Furious Australian travellers are hopping mad after a hotel booking website which claims to be “the fastest growing hotel booking site in the world” suddenly cancelled reservations without paying refunds, leaving some people thousands of dollars out of pocket.
The problems surrounding online booking agency HotelQuickly.com appear to constitute the second major online booking fiasco to hit Australian travellers over the holiday season.
The other one is Bestjet.com, though there’s no suggestion the two companies, or their problems, are in any way related.
News.com.au reported how thousands of holidaymakers had their trips ruined and were left out of pocket after HotelQuickly suddenly cancelled its reservations without refunding clients’ money.
On 11 December 2018, HotelQuickly’s Facebook site announced:
Dear Customers,
We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused with the bookings you’ve made with us.
Unfortunately, due to an unforeseen issue with our main hotel supplier many reservations have been canceled.
We fully understand how disappointing this situation is and we are working very hard to come up with a manageable solution.
However, at the moment and until a solution is in place, we can only offer you a refund in the form of a credit voucher for the value of your original booking that you can use for a future reservation.
Please contact our customer support team at support@hotelquickly.com and they will respond as soon as possible.
Again, we are extremely sorry for this inconvenience and unfortunate matter and the trouble caused.
Yours sincerely,
HotelQuickly Customer Support Team
Bookers are furious because they say HotelQuickly, based in Asia, was listed as a booking option on TripAdvisor and Trivago. TripAdvisor later told News.com.au it removed HotelQuickly from its platform as soon as it became aware of the problems.
Bookers paid HotelQuickly in cash but the site is refusing refunds except in the form of credit vouchers, and some clients say those don’t work.
West Australian woman Debbie Hamilton told Daily Mail Australia she had booked two luxury resorts through HotelQuickly for a holiday in Thailand with her husband.
She received HotelQuickly’s email that both bookings had been cancelled on 9 December 2018, adding that she immediately phoned both hotels and they both said the booking had been made but cancelled on 6 December 2018.
“I frantically re-booked straight away, but had to pay an extra AUD 400 all up for the booking, as it was peak time.”
She said HotelQuickly sent her online vouchers as way of refunding the AUD 1200 she had paid for the bookings, but the vouchers had a broken link, making them useless.
Other clients of HotelQuickly had similar stories.
As often when such online booking woes strike, the company website carries on regardless. Despite HotelQuickly communicating its problems by Facebook, the HotelQuickly.com website was still saying over New Year:
HotelQuickly understands that travelers want the best possible rates for their hotels, in a transparent and convenient way. Through the HotelQuickly app and the website, travelers like yourself book last minute hotel deals at the lowest possible rates. With an ever-growing number of hotels, HotelQuickly is the fastest growing hotel booking site in the world. And not just for attractive last minute reservations; HotelQuickly offers great deals for longer reservations as well.
And so on.
Written by Peter Needham
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