Fraud allegations have been placed by Booking.com, the hotel reservation system by Priceline for Europe. However, the Booking website doesn’t want to make any comments on the issue. The problem began when George Yiannios, one of Booking.com’s employees, claimed that numerous reservations that were made via the online travel company’s website were phony, and he believed that the hotelier was making reservations in order to advance their guest reviews. He deleted that hotel from the Booking website without waiting for the hotelier to reply. According to one of Yiannois’s e-mails, his claim was based on the fact that numerous groups of reservations had been made for that hotel with the same IP address.

The company charges hotels with a commission for the use of their website. The commission can range from 15 percent to 50 percent. They use a scheme for preferred hotels, which implies that they approve of the hotel, when the fees basis is really related to the position the hotel is on the page of results. So if they pay more, they are listed in the results higher. In this case, in spite of believing that the hotelier’s reservations were phony, the Booking website charged the hotel a full commission, demanding the payment of the phony commissions before they restored the access of the hotel back on the website.

Days later, the hotelier was forced to pay several thousand euros worth of commissions that they owed on the promise from Booking.com that they would be restored with access to the travel site’s system. However, after the hotelier paid the money, Yiannios dismissed his promise to reinstate their access.

Get more information from: www.booking.com