Travel Website Booking.com Leaves Hoteliers Thousands of Dollars Out of Pocket (theguardian.com) 42
The Guardian reports:
Travel website Booking.com has left many hotel operators and other partners across the globe thousands of dollars out of pocket for months on end, blaming the lack of payment on a "technical issue". The issue is widespread in Thailand, Indonesia and Europe among hoteliers who are venting their frustrations in Facebook groups as rumours swirl about the cause of the failure to pay.
Usually, if a customer makes a booking for a hotel through the website Booking.com and elects to pay upfront, the site takes the payment and passes it on to the hotel operator, minus a commission. Booking.com's partners have reported issues receiving payments since July, and in some cases months earlier. While Booking.com has continued taking payments from customers, the company has not always passed on the amount owed to hotel operators and others whom the Guardian has spoken to.
The article adds that last month Hungary's consumer watchdog agency "launched a probe into the company's failure to pay hotel operators in the country and raided Booking.com's local office, after local reporting on the issue."
In a statement to the Guardian, Booking.com acknowledged the "frustration" of customers affected by "an ongoing technical issue." They also said "the system errors that affected the payments have now been corrected," and that they had now processed the transactions of "most of" our partners. "We acknowledge that for some this has taken longer than it should have and continue to work urgently to finalise the rest of the transactions...."
In the company's August results, CFO David Goulden said there were "lower than expected" IT expenses in the second quarter of this year, in part due to phasing IT spend into the third quarter, but did not outline what this IT expense included.
Thanks to Alain Williams (Slashdot reader #2,9272) for sharing the article.
The article adds that last month Hungary's consumer watchdog agency "launched a probe into the company's failure to pay hotel operators in the country and raided Booking.com's local office, after local reporting on the issue."
In a statement to the Guardian, Booking.com acknowledged the "frustration" of customers affected by "an ongoing technical issue." They also said "the system errors that affected the payments have now been corrected," and that they had now processed the transactions of "most of" our partners. "We acknowledge that for some this has taken longer than it should have and continue to work urgently to finalise the rest of the transactions...."
In the company's August results, CFO David Goulden said there were "lower than expected" IT expenses in the second quarter of this year, in part due to phasing IT spend into the third quarter, but did not outline what this IT expense included.
Thanks to Alain Williams (Slashdot reader #2,9272) for sharing the article.
Cash Flow Problems? (Score:5, Informative)
Or maybe you'd just like to dip deep in someone else's money?
Use our time tested technique: Blame it on the computer!
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"A computer problem" has become the new "The check is in the mail".
Re: Cash Flow Problems? (Score:1)
Exactly. This really looks like a rob Peter to pay Paul situation. Hotels maybe should only honor booking.com bookings if they don't get someone else booking either directly or via a different booking site and direct any and all complaints to booking.com if their room was booked and actually paid for by someone else. Pissed off customers without a place to stay for the night will be sure to either end the company or fix their mishandling of funds pretty damn quickly.
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"the system errors that affected the payments have now been corrected,"
"We looked into it more deeply and I found that apparently what happened is that he was laid off five years ago and no one ever told him about it; but through some kind of glitch in the payroll department, he still gets a paycheck. So we just went ahead and fixed the glitch. So he won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it'll just work itself out naturally".
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Some countries may require them to have an office in the country to operate. It's the only thing that would make sense.
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Um... (Score:1, Troll)
Does "we spent all the money on hookers and cocaine" count as technical issues?
we got hacked like MGM and caesars! (Score:1)
we got hacked like MGM and caesars!
Re: we got hacked like MGM and caesars! (Score:1)
Booking.com does not people to work remotely (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe cash flow issues have to do with the new building lease?
Booking.com in Amsterdam consolidated about a dozen offices across Amsterdam into a single, large, purposeful building. The article and video is in Dutch [at5.nl], with a written transcript, (that can be pasted into google translate if you want).
Translated, relevant clue:
Booking has signed a lease for 16 years and pays 2 million euros for rent every month.
In related news, for those of you wondering why Facebook would pay 149 m
Re:Booking.com does not people to work remotely (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe cash flow issues have to do with the new building lease?
Why would they, can't you read the Dutch you linked? They sold their building to a German bank and then leased it back for $2million / month with a contract to run for 16 years. Not only would this have been a huge up front cash windfall for them, but over the life of the lease (ending 2040) it works out over $180million total in their favour.
Translate the entire page and read it all next time.
Re:Booking.com does not people to work remotely (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe cash flow issues have to do with the new building lease?
Why would they, can't you read the Dutch you linked? They sold their building to a German bank and then leased it back for $2million / month with a contract to run for 16 years. Not only would this have been a huge up front cash windfall for them, but over the life of the lease (ending 2040) it works out over $180million total in their favour.
Translate the entire page and read it all next time.
You seem to have missed my point completely thegarbz, assuming you also read the subject of my post, (an assumption, I know). The fiscal office trend lately is called Working From Home (WFH). WFH is having a major impact on Office Space values globally, perhaps you've heard about it here on the slashdots. All I'm guilty of is posting an informative article with actual lease prices and terms. That's why Meta broke a London lease recently [slashdot.org], at great cost.
Booking.com management has clearly decided to buck the WFH trend. Their close competitor AirBnB has decided to go the opposite route, and allow all employees to work from anywhere [slashdot.org], extending the pandemic-era policy.
I'm fluent in Dutch and watched the fine video before I posted it here.
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assuming you also read the subject of my post
Yeah about that. Can you write it with all the relevant words? It seems to have accidentally a whole word. Not something I would point out if I were you.
The fiscal office trend lately is called Working From Home (WFH). WFH is having a major impact on Office Space values globally, perhaps you've heard about it here on the slashdots. All I'm guilty of is posting an informative article with actual lease prices and terms. That's why Meta broke a London lease recently [slashdot.org], at great cost.
