A guesthouse landlady has told how a popular travel website's errors "decimated" her business. Paula Jones, who runs the historic Great House in Llantwit Major, has been sick with worry over mistakes by Booking.com and even feared bailiffs turning up at her door.
After Booking.com told the 66-year-old her listing would be suspended because she had missed monthly commission payments she provided evidence she had paid the amounts due. The website's staff repeatedly assured her the issue would be resolved yet her guesthouse continued to be suspended and she received automated emails saying her "debt" had been transferred to a collection agency.
Paula spent months trying to show Booking.com it had made mistakes and struggled to sleep at night as bookings dried up and the website failed to fix the problem. Eventually, with her business facing ruin, she told her story to WalesOnline. Five hours after we approached Booking.com for comment the website admitted it had thought the payments from the Great House came from another hotel with the same name. "We deeply apologise for the delay in addressing this issue and for the impact that this has clearly had on the partner and their business," said its spokesman.
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Last September the Guardian reported that technical problems at Booking.com had been leaving hoteliers out of pocket for months. Paula processes payments herself but in many other cases when a customer books a hotel stay through Booking.com the website takes the payment and passes it on to the hotel minus a commission. According to the Guardian the website had in recent months "not always passed on the amount owed to hotel operators".
At the time Booking.com claimed the "system errors" had been fixed but Paula is part of a 3,600-strong Facebook group named "Booking.com is not paying its hosts", which has been flooded with similar complaints. The Booking.com owner, Booking Holdings, made £5.83bn in revenue in the third quarter of 2023.
Paula, a former publican, took on the Great House about five years ago after "running a pub got a bit much" due to her arthritis. She invested all her savings into renting and redecorating the disused Grade II-listed stone house, which dates back to 1480 and Paula says is "not a cheap house to run". She does not expect to make back her initial investment but she says the hotel, which has two guestrooms, was finally "gathering momentum" and making an in-year profit before the Booking.com calamity. "All of a sudden I could feel things changing for the better and then this happens," she said. "It's sickening because I've done nothing wrong. It just makes you think: 'What's the point?'"
Booking.com told Paula – who pays commission of 19% on bookings through the website – that she had failed to pay for the months of June, July, August, and September last year. Paula repeatedly sent proof of the payments, which totalled £2,067, but her business was delisted from the site on November 22. The guesthouse was re-added on December 5 when Paula received an email from Booking.com saying "we have found your payments". But later that day she received an automated email telling her "it has come to our attention that payment is overdue".
On December 22 Paula was shocked to see the guesthouse had again been suspended because of the supposedly missed payments for the same four-month period from June to September. The delisting had a major impact on trade. "In January I had nine bookings, all through word of mouth," she said. "The previous January I had 27 bookings. I've got five for the first two weeks of February compared to 14 for the same period last year."
Paula estimates she called Booking.com 15 times in attempts to resolve the problem. Every call has wasted more than half an hour of her time and some well over an hour. She says staff were "always very sympathetic" but nothing changed and eventually she received an email telling her the "debt" had been transferred to a collection agency, adding more stress.
It was only after WalesOnline intervened that Booking.com corrected its errors. Its spokesman said: "In this specific case we can see that the payments made by the partner to Booking.com were allocated to another provider with the same name in error. We deeply apologise for the delay in addressing this issue and for the impact that this has clearly had on the partner and their business. We have reached out to them directly to offer our full support in getting them back online today and can confirm that we have taken action to immediately stop our collecting agency from pursuing this further."
When Paula heard the news she was "over the moon and bloody furious at the same time". When she asked Booking.com if she could claim compensation for the mistakes that had "decimated" her business she says she got "a very firm no". The guesthouse has won several awards for its hospitality, including from Booking.com, but Paula said she would encourage customers to book stays directly, which can be done by calling 01446 795629.
If you would like to contact us about an issue that should be investigated, email us at conor.gogarty@walesonline.co.uk
