Family hosts tourists in living room after Booking.com listing error
By Max Stephens
A family was forced to host a group of tourists in their living room for the night after a travel company wrongly listed their home on its website.
About 20 holidaymakers from around the world have descended on Karin Arsenius’s house in Greenwich, South East London, in the past month.
Karin Arsenius lives in Plumstead, Greenwich. Credit: Alamy
It came after Booking.com mistakenly used the postcode for her street for bookings, with her house shown beneath a location pin drop on its online map.
Users then booked accommodation which listed the address as a flat in Greenwich, the BBC reported.
Ms Arsenius, 37, said in one “shocking” incident last Saturday, she had to make up beds for three women from Argentina in her living room.
She told the BBC that her partner had taken them to a nearby pub to try and resolve the matter with the online accommodation site but had no luck.
“They had nowhere to go and we tried all the local hotels but everything was booked out.
“There was nothing free so in the end we said ‘we’re not comfortable with just letting you go out in the night so let’s just make up some beds in the living room and you can just stay here’.
“But it shouldn’t ever have got that far. It should have been taken care of, even if Booking.com is put out,” she said.
One of the group, Sabrina Salomé Schneider, 31, said it was a “nightmare” turning up at the family’s home.
“The family tried to help us, but we are still waiting for money from Booking.com as we still have to spend money to find new accommodation.”
“They’re a big corporation. They should be able to afford putting a few people up.”
Lisa Webb, a consumer law expert for UK consumer group Which?, described it as “really horrifying” for all parties.
She said: “Booking.com needs to take every step it has in its arsenal to make sure that, first of all, if it does happen, people are protected, people are given compensation, but secondly that these scams cannot appear on their platform at all in the first place.
“[Scammers] will target individuals in any way that they can and there are very unscrupulous people doing this.
“There needs to be checks and balances in place though to make sure that it cannot happen.”
In a statement, the company said: “We have a number of robust security measures in place, but in the very rare instance there may be an issue with a specific property we always investigate immediately.
“We can confirm this property has been completely removed from our site and all customers affected were contacted by a member of our customer service team to apologise and offer any support required in relation to refunds, relocations and additional fees, and we of course extend our sincere apologies to the homeowner.”
The Telegraph, London
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