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Fake Reservations
How to stop fake Reservations?
When I get a reservation I call the reservation phone number and when I get an incorrect number or the people say they did not make reservations with the hotel, I then know that it is a fake reservation. So I send them a (Request to cancel reservation) But of course they don’t reply because it is a fake reservation. Now what can I do next to open the room up to be bookable again and make sure I don’t have any other problems with those guests that made the fake reservations?
On the weekend and Holidays some of my competition will book us up with fake bookings so that they get the real bookings. How can we stop this abuse?
Hi Maxima,
That is more than a bit of stretch accusing the competition, especially without hard cold facts and evidence.
For potential fake bookings, simply pick up the phone and call support team direct.
They will never monitor these topics and call you.
See below for contact info.
Kind Regards
Consider linking your Property link into your partner profile as it helps other partners assist you, especially when starting out .
How To Guide :
https://partner.booking.com/en-gb/community/tips-tricks-more/how-why-ad…
How To Contact Booking.com:
If urgent, call the dedicated phone number* found in your extranet ‘Inbox’ tab. Under Booking.com Messages, Click on Contact us to reveal the phone number.
For more general info you can contact one of our main lines for help.
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I don't have cold facts those are pretty hard to get using Booking. Can't trace the e-mails. They give fake phone numbers. Now I call back all my reservations and send them an e-mail to confirm.
There needs to be a way that we - us (Hotels) can cancel a booking. For a reason.
These fake booking seem to happen a lot on Holiday and weekends. In fact, I get about six a month and I only have four rooms to sell. Sounds a little suspicious when I call and the phone numbers are of people who have not made reservation or some don’t even work.
I received 2 last minute bookings for same guests name using same number that a lot of partners have received and reported but seems nothing is happening. The apparent guest is not responding to messages nor does the mobile phone provided working and office address given again same complaints from other partners Prudential Towers Bangkok. So no show for 2 bookings for 2 nights. Great times. Anyway to stop this?
That is not a fake booking thats an Agoda Reservation with that address.
How I would stop it is by making them doone or both of the following
1. Send Passport ID with in x hours.
2. Prepay for last minute is to be done via X,Y ,Z. Add this process into the NEw Reservation template.
3. Create a Last Minute Prepay method new manual use template, so you can send it as soon as you see a last minute booking with same info as a reminder, Both templates should include warning that if no prepayment done and no photoIDs for ALL guest, you will cancel immediately. e.g. paypal.me/name short link , paypal invoice, or other 3rd party similar service
maybe some thing like Revolut or similar for near instant transfer.
PS: the big blue button top right area called "Start a Conversation...." use that instead of replying to a 2year old topic please, thanks.
For potential fake bookings, simply pick up the phone and call support team direct.
That's the funniest advice I have ever heard. Booking.com makes it impossible to cancel any booking, even obviously fake ones.
True that
All of my future Booking,com guests must pre-pay for their stay, when making their online reservation.
That is a lot of trouble for a guest to give Booking,com their credit card information, and then later cancel their "fake" reservation.
Do you mean booking.com collects the payment? If not, they can always charge back.
Having more strict policies, or non-refundable rates might help.
Fewer but not fake reservations and less cancellations.
Cheers!!!
Us Hotels need a way to cancel reservations.
You can cancel, but they can just rebook again with a fake credit card.
You can cancel reservations but you might have penalties so maybe it’s better to first contact BDC directly.
Wish you luck.
We do contact BDC directly, and we are told there's nothing they can do - they don't view these obviously fake bookings (multiple 3-month reservations costing up to 5000 Euros - we are a tiny B&B) and say there's nothing we can do. I've posted elsewhere the work-arounds we use to manage this problem, but my posts keep being deleted by the moderators!
Clearly a huge problem for booking.com
We have many fake fraudulent bookings since some time.
booking.com does not collect money for us and we are not allowed to pre authorise credit cards.
Always same MO, Long expensive bookings for multiple rooms in peak periods.
Fake Phone Number
No Address provided
No reply to Messages.
All we can do is request cancel, of course no answer
Then these become No Shows, we mark as No Show and eventually get credit card info, When we try to run the card (we have a 21 day 100% cancelation policy) the cards are invalid.
We have 100% damage.
Booking Supports sends the same old chat bot messages back and it is an uphill battle to cancel these fakes.
Booking says they check credit cards at booking which is clearly not true.
This is causing us huge damage and Im sure there are many more.
This needs to stop
Clearly a huge problem for booking.com
We have many fake fraudulent bookings since some time.
booking.com does not collect money for us and we are not allowed to pre authorise credit cards.
Always same MO, Long expensive bookings for multiple rooms in peak periods.
Fake Phone Number
No Address provided
No reply to Messages.
All we can do is request cancel, of course no answer
Then these become No Shows, we mark as No Show and eventually get credit card info, When we try to run the card (we have a 21 day 100% cancelation policy) the cards are invalid.
We have 100% damage.
