A Brit looking forward to a once in a lifetime trip to Thailand was left more than £7,000 out of pocket when he arrived and found his hotel did not exist.
Glen Parke, 30,paid £282 for a 59-night stay at Lek Lek Residence, advertised on Booking.com as a "one-bedroom house". When he arrived, he found only a small roadside shop and no sign of his accommodation, forcing him to spend an additional £3,044 on alternative lodgings booked online. But when he arrived at this second hotel it was fully booked, forcing him to spend another £3,579 on a third hotel.
Glen, a construction worker, from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, told Manchester Evening News: "I got off the plane in Thailand and followed the map to where the hotel should be and it was just a small market stall - it just didn't exist. I told Booking.com it didn't exist. For the whole trip I expected to spend two or three grand but within the first two nights I'm spending £7,000. I was trying and trying to get my money back for months.
“The first couple of days I wanted to go home. I'd had enough. Getting the money back from the invoice for the third hotel was a real palaver. I'd been on the phone with Booking.com all week and had been told there was no complaints department. They told me to send a bank statement with the payment for the hotel and told me to call them back and they'd refund me on the phone. I did that and called them back and they said they couldn't do anything with it and they don't know who authorised that decision. The trip was good other than the fact I was thousands of pounds down than what I expected to be."
Glen's hotel turned out to be a market stall (Google / SWNS)
The tourist was planning on spending nearly two months in the country (Google / SWNS)Glen touched down in Koh Samui on January 1, 2024 and had booked his £282 hotel a year in advance. He was offered another hotel in and around his £300 price range but on the island of Koh Phangan - a 50-minute boat journey away- so he refused. Instead, the online travel agency allowed Glen to sort his own room up to a price of £3,196.89, as per an email from the company. Glen eventually found his third and final hotel - also authorised by Booking.com up to a price of £3,196.89 - where he spent the remainder of his 57 days in Thailand. He found a hotel for £3,579 and decided to cover the £382.11 difference.
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However, Glen was left out of pocket and said he wasn't refunded for the final hotel until Booking.com were approached for comment. He said: "They told me to send them an invoice and they'd pay it, but then they moved the goalposts about. Booking.com kept asking for changes to be made on the invoice before they could pay out.
"The hotel was booked through my brother and Booking.com knew this. This initial problem with the invoice was 'no balance shown', then it needed a price break down, then it needed to show the number of guests, then it became an issue about it being in my name, then they promised to solve it if I sent a statement that correlated with the invoice, so I did.
"So I got a friend in Thailand to keep going to the hotel to ask them to change the invoice to send it to Booking.com but every time I did they would say it's not right. All of these different stipulations mentioned separately. Basically I can see the issue with it being in a different name which is why I confirmed with them so many times. I was struggling for money. I really needed that three grand back sooner."
A spokesperson for Booking.com said: "We're sorry to hear of the issues this customer encountered with his recent reservations. Having investigated, we can see we did not handle the refund of the alternative accommodation booked as swiftly as we would have liked. As this is clearly not the sort of experience we want for anyone using our site, we have refunded the customer in full and apologise for the inconvenience. Ensuring our platform is safe, secure and trustworthy for our customers and partners is our top priority, and every week, we facilitate millions of stays with the vast majority taking place with absolutely no problems.
"We are constantly optimising the robust security measures we have in place to protect them, and take the process of verifying accommodation listings extremely seriously, including checks performed by our security, local partner services and customer service teams and issues with accommodations occur very rarely."
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