Why Our Properties Are No Longer Available on Booking.com

There are things you learn about a company when something goes wrong. Not when the system is working and the commissions are flowing and the reviews are accumulating — but when there is a genuine emergency, a situation that requires a human being to make a decision quickly and with common sense. That is when you find out what a company actually is.

On 29 July 2026 and the following days, a wildfire swept through parts of southern Rethymno. Half of our managed properties lost electricity as a result. Some had their surroundings burned. Guests were due to arrive. We needed to cancel those bookings, free of charge, and move quickly — both for the safety of our guests and because it was simply the right thing to do.

What followed with Booking.com was one of the most frustrating experiences we have had as hosts in this business.

Two hours for something that should have taken five minutes

We called Booking.com's partner support and explained the situation. A wildfire. Properties without electricity. Guests arriving within days, one of them the following morning. We needed emergency cancellations processed without penalty.

We were assured it would be handled.

Then the emails arrived. Conflicting ones. Asking us to justify the reason for cancellation. Informing us we would be liable for any additional costs guests incurred in finding alternative accommodation. Directing us to cancel through the extranet — despite the fact that one booking had a guest arriving the next day, a window in which the extranet does not allow cancellation at all.

We called again. We explained again. We were assured again. More emails arrived. Two hours passed. Nothing was resolved.

We want to be clear about what we were asking for: not a favour, not a financial concession, not anything unreasonable. We were asking Booking.com to support us — and more importantly, our guests — in the middle of a natural disaster. We did not want our guests to spend their holidays in a house without electricity, in a middle of a scorched landscape. The answer, in practice, was a process. A series of forms and contradictory messages and escalations that went nowhere, administered by a support team where no single person takes ownership of a case from beginning to end. You speak to someone who assures you everything is fine. Then you receive an email from someone else that contradicts everything you were just told. There is no continuity, no accountability, and no one whose job it is to simply solve the problem.

The contrast with Airbnb

We also manage properties through Airbnb. When the wildfire happened, we contacted them once — a single call, a single message. They took immediate action. No forms. No contradictory emails. No two-hour loop of reassurances followed by liability warnings. The bookings were handled, the guests were protected, and we could focus on the actual emergency and the guests who were already here in Crete, rather than on navigating a platform's bureaucracy.

This is not a minor operational difference. It reflects a fundamental difference in how these two platforms understand their relationship with hosts and guests. Airbnb treated us as partners in an emergency. Booking.com treated us as entries in a system.

A policy decision, not an emotional one

We are not writing this in anger. The wildfire is behind us, our affected properties are recovering, and we are focused on the remaining season ahead. We are writing this because we made a considered decision — to close all of our properties on Booking.com permanently, once existing bookings have been honoured — and our guests deserve to understand why.

The wildfire was the moment that made the decision clear, but it did not come from nowhere. Booking.com is a powerful platform, and that power sits almost entirely with the platform rather than with the hosts or the guests. The interface is aging and cumbersome. The support model — no dedicated contact, no case ownership, a rotating cast of agents each starting from scratch — is structurally incapable of handling anything that falls outside the standard script.

For a large hotel chain with a dedicated reservations team and a legal department, this is manageable. For a small, carefully curated collection of properties run by individuals who care deeply about the experience of every guest, it is not the right partnership.

Book directly — it is simpler than you think

Booking through stayscrete.com or reaching us directly by phone or message is not only easier than using a platform — it is often cheaper. Without commission layers built into the price, we have more flexibility on rates, and we pass that directly to guests who come to us without an intermediary.

More importantly, when something unexpected happens — a flight cancelled, a family emergency, an act of nature — you are not navigating a platform's cancellation policy or waiting for an algorithm to process your request. You contact us. One call, one message. We handle it. Refunds for genuine emergencies are not a bureaucratic procedure for us; they are a straightforward conversation between people.

This is what direct booking actually means. Not just a marginally better rate, but a fundamentally different relationship — one where the person who answers your message is the same person who will be there if something goes wrong.

What this means for guests

If you have previously booked a STAYS property through Booking.com, your reservation will be honoured in full. Nothing changes for existing bookings. Our commitment to you as a guest is the same regardless of which platform you used to book.

Going forward, our properties are bookable directly through our website at stayscrete.com, and through Airbnb. Direct bookings carry advantages that platform bookings do not — direct communication with us from the moment you enquire, flexibility that no algorithm can match, and the knowledge that when something unexpected happens, you are dealing with people who will pick up the phone.

We have always believed that the best version of hospitality is a direct relationship between host and guest. Booking.com was never fully compatible with that belief. The wildfire simply made it impossible to pretend otherwise.