A holiday lets platform used by thousands of landlords to generate income has come under fire over ‘ghost’ properties.

An investigation by Which? found that hundreds of Booking.com customers reported paying for accommodation that turned out not to be real, and then sometimes struggled to get a refund.

While some listings were deliberate scams, others should have been deactivated but were still available to book.

Using an advanced Google search, the consumer group found 52 listings on Booking.com where multiple recent reviews said that the property didn’t exist, with hundreds of reviewers warning of what they describe as ‘scams’.

Of those 52 listings, 35 were still set as available to book, while the others had been active in the last year but were ‘not currently available’.

Online booking sites such as Booking.com do not physically verify the millions of properties they host. They say that a customer’s contract is with the accommodation provider but will check that the address is real and that the owner has provided an official form of ID.

Scam warnings

Which? reports that travellers won’t necessarily see previous ‘scam’ warnings from reviewers because Booking.com’s default system is to show users what it calls the ‘most relevant’ reviews first.

For one listing of a let in London, the group found that 10 out of 11 reviewers gave it one star out of 10. Just one reviewer gave it a score of 10 out of 10 and described it as ‘exceptional’ – and this was displayed as the ‘most relevant’.

After Which? alerted Booking.com to the existence of the 52 listings, it removed 32 of them, while most of the rest were set to ‘unavailable’.

Booking.com told Which? that some of the listings it found were not scams but “contract terminations where the correct procedures may not have been followed”.

It said other listings required further verification, as part of its safety and security measures. It added: “If a partner wants to terminate their contract or remove their listing, then we have robust processes in place, with clear guidance available online to all our partners on what is expected.”

Read the Which? report in full.

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