Open letter to the Booking.com CEO

8 min readJun 24, 2019

Hi Gillian,

Trust, transparency, honest traveller reviews are cornerstones of any great travel/booking platform. My family and the families of my friends planned our travel to Turkey between 6th June to 16th June and we used Booking.com for the first time to plan our international trip. For a specific booking, we had a negative experience both from the property owner and booking.com. We are taking a leap of faith and highlighting our concerns here hoping that you will lend us an ear.

Property owner double charged us, changed our property, made false promises and refused to address any of our concerns. What is more, they successfully locked us out of booking.com from posting a review by doing a no-show. Neither booking.com has been able to resolve the discrepancy nor they have made any successful attempts of doing so.

Property under discussion is Ipek Konak Suites, Istanbul and Ipek Ottoman Suites, Istanbul, both operated by the same management.

URLs on various platforms:

Ipek Konak Suites: Booking, Google

Ipek Ottoman Suites: Booking, Google

What happened?

We booked Ipek Konak property between 6th June to 9th June. 48 hours before the scheduled booking we were informed that due to some maintenance work (the same reason has been provided to many travellers as you will see in several reviews below) the booking has been cancelled and we have been shifted to an alternate property which will offer the same facilities, Ipek Ottoman. We tried to work with our contact person and agreed to adjust our stay to a new place. We were promised those same facilities will be provided in the new location. Upon arrival, we found huge gaps in the promises made to us. I’ll spare the details but I am happy to elaborate if needed.

Following are the various issues that we wish to highlight, mostly pertaining to booking.com’s setup, support and responsiveness to the situation:

#1 — The credibility of Booking.com reviews?

A genuine review is key to trust and transparency for any traveller before selecting a place to stay. All big travel aggregators including booking.com ensure the same. But, it seems, the system might have loopholes that are allowing the property owner to prevent negative reviews from making it to the platform.

In our case, the property owner marked us “NO SHOW” on booking.com. He also informed Booking.com that the management has intimated me/my friends through email on June 9 for our “NO SHOW”. This means — we can not put in any review for this one. However, we did not receive an email from the property owner and booking.com did not confirm the no-show with the travellers before locking them out of the booking.

It made us wonder if the property listed is truly okay on other platforms? Upon evaluation of Google and Airbnb, we saw a lot of problems faced by other travellers for the same properties as well. It made us realise we should always check other platforms before making a booking. Does that mean that we cannot trust booking.com reviews?

#2 — Safety of financial information with booking.com

While making the reservation with booking.com we assumed that just like any other travel platforms, the payments will be managed by booking.com and failed to read the fine print that the credit card information will be shared with the merchant (Ipek management).

We became aware of the issue when a double charge was issued on the card for the same property for a complete stay on April 20 and April 29 respectively. It took booking.com more than 48 hours to respond to the urgent issue. You can understand that closer to travel getting a large amount of money on the card can throw the whole trip haywire. The amount was eventually refunded back but after rigorous follow up, and close to 30 calendar days delay. When we asked booking.com support about how to stop the misuse of the credit card in the future the support staff suggested that the best way is to cancel the card and get it renewed! This is another unacceptable approach when we are close to our travel dates. As a consumer, it is an unacceptable solution to renew the card after every transaction to prevent misuse!

#3 — Who has the ownership of a reservation?

For the same booking, since the amount was processed directly by the property owner, we realize that booking.com has very limited power in the matter. Perhaps close to none as it was demonstrated while handling our service request and also confirmed by their support staff. This made us think who is taking responsibility for our reservation? This is almost equivalent to making a payment to an unknown person in a different country with no control in own hands. It made us wonder if there is any value to using booking.com services.

The most ridiculous aspect is that despite confirmed bookings, there is no guarantee about the bookings done via booking.com. We realised that booking.com was left to take acknowledgement from the property owner, once they deducted the money. They did not have any method to authenticate if as a consumer we actually paid or not. As a consumer — we are left at the mercy of the property and booking.com does not even have the authority to mediate. We would have instead happily paid a service charge for the peace of mind.

#4 — Biased and unequal treatment

With this incident, we realised the following power in the hands of the property owners:

Debiting payment from the consumer
Marking the reservation on booking.com as “No Show”.
Can provide comments to booking.com without proof, that they had intimated via email to the consumer that they never came
Allowing them to communicate outside booking.com platform — due to which, there are scattered proof for any incident — which is very hard to collate
Voiding the consumer’s right to provide a review, if property marked us as “No Show”.

The whole platform seems to only empower property owners. Travellers, on the other hand, are responded to with the following dry message from Booking.com support.

We would like to remind you that Booking.com does not act as principal in regards to providing this reservation, nor do we act as a travel agent. Therefore Booking.com never issues any charges to any of our guests for any reservation, modification or cancellation. As a result, Booking.com does not accept any liability for the acts or omissions of the hotels that advertise via our site.

Our belief that platforms like Airbnb that allow equal empowerment to property owners and travellers are a more prudent choice under any circumstances.

#5 — Lack of intimation from Booking.com

Typically, every big platform has its applications, so does booking.com. It is generally expected from every application to send a push notification, especially around reservation (as it is booking platform).

Based on this incident, it was expected that Booking.com would have at least sent out a notification to the travellers (us), that ‘you did not show up at the property — all okay?’. Instead, they trusted the property owner’s claim about consumer intimation. Again the consumer confidence is taking a back seat.

#6 — Helpless and ineffective support team

During our multiple interactions, the support came off as ill-equipped and helpless mostly. They were confused about the second charge refund as a full refund of the booking amount. They constantly defended property owners when we asked how come no one confirmed from us about a “No Show”. Felt no obligation to check if our version was correct and if we indeed travel. Insisted that post-travel customer support is not possible. Did not empathize that for travellers travelling internationally it is not possible to spend the trip talking over the phone instead of dealing with the situation and seeking support at the end.

All of that has left a sour taste in our mouth and we really doubt if we will ever trust booking.com to make any of our future bookings. Additionally for all the helplessness displayed by the booking.com staff, what we are not convinced about is that why we are still not allowed to post a review for the site, which is primarily our ask and completely under booking.com’s control?

We had a great trip in a beautiful country and one thing we learned is that Turkish people are friendly, helpful and go out of their way to help visitors. We don’t want to label our trip with one negative experience. Yet at the same time, we want to ensure that we fore-warn other travellers from our experiences. We are not worried about money here, we are not looking for a compensation or refund. Our hope and aspiration are rather simple. We stayed at a property, we paid at full price, we deserve a chance to post a review of the property that can serve as a warning and we believe that Booking.com should strive to make this possible. For, a platform built for travellers and used by travellers, it should be possible to share honest reviews and feedback. Gillian, my friends and I hope that you will lend us the opportunity that is rightfully ours.

Always wishing you and Booking.com the best

Priyank, Radina, Yatesh, Megha, Aman, and Kirti

Reviews attachments

Various reviews picked for the Ipek Konak property from Airbnb, Google reviews and Booking.com. A trend can be noticed that we were not the first set of travellers who were misled and there is a pattern here. It can also be seen that in the first review below, Ipek management has tried to emphasize that Frank did not stay at the property even though they were clearly moved. Something that they have started doing by locking out travellers from Booking.com using a No-Show.