Booking Supports sends the same old chat bot messages back and it is an uphill battle to cancel these fakes.
Booking says they check credit cards at booking which is clearly not true.
This is causing us huge damage and Im sure there are many more.
This needs to stop
The situation is bizarre. We don't understand why Booking.com doesn't take this problem seriously, because it must surely impact their bottom line. If we don't earn money from legitimate reservations becuase our calendar is blocked up with fake bookings (currently almost every night for the next 6 months is blocked), BDC doesn't earn commission.
We would love a moderator to respond to this!
Our next step is to approach the media - has anyone else considered or tried this?
They seem too big to care, especially about the smaller resorts. If Hilton had this problem they would be all over it.
Just give smaller resort the possibility to pre authorize cards or take deposits for them, problem solved.
I talk to BDC Support every day, they promise to escalate the matter but nothing happens, next day, new fake bookings taking a lot of out time and killing our business and I get the same old chat bot answers when I inform BDC. It's like Groundhog Day except that every day is killing our business.
We can't be the only ones with thi problem
If you search these forums for FAKE and FRAUD, you'll find dozens of similar threads with the same problem. So it's widespread and clearly - in our view - an organised activity.
One fake booker actually engaged in a WhatsApp discussion with us (becuase we had requested a deposit for their 4-month long €5500 'reservation'). During this conversation, they accidentally sent us a message which was clearly intended for others; they deleted it almost inmmediately, but we had already copied it. It said (in Brazilian Portuguese), "Hi guys, I received a message from a hotel where I made one of the reservations (3) asking for a deposit or they will cancel, even though the information at the time of booking was for no card needed, and free cancellation. Did anyone else have this experience?"
We would really love to know the root source and motivation behind this activity. We're getting fake bookings from all over the world (it seems), including Saudia Ariabia, Russia, Brazil, Morroco, India, Argentina, Algeria, Serbia.....
I too get lot of fake bookings from the past month. Contacted Booking.com and they asked me change the policies and this obviously did not help. I'm contemplating on leaving this platform if Booking.com does not find a way to resolve it.
Fake reservations is a big problem.
Unfortunately BDC it doesn't seem that BDC can help us on solve this issue. 😕
Your And I have the same problem, I am blocked by every fake reservation. A solution to not close the activity is. If you have noticed, the false pronotations are done robotically. Place the reservations once, you cannot stay for less than 5 nights. Because they always recommend either 2 nights or 4. I decided on 5 nights. The idea is for you to decide the opposite of what the bad guys pronotate.🙂
I'm talking to a Friend who owns a Cyber Security company, he did some research. One possibility is Visa Scammers who need proof of a Reservation for fake visas.
Anyway, booking.com should take notice as this is clearly known to them as their own support staff have told me.
They are facilitating fraud through their platform...
Hi!!!
Fake reservations is very frustrating!!!
It has happened to me many times…especially from Visa scammers…
I changed my policies to more strict ones and fake reservations have been almost eliminated…
Prepayment is also another way to eliminate fake reservations…
Less reservations but more secure reservations…
Wish all a happy weekend!!!
Yes, but with BDC taking a higher commission, of course. Interested to know what your "more strict" policies were, tho, if you donçt mind sharing details.
Hi Tania,
I changed my rates to non- refundable…
Not only me but every property in my small village changed to non-refundable when w had faked reservations…
Now that fake reservations have stopped I have non refundable rates and standard rates…with 15 days cancellation before arrival…
Keep well!
1. Require credit card for reservations. Then preauthorize credit card.
2. I find same day bookings are prankster prone. Either require 3 day advanced reservation or only accept prepaid for same day.
Jack, I think you missed the details at the start of the thread. These fake bookings are often made weeks in advance, and for durations of many weeks, often several months. So our calendar has been almost completely blocked out with fake bookings for the whole of the 2023 season. Where we live, credit cards are rarely held, and the very large majority of our bookings in the past have been from the native population, not overseas travellers.
That's different from the fake bookings I get.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'rarely held'. You don't require credit cards?
You don't pre-authorize the credit card?
Also you can do a google map search of the address provided to see if it's a real residential address.
I have pre authorise in my policy but BDC will NOT allow me to see the credit card details - so I cannot make sure the booking is legit. This is the ONLY agent that does this - all other agents I deal with a 50% non refundable deposit is required before confirmation. I have had fake reservations where the credit card details were also fake and when I tried to run them after a no show it told me that it was declined. This leads me to be out of pocket.
I have noticed that in most of these fake booking the booker has no address.
So I have now changed the settings to require a booker to have an address Anyone have experience with this ? Do your Fake bookings have an address ?
Most of my Fake bookings have no address
Do your fake bookers have addresses ?
Hi, Roland, yes they do, but usually only partial ones, so for example just the name of a village and the country, or a street but no house number.
Mine also have partial or nonsensical addresses
Are your settings in BDC such that you require Booker Address ?
Yes.