Host telling me to cancel my booking in exchange for a discount?
- By
- Aparna Patel
- |
- 22 Jul, 2023
- |
The person who has contacted you as “the host” may not be who they say they are. They could be a junior employee who is able to slip you the key to an unbooked room, while pocketing your reservation fee. They could even be a scammer totally unconnected to the accommodation who has found out you are staying there (maybe from your social media posts, or maybe they have hacked into the accommodation’s booking.com account). They would take your money, but when you arrived at the accommodation you would have no booking.
Other answers have pointed out that the host probably wants to defraud booking.com. They’re probably honest to you, but you may not want to count on probably.
One similar situation that is probably not fraud: suppose you’re staying there already and want to renew your stay. You could do so through booking.com, or directly with the landlord. By then you’d already know them in person, and know the place, so it would be safer for you to do so.
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TL;DR Keep your original booking.
It’s possible that the host found out that the demand on accommodation for the period of your booking went up, so they will have no trouble renting the place for more money to someone else if you cancel. Or maybe they are already overbooked and are looking for the least expensive way out.
The thing you have to understand is that between the moment you cancel and the moment you rebook (with the same host or otherwise), you have no room. If you have free cancellation, at least don’t cancel until you have a new confirmed booking on better terms.
Also keep in mind that booking.com provides added value to you compared to a reservation on the side. E.g. the host will be inclined to give better rooms to booking.com customers who can otherwise trash them in reviews.
If you go to a certain place regularly, it’s a good idea to forego booking.com and get a reservation directly with the host you know and trust. This doesn’t seem to be your case though.
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Part of the host’s contract with booking.com is that booking.com will take a commission fee of 10-25% out of each booking made through them.
So if you cancel your booking.com reservation and pay the host directly, the host will get the full amount of your payment, instead of just 75-90% of it, and booking.com gets cut out of the deal. The discount they’re offering is a sort of kickback so that you get a piece of the savings also.
However, this sort of thing is undoubtedly forbidden by the host’s contract with booking.com, so basically they are asking you to help them defraud booking.com. If booking.com finds out about this, they’ll probably cancel the host’s account, and maybe sue them if they’ve been doing it a lot. I don’t know whether you yourself would be at any legal risk as well, but it certainly doesn’t seem like a very good idea to me.
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Credit:stackoverflow.com‘
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