Will this public case result in flood of people away from booking.com? Probably not.
This is just a simple abuse of power, most easily identified by the question: "What are you going to do about it?"
It seems the play is to tell the world. Congrats to this lady for getting her money/booking back.
There are plenty of full service travel agencies that offer to book guaranteed price reservations in pretty much any locale in most countries. There are some that even offer extra guarantees like a last minute cancellation by the hotel being refunded at double the cost, to ensure you can get a room elsewhere.
Because you live in an attention economy and the probability of using another service is pretty low. We can also develop our own travel agent with LLMs but that's an outlier of the market, and financially negligible. The problem is about power in the economy.
If a dozen different HN users expressed a dozen different preferred ranges… would there now have to be viable competitors at each possible step?
Incompetence at that level feels like malice.
Eugh, I feel dirty defending them.
Priceline, Agoda, Rentalcars.com, Kayak, OpenTable, Rocketmiles, FareHarbor, HotelsCombined, Cheapflights, momondo
I had this on Airbnb.
> Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules.
Let's be real here. Booking.com is not the only side stretching the terms of service to the limit to extract maximum value. This speculative booking and cancellation also drives costs up for other consumers who book reservations with honest intent by pulling a bunch of units off the market. It's hard to blame Booking.com for wanting to stick it to her.
Free cancellation is an upcharge (often a significant one), which she paid for, and made use of.
It would have been easily possible for booking.com and the hotel to offer rooms at two price points and make the conditions clear ahead of time:
- High price (guaranteed room)
- Low price (based on availability, if F1 is that week you'll get the choice between paying an upcharge, cancellation, or moving the booking to another date)
Booking has stood by me before whereas the little seaside hotel barely has a working phone much less a computer with a person that can operate it.
I have no doubt Booking is fully liable here but for the vast majority of interactions they reduce friction.
I once mentioned that while checking in at a family owned hotel, and they said they appreciate that the booking service allowed them to compete with larger chains on that front.
Perhaps if there was some "shopify of accomodation" it would be easier to have a seamless experience. In the meanwhile, the existence of a stable reference point gives the false sense of a trusted travel assistant.
I take advantage of their platform moreso than they me. I book refundable no-pre pay hotels every time, sometimes having multiple bookings for the same week. It's like a free option on future pricing.
Unfortunately, there are some smaller BnBs that only take booking.com
Although, this article reminds me of people on slickdeals complaining that they got caught trying to buy a type-o.
> When Mann booked the accommodations, Formula One organizers hadn't locked in the exact race dates. So she covered her bases — reserving the same four-bedroom unit for two possible weekends in May 2026, both with free cancellation.
> Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules.
I wonder if this changes our perception of things. If you book two dates and then cancel, are you not also part of the problem?
Perhaps if you didn't go for the free cancellation, then it should be a fair two way lock in, if you commit, we'll commit etc. Still not as bad as when Jason Manford finished a show, turned up at the Village Hotel in Bournemouth, and because he checked in late, they'd given his room to someone else.
If the website said "you can cancel for free", why would I consider myself part of the problem?
If the website said "you can book, but we could cancel your booking for any reason, including because we can rent it to someone else for more money", I wouldn't consider the website as part of the problem either.
As it stands, only one of those two things was prominently mentioned on the website.
The company offers cancellable reservations for a fee. She paid the fee. What are you talking about
Every time I have ever seen a cancellable reservation at booking.com I have also noticed that it costs more than the same reservation without cancellation priveleges.
She almost certainly paid for the flexibility.
It does not.
But... I don't think it impacts the main point of the article.
Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules."
And then Booking.com cancelled her booking, in line with Booking.com rules. Shit goes both ways.
But I know nobody would consider the two equivalent, so I must be mistaken. Right?
I had exactly the same case. I had a non cancellable room booked for an event and a week or two before the event it was cancelled and booking tried to claim they were not an agent, they were not part of the contract, that they cared very deeply. Customer support in English cost 1€ per minute and they kept putting me on hold. Eventually I just went to Facebook and asked GPT to start incrementally generating more and more offensive posts direct at their social media account. It's much cheaper than their customer support line and it actually reaches someone who can do something.
With booking.com they’re big enough that making a fuss in the media gets you a $17k room for $4k. I’m taking that deal every single time haha.
And rentalcars.com is a flat-out scam. I had to dispute CC charges with them when I showed up on scene, there were no cars, and rentalcars wouldn't refund it. Always book with the rental company directly.
Every time there's a big event somewhere a bunch of people who booked before the event was publicized get bit by this.
tantalor•57m ago
Sounds like booking.com made a mistake in applying the wrong policy, and is trying to cover up for it instead of admitting their liability.
twoodfin•51m ago
Without that risk you’re not functioning as a broker and shouldn’t be rewarded as one.
jeroenhd•48m ago
The underlying problem, that hotels are capable of canceling bookings so they can ask for extortionate rates when events nearby take place, still remains.
I'm not sure whose fault this is, really. The person buying the reservation knew this deal was too good to be true, the hotel should've fixed their prices if they want to charge 12k extra for a weekend, and booking should probably kick hotels that do this off their website.
Booking.com is an absolute hell site for various reasons, but I'm sure the same conflict would've happened had the room been booked through the hotel's website.