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Problem with false reservations

Hello, I had a suspicious reservation yesterday. 

While the guest County showed up as Samoa, contact number was from Switzerland. This is my first question. how does booking collect user location, from IP addresses?

I contacted the phone number which was given in reservation and they claim they never made the reservation. Is it possible to require phone verification or something, or does booking offer some kind of security in this area.

Unfortunately my Country is not eligible for Credi Card payment yet, so now I`m basically unprotected from this kind of "attack" in the future.

Do you have some suggestions?

 

Thank you,
Dardan

 


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Sales 5 years ago

No, I also have this kind of problem, espesially from Indians who make resrervations and do no show.

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LouiseMHS 5 years ago

I have had many of these however since I opted for the system where Booking.com takes the payment and sends to to me monthly this has not occurred. (Maybe a coincidence though???). I do still get lots of cancellations but they cancel before they incur the Cancellation Fee. If you set an early cancellation fee this may prevent some fake bookings.

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AG Lodging 5 years ago

> how does booking collect user location, from IP addresses?

No. When guests book, they fill the form where they can enter any country and any tel. number. So, you (host) see the data that they filled, regardless of whether it's correct or not.

However, you can set policies to prevent false bookings. Go to Policies -> Guest requirements. Here, you can set that guests must provide verified phone number, at least one previous stay, and home address. Adding these requirements will significantly reduce false bookings.

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Veronica Gonzalez 4 years ago

Of the 14 "reservations" we have received from Booking.com since last December, 10 have been false: Fake names, invalid phone numbers, and weird combinations like a person from India who prefers to speak Russian and gives a U.S. phone number.  I don't understand the motivation for someone to go to all this trouble to make a phony reservation.  I have brought this up with Booking.com and they completely ignore it.  One of their representatives told me that the fact that a client gives an invalid phone number does not mean it is an invalid reservation.  We are in Nicaragua so Booking.com will not take credit card payments.  So we send a message asking the "client" to provide valid info like a real phone number or their flight reservation number.  If they don't, we ignore them. 

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Xirundu Lodge 4 years ago

I just read an interesting comment on another thread about this. It seems that "under the radar" immigrants make bookings on the site with fake or stolen credit cards, so that they can get a booking confirmation to get them into the country.

Booking.com is absolutely shocking at taking any responsibility for hijacking our calendar!