And Lady Justice’s hammer struck (again) the other day. Booking.com is a travel company, not an IT company. I don’t know which argument was decisive with the judge, but I think he tried to fix a hotel himself. Deal Because suppose you are planning a room around a large event. Adèle in Munich or the Venice Carnival. I did that myself last year around a World Cup rugby match in Lille and for later this year for a women’s water polo match at the Olympic Games in Paris. I searched and found a place to sleep just above market (in normal times), but during mega-events a good deal. Two nights 300 euros. And the same thing happened twice. A few weeks after the booking, it was cancelled. I called, because I thought it was strange that the room was back online for about 800 euros. And sure enough: Booking.com reverted it and would reprimand the owner for not doing it again. A little over a month later, the booking was cancelled again. Anyway, customer service. ‘Yes, excuse me, we contacted the owner and he forgot to pass on a previous booking and that takes precedence’. I stammered that I found it strange that a tech multinational with more than 15,000 employees doesn’t have all of that online in real-time. But it was really the owner’s fault. I also said that I understood that you can charge extortionate prices during the Games, but if for some reason you didn’t do that (it was about two nights) you have to be man enough to respect that booking. A deal is a deal, right? Well, not at Booking.com. Fallacies, lies and so on. In the end, I was fobbed off with a proposal for a similar place to sleep and you get the price difference back. Oh, wait: up to a maximum of 25 euros. My only choice was an hour outside the city and was many hundreds of euros more expensive than the nice apartment near the Bastille. Travel agent? I honestly don’t know if Booking.com’s a travel agent, because then they don’t make much of it. What I do know is that it’s definitely not an IT company. If you can’t even technically handle the raison d’être of your online business. Or they have to change their name. ‘Book now on www.maybebooking.com and you might have a room!’ Because it’s really not that difficult technically! I now book a different IP address every week in the same apartment near the Bastille in Paris, which I cancel the day before departure.
