Booking.com hit by fraud claims

Image via WikipediaAmsterdam – Allegations of fraud have been levied against Priceline.com’s European hotel reservation system-Booking.com-but the company has refused to comment for this article.Having received no reply from the company’s Amsterdam headquarters, OfficialWire sought a statement from the company’s US-based spokesperson, Brian Ek, but he wrote in an email: “I have no comment.”

Shares of Priceline.com, Inc. fell more than 17 percent on Wednesday, a day after the company suggested bookings growth could slow. Shares of the online travel agency tumbled 17.1 percent, or $20.03, to $97.17 on NASDAQ.

This story begins five days ago, when Yiorgos (George) Yiannios, an employee of Booking.com, claimed that a number of reservations made through the Booking.com system were “fraudulent” and that he believed that the hotelier had made the reservations to advance its guest reviews. Without waiting for a reply from the hotelier, George deleted the hotel from Booking.com.

According to an email written by Yiannios, the basis of his claim was that several groups of reservations were made from the same IP address.

Booking.com charges hotels a commission for using its website. That commission ranges from 15-to-50 percent and they use a “preferred hotel” scheme that implies that Booking.com has vetted or even approved the hotel, when in reality the basis of the charge relates to the hotel’s position on the results page. In other words, pay more and be listed higher in the results.

In this case, despite believing that the reservations were “fraudulent” (to use Yiannios’ word), Booking.com charged the hotel the full commission and demanded payment of these ‘fraudulent commissions’ before they would restore the hotel’s access to Booking.com.

In the days that followed, the hotelier was coerced into paying several thousand Euros in commissions owed (but not currently due) on the promise that Booking.com would restore the hotel’s access to the system.

Then, after paying the money, Yiannios refused to reinstate the hotel’s access.

OfficialWire wrote to Brian Ek and the exchange went like this:

OfficialWire [11:33am] – Brian, Perhaps you can help me with this. Sir, I have been tasked with the job of following up on some loose ends regarding a story we are working on, relating to allegations of fraud, by your company, in connection with the dealings of client reviews, hotels, etc. and to that end, I am attempting to obtain a contact so that I can get answers to my questions. Please reply with your contact’s name and telephone number and email address so I can present the specific questions for reply.

Brian Ek [11:38am] – I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Get entire story on – OfficialWire.com

Share

FREE  for 30 days

 Email This  Print This