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Google My Business Listing and Booking.com Directing Guests to Our Competitor

Dear Partners.  

I want to express my deep concerns about a situation We have been having with Booking.com and our hotels property listing on Google My Business and Google Maps.  For more than a week when you search our property pension santa elena in Monteverde, Costa Rica.

https://www.google.com/search?q=pension+santa+elena&oq=pens&aqs=chrome.3.69i60l3j69i59j69i57j69i65.2127j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

WHEN you click our Booking.com hyperlink on our business listing OUR clients are being directed to our competitors booking.com page. I have tried everything to get this resolved. Even closinging our property. The problem persists. This has been a nightmare and is costing our hotel reservations. 

I don't know what to do???? I am hoping that Property owners will help us push this issue into the right hands. Yesterday - We had a guest that was sure they made a reservation with us.  Please help us?


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Ranbsmith 5 years ago

A quick update. I have been told that Booking.com will not be able to resolve this issue for another 7-10 business days. It has already been 7 days before they escalated the issue.

At the moment if you search our hotel on google our booking.com hyperlink directs our clients to our competitors booking page. Booking.com says that it is Google - Googel says it's Booking.com.

We are a prisoners. No one will help

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Leandri Klopper 5 years ago

Hi there,

It's been 3 days since you posted the update. Any news?

If BDC advised they are looking into it and it'll take about a week, then they are sure to resolve it eventually.

Perhaps the competitor has a Booster with Google, which they pay for. But if the link is suppose to go directly to your property, I'd say that it has to be sorted out directly.

Best of luck

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Bnb 4 years ago

I now have a similar situation here in the UK. I was called by an asian sounding guy claiming to be from google who requested I verify the property. I told him I didn't want it advertised this way at all.

The Advert showed both my telephone number and full address.

I had already received requests from people for the room directly on my phone and at the time had not realised how they got my number. One guy turned up and said he wanted to stay a week but didn't have the cash with him. Exactly what I never wanted and why I use agencies like BDC and AirBnB.

Anyway the google guy said in order to remove the listing I needed to verify it first which I tried but you cannot remove entirely. All you get is a large red banner saying permanently closed. It is googles way of blackmailing you into staying.

Because I never requested to be a member of goolge my business I called BDC and they appeared to know nothing. Who knows? Anyway they have tol me it may take a couple of days (15/04/2019) for them to get google to take the advert down. So it would seem it was BDC in the first place who instigated this thing.

What I did find out was, that it is possible to blank out the address.

You cannot remove all telephone numbers but I found you can replace them. So I put in BDC's help line.

Also I have been adding images to the ones from BDC with slogans such as Google Sucks. Also Added text to show people the advert is illegel.

In addition it is possible to change the location so I have moved from Weymouth to the Outer Hebrides.

I am still waiting for an acceptable answer but will be reporting the situation to the ICO for what I consider is a breach of the GDPR rules and could carry a huge fine.

-Paul-

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Themis Dimitriou 4 years ago

Hello guys,

I have recently joined booking.com and i have found out a couple of weeks ago that i have been added at google my bussiness  service without my applying for it. So i contacted google and they said that the listing is there because they are partnered with booking.com and they automaticaly create new listing for all new listings of booking but i could claim ownership. Anyway i did verify the property by google and now i come to find out that booking.com does not support the direct website service to my country so what ever dates you search it comes out with no results.