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Double Bookings

I have been a partner with Booking.com for less than a year. The letting business has gone well and 90% plus of our bookings have come through Booking.com. However, twice now Booking.com has double booked our rooms.

We only have 3 rooms to let in the house we live in. On the first double booking occasion by Booking.com we reported it to them. We got no response at all. In the end my partner and I vacated our own bedroom and slept on the sofa to accommodate the extra booking. Not acceptable.

Recently we had another double booking created by Booking.com. This was our premium room and we have no alternative (and equivalent) room to offer. We requested that one of the bookings be cancelled. Belatedly we were asked to find alternative accommodation for the guest we requested a cancellation for, due to Booking.com's error, which we declined to do. Now Booking.com has said they will seek alternative accommodation for the cancelled guest. In a patronising manner they said that on this occasion they would not charge us commission (on the cancelled booking).

This is totally unacceptable. For goodness sake Booking.com fess up when you get things wrong. Own up to it. Deal with it and do not pass off the responsibility for your failures to your partners. If you want to grow a successful business, stop just going through due process and box ticking and start reacting in an appropriate manner.

Jon Pavitt

Tressa House


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Merylmllr 5 years ago

I am experiencing the double booking thing right now and I'm not sure what to do? I have two double bookings ... please help

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Mika 1 year ago

We have unfortunately the same incredible experience with booking.com. Does anyone has experience by claiming against booking.com?

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Jonpavitt7 5 years ago

I think you just have to push back hard. Appropriate response and process does not appear to be the Booking .com Modus Operandi

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Mika 1 year ago

We have unfortunately the same incredible experience with booking.com. Does anyone has experience by claiming against booking.com?

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Rociram93 5 years ago

No one from booking,com dared to reply to my concern. I have a double booking this coming Dec. 14. The airbnb booking was confirmed very much earlier than here but booking.com still booked the Dec. 14 here in this site, giving me a double-booking on my unit. I have been emailing them regarding this but haven't receive any reply until now.

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Claire Conners 4 years ago

I also have been experiencing double bookings from Booking.com - despite having synced my calendars and manually updating (due to the updates taking approx 24 hours to synchronise).

I have been on Airbnb for about a year - incredibly happy with process, systems and payments. I thought I would expand to Booking.com, but its been disastrous... their system is NOT AIMED at guest houses/BnBs but more the bigger, detached hotel groups and chains.

The first double booking, I reached out to the guest and they cancelled from their side.

The second one, a booking came through on 22 March (for 28 Mar - 2 April). I am aware that sometimes the calendars are not updated for up to 24 hours so need a manual update, but I had had an existing Airbnb booking since 6 March (thats SIXTEEN DAYS). I told the guest there was an error and the place was not available. She was understandably disappointed with Booking.com as she had paid in full, but the guest dealt with Booking.com who she said "cancelled the booking". I then got a rude call from an uppity Booking.com woman saying I needed to relocate the guest. I only have one house available so this was not possible. Booking.com are now charging me 50% of the total booking cost as "relocation cost / complaint cost/ D11" = EUR 700. I find this completely unacceptable. The error was on their side and now I have to pay them EUR700!!???? . SHOCKED at this. This is 20% of my total earnings to date from Booking.com, so its not like its very successful. And this penalty is over and above the 20% commission they already help themselves to.

Emails to their customer service also get no response - just notices of invoices they will deduct off my payout.

Booking.com sort your integration system out - and while you at it improve the mobile app which is clumsy ** with limited functionality. This is not the last you will hear from me - and at this rate, I will be taking my property off this platform.

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Julie Batey 3 years ago

This is 100% exactly correct "This is totally unacceptable. For goodness sake Booking.com fess up when you get things wrong. Own up to it. Deal with it and do not pass off the responsibility for your failures to your partners. If you want to grow a successful business, stop just going through due process and box ticking and start reacting in an appropriate manner." 

We manage dozens of properties, all listed with Booking .com, use Channel Management software and LIVE on our extranet - there is no accounting for the fact that from time-to-time correspondence from Booking .com does not come through, technical errors etc do occur AT BOOKING .COM, their recent invoicing fiasco, which they have apologised for, is proof...

