Booking.com Subject to Bogus Short-Term Rental Listings, Investigation Finds
Photo Credit: The Booking.com HQ in Amsterdam. Adobe Stock / Bumble Dee
Skift Take
Fake short-term rental listings are indeed an industrywide problem, but Booking.com seems to get more than its fair share of sketchy listings and fraudulent messages to guests.
In its effort to expand its short-term rental business to compete with Airbnb, Booking.com has opened itself up to manipulation by scammers.
That's one of the conclusions from a recent investigation by the UK consumer group, Which?
In a report called What went wrong with Booking.com?, the consumer group concluded that fraudsters take advantage of the platform's automated tools.
"The fact that listings – both genuine and nefarious – could be written using the same Booking.com algorithms, rather than by owners personally, makes it hard to tell the difference between a genuine listing and a scam," the investigation found.
The group said it took less than 15 minutes to create a listing that appeared on Booking.com.
"We didn’t need to provide proof of who we were," the report said. "And, unlike if you put your house on Expedia’s Vrbo – or on Airbnb the last time we tri
