On August 12, 2008, HotelMarketing.com linked to a story (Booking.com Mum On Fraud Claim) from a Website, Officialwire.com. Booking.com wants HotelMarketing.com’s readers to have the real facts.

Booking.com maintains a hotel review and scoring system where potential customers can evaluate satisfaction levels from other customers who have stayed at a particular hotel.  Booking.com takes this review system very seriously and monitors every review and score to insure that it comes from actual customers and not from employees or affiliates of a hotel.

Recently, the Booking.com staff noticed a hotel where the owners and affiliated individuals had booked themselves several times into the property in order to be able to boost the hotel’s review scores. Some of the questionable bookings were using e-mail addresses of officialwire.com. Before the bookings were made, the hotel lowered its rate from 600 to 60 Euro per night.

This activity is a violation of Booking.com’s hotel participation policies.  After further review, the hotel was removed from the Booking.com system.  At no time did Booking.com offer to reinstate the hotel in return for paying commissions that were owed to Booking.com.

Source : Hotelmarketing.com