To force relocation costs onto property owners is disgraceful when it is clearly a technical issue. Simply say sorry to YOUR guests, they are YOUR responsibility = give them a full refund so they can book somewhere else, very simple! 

Own up to your mistakes and take responsibility - be a grown up!

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Gerard Murphy 2 years ago

I've had numerous double bookings from Book.com but everytime I contact Booking.com about this they say it's my fault, that I have somehow opened the dates again - why would I do that??? Obviously I didn't do it and the problem is with the Book.com software - there is obviously a bug in their software that allows this to happen. But Booking.com have never put their hand up and said that this is our fault, everytime they say it's my fault. I'm also listed with Airbnb, I've never had a double booking with Airbnb.

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laura fagan 2 years ago

Hi, just seen this post and is interesting that this issue is still going on years later (as I have now had 3 occasions that this has happened to my property) and each time I speak to booking.com I get the same feeble response. I keep requesting help from them to sort their system issues and nothing gets actioned. Constantly arguing about being charged extra fees when the error is with booking.com is painful. The laugh of it all is booking.com were featured on tv within the last few weeks for this very same issue, yet they still did not take ownership. Personally thinking of starting a complaint procedure with the watchdog or trading standards to start making booking.coms life hellish as they have been doing to me (and by looks of it, others too!). 

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Jarratt - Acco… 2 years ago

Hi Laura, 

I'm sorry to hear you've had a bad experience with overbookings. Do you have your calendar live on other sites as well as Booking.com? If a property has more than one live calendar on various platforms, it is worth considering the benefits of a channel manager; below I'm sharing a link to an article on our partner hub that explains the features and benefits in greater detail, should it be of interest: 

 

Choosing the best connectivity provider for you

 

Kind regards, 

Jarratt

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Ciaran Cronin 10 months ago

Hi Jaratt, 

what if the double booking comes from the booking.com system?? This is what has just happened to me. No calendar conflicts from any other source, just on booking.com

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Norman Duffy 2 years ago

I had a double booking.  Not a calendar sync issue.  It was booked twice via the booking.com site. How can that be anyone else's fault.  Sounds like a bug in the booking.com software to me. 

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simon taylor 1 year ago

we are going through multiple double bookings and are sacking booking.com . we have had 4 in 36 hours .  thats not an accident . we never get 4 bookings in 36 hours . i dont think this  is a glitch .

Simon 

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Stephen Collinson 1 year ago

I have had 4 double bookings in a week. Booking.com messaged me to say they would charge me any costs in sorting them out alternative accommodation! 
 

sort it out Booking.com, don’t you care about your customers? 

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Gerard Murphy 1 year ago

I just had a guest book the same cottage TWICE for the same dates on Booking.com - but of course it's my fault!!! 

I don't think there is any point in putting comments on the "Partner Hub" - Booking.com never reply and never do anything to fix the problem. I don't think anyone from Booking.com even reads these comments - how many times have they replied to any of the comments above?

Booking.com don't care about the hosts, they don't assign any resources to answering hosts concerns.

Personally I find Airbnb a much better platform - I never get any double bookings on Airbnb and you also can leave a review about the guest (to warn other hosts about bad guests) - something that Booking.com don't offer. Thankfully most of my guests are now booking through Airbnb.

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John Jones 7 months ago

I have had to deal with five double bookings from Booking.com this year. Three in the last week all booking for a date for which I was ahowing no inventory on my calendar. The first two I was able to ask the guest to cancel because of the error but the last double booking was made too close to check-in to be cancelled. I had to phone Booking.com to explain their error which they did not admit to and now they are trying to relocate the guest telling me that it will be at my expense. I've had it with Booking.com as I just don't need this unnecessary stress. I can understand why they don't take responsibility for they flawed system, it's because it would cost them money and they would rather lose one of their hosts than lose money. Bad business. They need to start to acknowledge their failings and do something about it. Airbnb are much easier to deal with.