Is it possible to get banned from booking.com? - Bargain Travel Forum (2023)

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Destination Expert

Yes absolutely possible and it’s not just exclusive to Booking.com - it’s all mainstream OTA’s.

No, your situation is quite safe. There has to be repeat patterns of multiple bookings in a given location, which is booked and cancelled. In a given destination during periods of heavy demand, having a person holding X number of rooms at Y number of hotels, can actually impact availability and rates

Another way you can be banned, is from making reservations and having your CC declined repeatedly. This is accumulative based on complaints from numerous properties

Edited: 2 years ago

Thank you for reply! And if you get banned, what happens with existing bookings including those that are already paid?

But I get it, there has to be a pattern. Also we are not talking about last minute cancellations here, but months or many weeks in advance. Probably I am not the only one doing it like this in these times. Recently I had one booking in Hungary and one booking in Sweden (my own country) at the same time, but then Hungary closed the borders so it was very good that I still had a booking at a different location I could go to.

Destination Expert

Prepaid existing reservations are maintained, provided the hotels themselves do not cancel it. Having no access to the platform itself makes no difference to an active reservation, as the OTA has no authority to cancel it. Only the hotel does.

Whether it’s being banned or having issues with existing reservations, the priority is always to contact the hotel directly first. Everything else can be followed up later

Edited: 2 years ago

I was banned for about a year after I made many reservations, (maybe 12-20?), and then cancelled them. At the time, I was booking for travel at least 3-5 months ahead of time, and didn't hold on to any reservation more than a few days.

At the time, I didn't know that this behavior would be punished, and as I'm an avid hunter of lodging, I thought it wouldn't hurt anyone if I booked the room I thought I liked until I found something that I liked better...and with more searching, I kept finding rooms I liked better.

Booking.com didn't tell me when I became un-banned---but after about a year of not using them, I tried booking a room, and it went through.

It's very strange then that they don't say anything about this in Terms and Conditions. If it's against the rules, they really should say something about it.

I think booking.com is the best for budget and no frills accommodation in Europe, more than often it is cheaper than booking directly with the place you are staying at.

Destination Expert

I'm not sure that it needs to be spelt out that if your actions could be construed as abuse, there could be a range of sanctions applied to an account. I imagine that it would be difficult to quantify every possible way that someone could find themselves in trouble, for example, how many bookings and subsequent cancellations would it take to trigger a red flag, a warning or a ban?

I personally can understand why the platform would want to have some discretion about what they do and when. The vast majority of travellers will never get close to triggering anything in my view.

Well said, RojBlake. On a side note, it didn't occur to me that there are actually people making multiple bookings with no intention of keeping them. Just when you thought you have heard and seen it all...lol.

There are people who plan multi-location trips far in advance, but haven't decided yet in specifically which locations to stay in or how long to stay, so as they change their minds they change accomodations, e.g cancelling and then booking at another location, muntiple times. This is not abuse in my opinion, but if it is in their opinion (the OTA) they should also clearly state so.

Edited: 2 years ago

Destination Expert

>>>This is not abuse in my opinion<<<

That's my point, really. It's hard to define where abuse really starts. I wouldn't say your example was abuse, but perhaps BDC would. Or perhaps it would depend on how many times multiple is in reality, at least from their point of view.

I admit I have booked refundable rate sin order to have somewhere to stay, and have then changed my mind later. That's fair enough to me. What I'd say isn't so usual, is a person booking a dozen hotels for the same dates, and then making a decision as to which one to stay at much later on, and cancelling all of he other options.

That's my definition of abuse, but again, it may not be yours or BDC's.

If that's the case I should be fine. And so far after years of travelling with this type of planning, I haven't really had any issues with them. The only reason I wondered was cause I heard of other people getting banned for reasons related to cancellations. The only issue I had was a few years ago when a property owner at booking.com got extremely angry at me in a private message because I made a few changes in number of days to stay but ultimately ended up cancelling the stay because I found a different place. He claimed this was abuse but nothing happened to my account.

Edited: 2 years ago