Urban Boutique Hotel, Vienna: Fraudulently Posting Reviews on Booking.com From My Account

The Fraudulent Review in Brief:

The most important part of this story is this seedy hotel used my account to post a fraudulent review.

Here are other reviews posted the same day, likely also fraudulent.

More 9 and 10 star reviews get added all the time. Urban Boutique Hotel is no where near a 10-star experience.

But to be clear, it doesn't matter how good or bad Urban Boutique Hotel is. What matters is they are fraudulently posting reviews from customers' accounts.

These examples indicate there is a problem with Booking.com that Urban Boutique Hotel is regularly exploiting.

In the Beginning:

I booked Urban Boutique Hotel because of its central location, attractive photographs, and low price point.

I got a room with two twin beds and a shared bathroom for me and Sev, the cheapest option.

The cost was 311 EUR for four nights, or about 77 EUR a night.

Reading Reviews on the Way There:

On the train from Salzburg to Vienna I started reading the negative reviews for Urban Boutique Hotel on Booking.com.

I was disturbed to see several 1-3 star reviews lamenting plumbing issues, peeling wallpaper, and no relationship to the photographs on the website.

The management would respond to these comments, claiming visitors shouldn’t expect much given the location and price.

I didn’t know what to think. Guests can sometimes be unreasonable, and interspersed with the negative reviews are a ton of positive. The hotel had a 7 out of 10 overall rating.

Arriving:

After checking in, the receptionist showed us how to use a code to unlock the hallway door leading to the room, which needed another key.

This is when I understood that Urban Boutique Hotel not really a “hotel.” The room seemed to be a part of a single converted apartment.

I always had trouble turning the key-code door handle correctly. The manual key to the actual room was another headache to figure out.

The Room:

At a quick glance the room might’ve looked okay.

But closer examination showed an urgent need for renovations.

The wallpaper was bubbling up from the walls.

The mirror on the desk was cracked.

I felt every spring on my mattress. One evening a bunch of slats fell out of the bottom of Sev's bed.

The room had a bit of an odor when we entered, which seemed to go away after a while, or we just stopped noticing it.

Sound Check:

We were lucky our neighbors were quiet because the walls were extremely thin.

One evening some neighbors walked down the shared hallway, chatting in normal tones. They sounded like they were in our room, which gave me a fright while I was half-asleep.

I also often heard other guests as they struggled with the key-code door handle down the hall.

Getting to the Room:

The room was on the third story and there are no elevators.

You have to walk through the Urban Boutique Hotel bar to get to the stairs. This bar has very loud music.

Despite what my fraudulent review said, I never ate or drank here.

The Bathrooms:

On our first day at the hotel the shared toilet flooded every time it flushed. I then made sure to use the toilet by the bar when I entered or left the building.

Things that Weren’t So Bad:

To be fair, here's what I liked.

The location.

Room service made our beds every day.

The shared shower and the WiFi worked.

The Fraudulent Review, Long Version:

The day after we left Urban Boutique Hotel I get an email from Booking.com thanking me for a review. I thought this was curious since I hadn’t written one.

I look on my account and lo and behold: a 10 star rating to Urban Boutique Hotel.

Seeing my name next to this fake review felt gross, and I was alarmed that someone else could seemingly access my account.

Resolution:

I changed my password and called Booking.com to alert them to this issue.

They said their security team will look into it and get back to me. I didn't hear from them again, until I emailed their CEO Glenn Fogel ([email protected]) a week later.

He (or more likely the assistant that monitors this email account) forwarded my concern to the "Fraud Leadership" team, and Urban Boutique Hotel was taken off of Booking that same day.