Indeed it has. Unfortunately this has zero to do with the video you posted or the financial impact that this video shows. You are making one point, but presenting evidence that is attempting to make a completely different point.
So I invite you to clarify what point you are trying to make and why it supports it? Right now:
- the video and story you linked sho
Re:Booking does not want people to work remotely (Score:2)
Booking took themselves from a bad situation, (owning a newly built building that's been in the works since well before the pandemic, large enough for 6000 employees, with 3 in-house restaurants, fitness, etc., which is separate from adjacent public restaurants, fitness facilities, etc.) to a less bad situation, now only being on the hook, (a lease now), for €2mil/annually for 16 years and a strict non-WFH policy. The building is a scenic 5 minute walk from Amsterdam Centraal Station [google.com] by the way. Bookin
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Correction: Booking is now on the hook for €2mil/monthly, (not annually) for 16 years. My bad.
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Real estate financial commitments as a result from lack of a competitive WFH policy, not necessarily aligning with what employees want certainly influence cash flow options.
Again this is not a cashflow decision that has affected them negatively. I get your point about it not being a good decision in a WFH world, but objectively what they did raised their cash on hand and therefore (as per your first sentence on the top post) cashflow issues have nothing to do with the new building lease. You're making a different point to the one you think you're making.
But all of this is begging the question anyway. Booking.com does not have clashflow issues in the first place. Sure that's th
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Here's a recent article in English about the situation:
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2023/... [dutchnews.nl]
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Booking.com contacted me a while back about a job. IIRC they required something like *6 weeks* of on-site onboarding with no accommodations for disability or family.
Booking.com does not want people to work remotely (Score:2)
Assuming you recalled accurately what Booking told you, what Booking said to you is absolutely abominable, because finding a place to live anywhere near Amsterdam is so hard, Amsterdam University has been telling extremely motivated foreign students that if they haven't already procured housing, then to forget about Amsterdam University.
And on top of that egregious fault, housing in The Netherlands tends to have a lot of very steep stairs. As in, it is significantly more difficult to accommodate all disable
Buyer beware (Score:4, Informative)
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Agree. I stopped using booking sites after I ran into multiple problems and started contacting the companies directly. I can usually get the same or lower rates than what Booking.com or Hotwire.com offer.
If you use a booking site you are essentially locking yourself into a non-refundable, non-modifiable contract and paying up front. Do you want to stay one less day and move on to your next destination or go home early? You can't change the pre-paid contract with the booking site. If you deal directly w
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Yep, seen the same thing in LA at the motel in the middle of night. "No, we don't see any record of this reservation!". Booking's hotline gave us "number not known". Spent an hour at the parking lot frantically trying to figure out, what happened to our reservation, until we discovered, that the reservation at booking.com was done through a third party, and suddenly that motel owner (unfriendly as hell) could find our reservation.
It all smelled a bit like "this company smells a bit rotten from the inside".
Mandatory late fees (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mandatory late fees (Score:5, Informative)
In the UK interest and debt recovery [www.gov.uk] is part of law. You do not need to have a clause in your contract to be able to claim this.
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Actually this is common for all common law contracts in nearly all countries. Specific performance from a contract provides courts with the ability to grant penalties for undue costs if a contract wasn't fulfilled.
You don't need a specific law in a country to convince a court that the other party not meeting their contractual obligations has hurt you and demand redress, it's just a fundamental tenant of contract law.
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The UK law makes the late payment interest statutory, you do not need to go to court to be awarded it. Enforcement of the payment is another matter. I have used the threat of this a few times and found it to be an effective way of getting payment earlier that I otherwise would have, sometimes I have received interest & costs.
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For France, for sales between professionals: the minimum values set in the law are: 40 € fee + 6,18% annual interest rate starting the day after the due date, due date being by default 30 days after execution of the service. Source: https://entreprendre.service-p... [service-public.fr]
I don't know how fast booking.com pays. If they usually transfer the money immediately when the sale is made then no late fee will apply as long as the current payment glitch is less than 30 days. If they usually pay at their latest possible
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In the interests of consumer & small business protection, wouldn't it be a good idea to mandate late payment fees to businesses & intermediaries? I'm sure they'd fix their "software issues" that last for several months a lot faster if there were.
The problem is, this is how all travel agents have operated. They hold onto the money until after the season is over, so the hotel eats all the costs until all the customers for that period have been served.
Given the abusive T&Cs that agents (online or otherwise) use, any attempt to claw back the money, no matter how legal and legitimate will result in immediate delisting. Travel agents really are like a legal mafia standing over hoteliers. They make the likes of AirBNB look good.
Smaller hotels ar
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"Technical issues" don't take that long to fix (Score:2)
If the issues really were technical, and it really took that long to fix them, that would be an indicator that their system is in deep, serious trouble. Perhaps they cut so deep into their IT budget, or were so difficult to work for, that anybody worth their salt left for greener pastures. I've built and managed financial transaction systems for years, in the mortgage and healthcare industries, and they just aren't that hard to get right.
My guess is that it's not actually a technical issue.
"Booking.com?" (Score:2)
It's weird how these payment glitches only ever affect outgoing transactions while incoming transactions continue to flow like oil on a frictionless slide.
value (Score:3)
Do sites like booking.com really add any value ? I can google for accommodation in a strange city and most places I'm likely to stay in will accept payment when I check out.
I get it if we're talking niche places like hostels maybe (although even they can be quite well managed). It just seems to me like booking.com squats on other people hard work.
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Book with the hotel whenever possible as you will always get the best deal since the hotel won't be paying their outrageous 15-18% commission on your stay.
It's often not true, at least when booking online.