Booking Holdings
Consumer Discretionary
44
out of 100. Number 261 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where Booking Holdings does well
- Arbitration 2 of 20. Few problems found.
- Renewals 0 of 20. Nothing found.
- No forced arbitration or class-action waiver anywhere in the terms — disputes go to real courts, and EU/UK/Swiss consumers can sue in their home country's courts, not just Amsterdam.
- Material changes to the terms require advance notice, and bookings you've already made keep the terms in force when you booked (A22).
- There is nothing that auto-renews: no paid subscription and the Genius loyalty program is free.
- Their crossed-out discount prices are defined as a like-for-like comparison (same dates, same policies) rather than the mystery 'was' prices some rivals use.
- Privacy-wise they offer erasure rights, AI 'memories' can be viewed/deleted and consent withdrawn in settings, and ad-partner data is hashed/pseudonymised rather than handed over raw.
If you pay at the property rather than through Booking.com, they hand your full credit card details to the hotel/host — so your card data ends up in strangers' systems you never signed up with.
The fine print
6 clauses and findings from the draft archive, dated 1 October 2026. The plain English comes first; the small print is the company's own words. None of these has been checked yet.
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If you pay at the property rather than through Booking.com, they hand your full credit card details to the hotel/host — so your card data ends up in strangers' systems you never signed up with.
"Unless payment is made to Booking.com itself during the reservation process, we need to forward your credit card details to the trip provider you chose for payment processing."
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Booking.com builds a 'traveller dossier' — your cancellation rate, review history, whether anyone reported misconduct about you — and hands it to each hotel you book, so the host can quietly judge you before you arrive.
"In certain cases, we also provide some summary information about you to the trip provider. This can include: whether your account is verified; whether you've booked with the trip provider in the past; the number of completed reservations you've made with us; the absence of reports to Booking.com regarding misconduct involving you; the percentage of reservations you may have cancelled in the past on our platform; whether you've given reviews about past reservations."
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Your email address and phone number are hashed and shared with ad companies so they can match you across their databases and target you — it's not called a sale, but your identifiers feed third-party ad targeting.
"We may share some of your personal data (such as identifiers) with advertising partners, as part of the marketing of our trip services via third parties... We use techniques such as hashing specific personal data (for example your email address or telephone number) to enable matching with data in one or more of their databases."
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Your booking and chat data can be fed into training their AI models, and they keep AI-generated 'memories' about your travel style and budget produced by an outside AI company.
"We may use your personal data to develop and enhance our machine learning models and artificial intelligence systems" and "We store the AI memories which are generated by a third-party AI model. AI memories can include preferences like your travel style, budget, or specific needs."
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You think you're booking 'with Booking.com' — but legally your contract is only with the hotel. If the stay is a disaster, Booking.com's terms say the hotel, not Booking.com, is responsible.
"When you make (or request) a booking, it's directly with the Service Provider — we're not a 'contractual party'." ... "The Service Provider is solely responsible for the Travel Experience."
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If Booking.com (or any sister company like Priceline or Agoda) decides you owe them something, they can seize your wallet credits and rewards with zero warning.
"We may set off or settle any or all of your Rewards against any claim we (or a Group Company) have against you. We may do this at any time, and without advance notice."
How these were found
ToS read in full: 'Customer terms of service', updated 15 September 2025. Privacy Notice for Travellers: 'Updated August 2026'. Both read via verbatim OpenTermsArchive mirrors (github.com/opentermsarchive/contrib-versions, Booking.com/Terms of Service.md and Booking.com/Privacy Policy.md, crawled ~6 days before research on 2026-10-01) rather than booking.com directly; official URLs given below point to the live documents. Scope is Booking.com (flagship consumer brand); Priceline/Kayak terms were not separately reviewed. No direct contact forms needed; all findings are from the actual document text.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.