Family home listed as hotel on popular website has to turn away guests

A home in Westmeath has been the subject of confusion and frustration this month as it was wrongly listed as a hotel on Booking.com. 

The property, listed as "Kinnegad Corner Hotel" was listed on the popular accommodation website claiming to be a two-star hotel offering room service and a 24-hour front desk. Four different rooms ranging from a double room with en-suite and a quadruple room were available to book.

In reality, the family home belongs to the McDonnells, who had no idea their home was listed until guests started arriving.

Rebecca Breene McDonnell, whose father resides at the property, told The Journal that eleven people had turned up to stay at the house since the beginning of October, including two families and a couple celebrating their anniversary who asked if they could just stay at the property, to which the homeowner replied no.

"The hotel itself doesn't actually exist. the rooms in the images aren't... they're not the rooms of my dad's house. So they're just from some random place", Rebecca said.

The family contacted Booking.com to make them aware of the mistake, and hopefully have the listing removed, but according to the Journal, it remained there until Monday October 23. 

"They said they would go and try get it taken down, and then nothing happened for three weeks", Rebecca said. 

The family noted that nothing serious had happened as a result of these unwanted callers to their home, but frustrations had grown due to the length of time the website took to remove the listing.

Booking.com has since apologised to the family with a spokesperson commenting:

"At Booking.com, we take safety and security very seriously and have a number of checks in place before a property is ever allowed to begin welcoming guests.

"We also have a team dedicated to detecting and blocking suspicious activity around the clock, with this property swiftly removed from our platform.

"All affected customers will be contacted by a member of our customer service team to offer any support required in relation to refunds, relocations or additional fees and we of course also extend our sincere apologies to the homeowner."