What happened when we paid for a Booking.com that didn’t exist

We found hundreds of reviewers complaining of being scammed in summer 2024, more in autumn 2024 and, now, again in April 2025, we still found dozens of complaints.

For one property in Shrewsbury a reviewer said: ‘The property doesn’t exist. Booking.com are aware of this and are still advertising it and are still taking peoples money!!!!!’ while another said, ‘Unbelievable Booking.com – you’ve had this reported so many times and haven’t removed it.’

This is unsurprising. When we investigated earlier this year we found that it can take less than 15 minutes to set up a listing on Booking.com. We also found people who’d booked accommodation that turned out not to exist and some who’d been scammed through Booking.com’s own messaging systems.

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Booking.com’s response in the past has always been that, in most cases, the non-existent listings aren’t really scams,…