No Reviews on Booking.com - Avoid?

Nebbit

We are looking to book a self catering flat for a week in a town in Poland where we have been before. The flat that 'ticks all the boxes' for our family group has one downside - no ratings or reviews. Should this, in itself, be a reason to avoid going there?

eskbanker

Depends on how much importance you attach to reviews!

If you search for the property on other sites, such as Airbnb, Vrbo, etc, as well as generic search engines, you may find other listings with reviews, although care needs to be taken that they apply to rentals from the current owners (who may also have other properties if you search for them too)....

Westin

It could of course be that this is a new listing - but you are right to be cautious.   Booking.com have jumped into this apartment/villa market and some of the controls that should be in place when listings are accepted seem to have been overlooked.  This could leave those booking at risk from unscrupulous ‘owners’ or just scammers who list a random property.

Suggestions:-

- See if it is a management company listing the property and if so research them more.
- Check if the apartment has been listed under another name (sometimes shown under remarks in the listing).
- Use Google Maps or similar to look up and view the address.
- Google the address and apartment name to see if any warnings are out there.
- Use Google Image to reverse search any photos on the listing. See if they have been used elsewhere.
- Only communicate via the booking.com platform. Be wary of contact outside of this or requests directly from the ‘owner’ for payments.

Nebbit

I did the above and found that this address is listed on other sites, but again with no feedback. I also found that  a building company is registered at this address. This seemed fishy so we decided to cancel and book at another address, where reviews are available. Thanks for all the advice

J_B

Our rental apartment in Wales - we have used a local agent for many years.

This year they have subbed out to Booking/Cottages/Airbnb to hopefully reach a wider audience.

As a consequence we now have ONE review - in the details he gave us 10/10 for everything ... so Booking have marked us with 9/10!