I’m a long-time customer of Booking.com (possibly several hundred reservations over the past decade) and have rarely, possibly never had a complaint about their services. Last week while traveling in Belgium, I checked into a hotel and the room was completely unacceptable (first time in 26 years of European travel). I wanted to cancel and find another hotel. I pulled out my smartphone and tried to reach the customer service department at Booking.com and could not, for the life of me find a phone number (nor a live chat option) for live customer service.
Now the good news: the receptionist/manager was a local hero! She contacted Booking.com via a phone number for hotels and assisted me with a full cancellation AND she called the nearby Ibis Hotel and reserved a room for me. Wow! Talk about great customer service … But, as a frequent and “independent traveler” I rely heavily on travel partners and travel tools; it’s unnerving not to be able to get help when “things” start to go wrong. Today, at home and on my laptop I dug into the Booking.com website found a link to message customer service; they emailed me back an international 24/7 number: +44 20 3320 2600.
What’s been your experience with Booking.com or other travel sites (Expedia, Hotels.com, etc.)? Suggestions?
Posted by
Paris
9617 posts
Wow -- that is incredible that the clerk where you were cancelling went to such lengths to help you cancel !
Interesting and a bit alarming that Booking doesn't facilitate contacting them when you need to do so quickly.
Posted by
906 posts
Thank you. I've entered the number in a file and in my phone.
Posted by
Austin, TX
1938 posts
I have used booking.com several times. and am at Genius I level. There have been a few times that I had to phone customer service about something but this was when I was still home. It has been a long time but it seems that I had some difficulty. getting through to booking.com. However I was always eventually able to get through and resolve my problems I can not remember all the details but I would hate to be having a problem while traveling and needing to call booking.com.
I have somewhere read of travelers having a reservation at a hotel, showing up and the hotel has no reservation. I have read of this happening to more than one traveler. I do not remember if it was through booking.com or not but I alway confirm my reservation before leaving home.
So the manager of the hotel that you found unacceptable helped you get a room at another hotel. Why did the manager not just help get you a more acceptable room in the first hotel or was the hotel just unacceptable?
Posted by
Chicago
7879 posts
What were you expecting booking.com to do? My first instinct would be to complain direct to the hotel that pays booking.com for the listing where customers can post reviews. The hotel manager is not a local hero; that person does not want a bad review on booking.com that would hurt business when they know they screwed up; that is the only reason they helped you. Booking.com doesn't own the hotels that screw up. They are just an aggregator one stop shop.
Posted by
CA
2076 posts
I haven’t had any issue reaching Booking over the years. I had issues three times. One was at a hotel without airport shuttle. I called booking and they booked me into another hotel. Once with no reservation at a hotel that I booked months before. The hotel called booking and fixed the issue. The other time I booked the wrong dates. I called booking right away to get the room dates changed or cx. I never pay in advance but had to because of where we were going. Again, Booking got the job done.