BEWARE of booking.com room capacity fiasco
Recently had a booking for two rooms (total people on ad was 7 ) somebody booked in 9 people . If there was a mishap, the emergency services , authorities would of crucified us. Tried to cancel the booking , booking .com wanted me to pay for there alternative accommodation . After speaking to a english employee of booking. com , who sought advice from his superior , they cancelled the booking. It seems that booking. com allows people to book rooms far above the maximum amount of people allowed , and the owners are treated as being in the wrong. It took me a long time , making two phone calls to booking.com to sought things out, promising to take booking .com to the local authorities, law courts, they then realised that they were about to be taken to the cleaners, and owned up
Our B&B is located in Canada and this would be a huge problem if it were to happen to us.
The logical side is we have no provision for extra beds so would Booking.com expect the guest to sleep on the floor? How is that taking care of your guests? What kind of review would we receive for that?
I also believe there would be an issue with our B&B insurance as it limits how many guest can stay in our B&B. I am sure if there were more than the allowable number it would be reason enough for the insurance not cover a claim as insurance companies will use any policy provision to get out of paying a claim. Then what would do? Would Booking.com be liable?
This just happened to me too. A booker claimed to have been told by booking.com that she would be allowed to book four people into a room with a max occupancy of three, but to check with me first. I never received her message, even though she says she sent it. So, as there’s no record of the conversation in extranet or Pulse, I can’t be sure she is telling the truth. When she phoned me to ask why I didn’t reply to the message I never received, she made me feel guilty at refusing her request for an extra bed and I’ve ended up letting her use a folding bed for the additional child, but I’m not very happy about it as it far exceeds my capacity as a small B&B without staff, not to mention contravening regulations. It worries me that this is happening to others. The whole point about using agencies like booking.com is to make it easier to avoid this kind of direct confrontation with desperate customers.
BOOKING.COM CANNOT BE TRUSTED with handling bookings for our family room. We have blanked out remaining dates for this room. It is not worth the hassle We do not want children under 6 years old. Some parents want their children to be children, showing scant respect for other guests. On this booking.com site you only have a choice of above 2 years. We have said no children, its easier. As you can probably workout, that we are not desperate to fill the place. Most of our guests are returning guests, and we only let booking.com handle a couple of our rooms, its about there limit