Booking.com - double-booking

dewart

My family and I booked a villa for this (2023) new year in Tenerife. We were all very excited and looked forward to it all year, at various points throughout the year there was correspondence between us and the vendor, asking various questions about the accommodation. We felt very safe and secure that everything was fine with the booking, even messaging the vendor a week before to arrange where we would pick up the keys etc. And of course the money was paid upfront on booking which we booked in March 2022. We arrived in Tenerife on the 28th of Dec 2022 at around 7pm in the evening and was told by the vendor that there was already a family in the villa and that we didn't have a booking. I contacted booking.com immediately, we were a family party of 5 with a child and a senior in our party we had nowhere to stay, we were distraught. We were all tired and hungry and needed a bed and time to think about a plan B. I can honestly say that booking.com couldn't have been less helpful. We were eventually directed to a nearby hotel. It was a 2-star facility across the road from a swingers club in a not so nice part of the town. The hotel was not expecting us and were not even sure if they could accommodate us, I wrongly assumed that Booking.com contacted them and that they would pay for the hotel...no...no...we had to pay nearly £800 for 1 night stay...I could go into what kind of experience that we had that night but it would take too long....the next day we assumed that Booking.com would pull out all the stops to make sure we were relocated....I couldn't have been more wrong...they totally abandoned us...they quickly cancelled our booking and tried to blame the vendor for the mistake. The vendor was good enough to show us an email from booking.com apologising for the inconvenience and accepting full responsibility for the error...eventually we found a 4-star hotel which was tricky as availability was low and the prices were over-inflated due to the high demand at that time of the year. We made the most of the remainder of our holiday. I have fought with booking.com since I have come back and evenually got most of the money that I outlaid for all of our alternate accommodation. I was still in excess of £300 out of pocket ...I am now trying without any success looking for compensation but I am hitting a brick wall with them. Does anyone have any advice?

Voyager2002

You could contact The Guardian (Consumer Champions) to see if they want to report your experience. I was recently cheated in a similar way and Zoe Wood at the Guardian (<zoe.wood@guardian.co.uk>)(took an interest. Suddenly Booking.com became helpful, possibly because of a press inquiry. 

onashoestring

dewart said:

… I have fought with booking.com since I have come back and evenually got most of the money that I outlaid for all of our alternate accommodation. I was still in excess of £300 out of pocket ...I am now trying without any success looking for compensation but I am hitting a brick wall with them. Does anyone have any advice?

What expences have booking.com repaid you and what is outstanding ?

What compensation do you believe you are entitled to ?  If the expences for the alternative accommodation have been paid by booking.com there won’t be any automatic right to additional “compensation” - they may offer you vouchers as a goodwill gesture .