Excerpt from The Japan Times
As major online travel agency Booking.com faces reports of payment failures in Europe and Asia, some Japanese hoteliers are planning to file a class-action lawsuit against the company.
Hotel owners say that over the past few months, Booking.com has failed to promptly transfer customer payments to the hotels, essentially leaving hotel bills unpaid for days or even months.
Hirotaro Kato, the lawyer taking on the class-action lawsuit, said around 40 people have consulted with him about Booking.com’s payment failure, of which three have decided to take part in the lawsuit. He plans to file the lawsuit sometime this week.
One of the prospective plaintiffs is Masahiko Matsuo, the head of Kazaya Group, a company that operates several hotels around central Japan. He says that his hotels have experienced delays in payments since June.
The situation got worse when he was notified via an email from Booking.com that, due to system maintenance, the revenue from the end of June and all throughout July would not be transferred until August.
Given that his hotels rely mostly — if not entirely — on Booking.com for reservations, this failure to pay in time meant that the hotel had essentially no income for the entire month of July.
“They didn’t end up paying for our July revenue until the very end of August,” Matsuo said. “I have still yet to receive payment for our September revenue, yet they continue to charge us commission fees for using the platform.”
He says that Booking.com still owes his company around ¥6 million.
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