Booking misleading customers with fake discounts, incomplete prices: Consumers Assoc.

Booking.com and Agoda.com, both parts of Booking, continue to mislead consumers with fake discounts, incomplete prices, and fake scarcity, the Consumentenbond said on Monday. The consumers’ association already alerted Booking to these violations in 2020 and the accommodation platform had promised improvement.

Consumentenbond researchers looked at various advertisements on both sites. They found that both booking sites advertise prices without including unavoidable taxes and service charges. “For example, Booking.com advertises a hotel room in New York that costs ‘from €211 per night.’ But that excludes €75 in taxes and fees.”

Both sites also create fake scarcity. For example, Booking.com stated on a random Tuesday that 84 percent of all accommodations in Nunspeet were fully booked. But that’s because the site also included private homes that are not available year-round. Booking.com also said that comparable 4-star hotels were fully booked for that night, but the researchers checked and found rooms available at the only two other 4-star hotels in Nunspeet. And Agoda.com claimed, when booking a room for 2 people, that it was the last room available. But researchers were also able to book at the same place for 10 people on the same night.

“Furthermore, Agoda’s lowest price guarantee appears to have all kinds of conditions attached to it that cannot be found on the site. And ‘free cancellation’ is sometimes not free at all.” Offered discounts also proved incorrect in multiple cases, the consumers’ association said.

“These are deliberate tricks to give consumers the feeling that they have found a good deal and have to decide quickly. They are riled up with lies,” said Sandra Molenaar, director of the Consumentenbond. The consumers’ association has reported Booking’s violations to the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM).