Hotels.com Reviews 

Title:
I am writing this review to warn others about the appalling customer service experience I had regarding a dispute with Hotels.com over cancellation fees for a stay at the Hotel du Vin in Wimbledon.

My booking had to be cancelled due to an air traffic control strike—a situation entirely beyond my control. However, the true failure lies with Hotels.com.

My complaint centers on these major failures:
1.Failure to Provide Documentation: I never received a booking confirmation from Hotels.com. Because they failed to send this document, I was never made aware of the specific cancellation terms. They are effectively penalizing me for a lack of information they were responsible for providing.
2.Ignoring Specific Questions: Throughout my correspondence, I repeatedly asked direct questions regarding the charges. Instead of providing answers, the support team consistently ignored my queries, sending only generic, unhelpful responses.
3.Inconsistent Communication: I dealt with a rotating door of different representatives, none of whom seemed to have read the previous correspondence. Every time I reached out, I had to explain my situation from scratch.
4.Refusal to Resolve: Despite their error, Hotels.com has refused to accept any responsibility. They have unilaterally closed my case without resolution, leaving both me and the Hotel du Vin out of pocket.

It is completely unacceptable that I am being held liable for cancellation fees that I was never informed of due to their administrative failure. I expected some level of professionalism and accountability, but was met only with avoidance.
I strongly advise anyone to think twice before booking through Hotels.com if you value your money or expect responsive customer support.

Date 6 September, 2026: As you can see from Hotels.com, they once again refer me to their response team. I can point out that both their response team and their Global Escalation Team have “investigated” this and done nothing to help either me or the Hotel.

We had travelled from the UK to Germany via car, approximately 13 hours of travel, we arrive at the home we booked through hotels.com and there were other people there, the host said he had no confirmation of us comming so couldn't house us, this became a bit of a desperate time as it was 5pm and looking like there were no hotels.

We booked another hotel 45 miles away from the origional to be told hotels.com had the incorrect price online and would not have us stay for that price,

Hotels.com relocation team would not pay the extra and could not find us another hotel,
By this time it was 7pm, with no hotels available.

They said they have no option to cancel and offered me a 70£ hotels.com voucher, this was just rubbing salt into the wound,

I received emails of the refunds but have not received my 100£ voucher back, so am out of pocket also, this has been a horrific experience and one I hope to never be in again, I will never use the Expedia group again, complaint is filed and will update review once fulfilled

Useless booking process. Billed my PayPal but didn't send booking confirmation. Spent more than half an hour on the support chat and they achieved nothing. I've had to dispute the charges with my bank because they wouldn't or couldn't cancel the transaction and refund the money.

This is a horrible company. Will NEVER use again. Hotel only charged 103.00 for my room but they charged 50.00 to my credit card!! Total RIP off. Next time I will directly pay to the hotel and make My OWN resrrvations.. would rather they get the extra scam money than this compnay.. terrible the way this works.

Absolutely horrendous customer service. I’d seriously avoid booking with them. I paid for a hotel and when I arrived it was absolutely horrendous. I’ve never stayed somewhere so dirty. I was eaten alive by bed bugs, there was a carrier bag over the smoke detector, it was filthy. The list goes on so I had to leave. I complained to hotels.com and they removed my option to leave a review for the hotel. Upon contacting them numerous times asking to leave a review, they just closed the chat. So beware!! They will not allow you to leave real negative reviews of hotels on their site. I sent them all the photos and they still won’t address the issue or give me a refund.

We booked with hotels.com and upon arrival we were told their credit card was declined 3 times.
We decided to pay on site and now are fighting to get a refund from hotels.com.
Avoid at all costs.
You should gave tried to help when we called your office.
No need to start trying to make it right now.
You had a chance and blew it

Just used the site to book a hotel. Pictures looked wonderful, all seemed well..That was until we got to the property. It was run down, dirty and absolutely not as shown on Hotels.com. It should be made compulsory that each hotel should provide up to date photos. If not, be removed from the site. This is the second time this has happened and once you arrive at the venue and fully paid, very little can be done.... Whilst the price's maybe competitive, the information and photographs should be less than a year old. It's misrepresentation, simple..

Absolutely horrific. Book a hotel, got a confirmation. Then was asked to later confrm payment, something their website is not able to do. Spent hours waiting for their chat, since AI chat bot could not figure out how to help me - and then was told to call and give my credit card on a line and wait for hours.

Service is not bad
Prices sometimes are too high

Price show as including all taxes and fees, expected that price. Actual cost was 10 percent more. Hotel.com has no way to contact a human. AI only support. Last time I'll use them. Read the other reviews before using their site to book anything.

When I arrived I asked if I can see the room before checking in. I was told I could, so I left my driver's license with the front desk. The 'hotel' seemed shady, like a crack house. I looked at the room and it smelled badly. There were batches on the wall and the bed was springy. Everything was very old. The person in the next room had the door open and was drink beer and smoking a cigarette. My wife could not sleep there and it seemed unsafe.
I asked if we could cancel the reservation and if there would be a charge. The front desk said it was fine and they would not charge me, that they had others waiting for a room.
Hotel.com then charged me even though I made another reservation at another hotel though Hotel.com that day.
Someone is lying. Not a way to treat a customer.

We made reservations through the app, and nowhere during the booking process were we clearly informed of a 21+ age requirement. When we arrived, the property refused to accommodate us and instructed us to cancel the reservations. We followed their instructions, only to then be denied approximately $300 in refunds because the cancellations were made the same day. Even more concerning, because the property required us to cancel, Hotels.com no longer allows us to leave feedback about the property or explain what happened. The entire experience feels like a setup in which the customer has no recourse: the property refuses the stay, tells you to cancel, you lose your money, and then you lose the ability to review the property. I strongly recommend booking directly with hotels rather than relying on Hotels.com.

Awful company. I booked a hotel on the website and then received a receipt from the hotel via hotels.com app with a receipt for less than the amount paid!
When I queried this I was told a word salad of reasons and they refused to refund the difference.
Word of advice - go direct

EDIT - as suggested I went back to the help centre and tried again. That's 30 minutes of my life I'll never get back! Lots of words but no Customer centric outcome. As suggested before avoid this company if you want any Customer service.

Its true. Customer support is garbage here and perhaps by design. Maybe the company needs the right motivation to go with ai to give the proper runaround or just hang up on you (i will have disappeared from the customer base long before. ) the agents or supervisors dont appear well informed or seem to care. Common excuses are wrong dept (send you to a unmanned customer support line) or wait a little longer and it will magically be fixed. It went from 5 hours to 9-10 business days. AI really cant come fast enough but really the ai is even more garbage. I have been a hotels.com customer and occasional gift card user since 2022. Recently, hotels.com gave a 10% off gift cards and so i thought it may be a good time to stock up. The experience afterwards has made me reconsider strongly whether giving any money to this company is safe. 1) i tried to book the gift card but every time i booked it would say order did not go through and agent would not be able to share the exact reason or help place the gift card order on the phone. Fine. Called my bank and confirmed it was hotels.com. Called their support line, notified them and they had it fixed within 3 hrs after noticing it on their website. Kudos to job well done. I placed the order and within a minute, gift cards are ready for use.2) hotels.com does not allow multiple cards for an order but supports merging up to 5 at once. However, after inputting my gift card and pin the website would hang. But i find out later if i clicked refresh, it held the values i inputted. After 10 or so attempts it went through. Resolved by me actually. 3) cancelling your reservation does not get you a refund for gift cards immediately. Its a automated process but the timeline is unknown to the agents (from 4 hrs. To 5 hrs, to 9-10 days). My reservation was predominately gift card with some left over covered by credit card The credit card portion started processing already by my bank and what about the gift card. Nobody knows or cares. The command to issue a gift card takes less than a second so my guess is it never came and my guess is they have a underqualified cheap software developer who came and broke something that was working fine before.

Honestly im very disappointed. Gift cards are great because cash is king. The company gets a loan for what is just 10% of the gift card value. Its better than a bank loan in this sky high interest economy and unlike issuing stock, the debt doesnt worsen with time. All you need to do is bare minimal services but apparently thats too much. This entire process used to be done in under 1 minute and now its inoperable

UPDATE: 9/3/26

The customer service rep is lying and keeps forwarding me to 1 800 246-8357 and it is a automated system with no person behind it. she wanted to point me to giftcards AT hotels.com but this is clearly for small denominations. Is this a joke? I believe you guys record phone calls. Check it and you can see how your employees operate.

i did go to the website and nobody there wants to help

Refund timelines, policies & processes
When you paid with a gift card
Within 4 hours of processing your refund, we’ll send you a new gift card for the refunded amount to the email you used when booking.

If the refund amount is small and you live in a state that requires low gift card balances (typically those less than USD 10) be refunded, you can email giftcards AT hotels.com to request cash back.

For help with gift card refunds, get in touch with Gift Card Customer Support.

I recently booked a room on Hotels.com. The next day I returned to check on my reservation. When I saw the hotel, the site showed was a bubble requesting that I confirm the reservation. I clicked on it and was then charged for a second booking. I attempted to contact Hotels.com and they stated that there were no refunds. $305.00 was a total rip off. I contacted my credit card company and was told they could do nothing for me. The funny thing is on the website it shows that the second payment was cancelled. Cancelled or not, they never returned the payment. With all of the other options that are available out there, I will never again use this site and would warn others to think twice before using Hotels.com

Ok, wow, what a poorly designed site, reflective of a bad company. I can't seem to log into my account (haven't used it in years). Can't create a new one because my phone number is associated with another account, and can't get support because the stupid AI requires you to log in. Guess I will use Expedia!!!!!!!!!

After everything that hotels.com put us through which was over 10 hours on the phone multiple times I was put on. hold and waited for 30plus minutes to no one coming back to the line. They gave me one key credit of 80 dollars. After them giving me this credit I then spent close to 1.5 hours until someone could finally get it to go through. When I finally got to my hotel my new reservation was canceled leaving me and my fiancée are at a hotel with no where to go the horrible way this company treats people has to stop.

I have used Hotels.com for over 10 years and been a Gold member most of that time. Over the past few years I noticed when I booked for friends as I could get a better deal that they would be given an upgrade. When I was just booking for myself nothing. This became brutally apparent when travelling In London when I agreed to book for a colleague. When we got to the accommodation my friend and I had to share a tiny tiny room while my colleague got upgrade to a massive room. When I questioned this with the accommodation, I was shown the notification they received requesting my colleague to be upgraded..
Enough for me, time to find a better accommodation app and I suggest you do the same

3rd Post 8 Sept: again the HelpCEnter option did NOT work. We've lost c£2000 which will now prevent us buying Xmas presents for our grandchildren. But I guess Hotels.Com DO NOT CARE as long as they maximise profits to hurt us!!
2nd Post: Hotels.com and Silver Gate Rooms, Split DO NOT CARE as their HelpCenter options just 'loops back' to their webpage. NO CHANCES to get a fair solution!! SO DO NOT USE Hotels.Com !!
Their 'No Refund' policy is a complete RipOff - with Appalling and Hurtful customer service.
We have had to cancel our trip to Split on 14th September because our daughter suddenly had a mental breakdown and we were faced with our grandson being put into care by Social Services.
Hotels.com Ai bots were totally unhelpful - taking around in endless loops and refusing to give us a tel number to talk to a real person.
So, as fixed income pensioners, we have now lost c. £2000 and Hotels.com and Silver Gate Rooms Dioklecijan Palace have benefited at our misfortune. How sad they appear NOT TO CARE!
PS: Tried to contact them through their helpcenter and it just 'loops' you back through their webpage. As I said a Total RipOff of genuine customers....

I used to be an exclusive and heavy user of Hotels.com until they decided to get stingy and cheap with their 10% incentives. Pre 2023 a person would gain 10% back from purchases (the average spent on 10 stays rewarded back into their "wallet." Now, they only offer a 1% to 2% return through their OneKeyCash back program. I have not used them since 2023. I called today, September 2026 and asked if they were ever going to regain the loyalty of so many lost and loyal past customers. The generic corporate respond of "we are looking into it" rang hollow. It has been 3 years. How long does it take to "look into it?" I would strongly recommend that everybody switches to booking.com where the incentives are still at 10%.

An Update. I find the Hotels.com response very corporate generic asking me to reach out. I already did before I even wrote this review. Why would I do it again. If they are unwilling to change their disregard for loyal and worthy offerings for everybody why would they want to talk to me a second time. I will only get more of the corporate speak.