Booking.com cancelled woman's $4K hotel reservation, then offered her same rooms for $17K
CBC
When Erika Mann booked a hotel for the 2026 Formula One Grand Prix in Montreal, she played it safe.
Her relatives were flying in from the Netherlands to watch the races with her, and Mann, who lives in Oakville, Ont., wanted to make sure their accommodations were locked in.
On May 25, she booked a four-room unit on Booking.com at Montreal's Holland Hotel, steps from the heart of race-weekend action. Price tag: $4,300. "I was super excited and yeah, jumped right on it," Mann told Go Public.
But weeks after her reservation was confirmed, her excitement ended. Mann says both the hotel and Booking.com told her the price was a mistake — and if she still wanted the unit for May 22-24, 2026 she'd need to cough up four times the amount — more than $17,000.
"That was just so outstandingly outrageous that I almost couldn't believe it," she told Go Public.
Digital rights expert David Fewer says shocks like this are becoming more common as online travel sites and hotels rely on automated booking and pricing systems.
He says Booking.com's policies allow confirmed reservations to be cancelled if the company decides the original rate was an error, leaving consumers exposed — especially when prices surge during big events, a practice known as event pricing.
"She'd done the research, she'd found the deal … and she'd booked it and thought she was done, and she was not," said Fewer, who directs the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) at the University of Ottawa.
"It's a weak position … our consumer protection laws are not great."
When Mann booked the accommodations, Formula One organizers hadn't locked in the exact race dates. So she covered her bases — reserving the same four-bedroom unit for two possible weekends in May 2026, both with free cancellation.
Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules.
Mann says she first heard there was a problem weeks later on June 27, when the hotel called her saying the price was wrong and she needed to cancel or pay the new rate.
She contacted Booking.com, which gave her two choices: Cancel the reservation herself or pay that new sky-high rate for the same unit on the same dates.
When she refused and demanded to keep her original booking, the website cancelled it.
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