They told me Booking.com had canceled it several weeks prior. I denied any knowledge of the reservation being canceled and we got our room with little issue. I’m not sure what was going on, but I’ve never used them since.
- ndjeosibfb 11mo agoalways book directly with the hotel