One woman found herself at the centre of a scam after dozens of tourists showed up at her house, thinking they’d booked it to stay in.
The woman from North London unwittingly ended up at the heart of a scam on the site Booking.com after around 100 tourists turned up at her home, expecting to stay there.
Travellers from around the world, including Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and Los Angeles descended on the home of Gillian throughout last month, MyLondon reported.
She told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme: "Someone knocked on my door. I opened it and it was this poor, very tired woman, presumably from Hong Kong, her daughter at the end of the gate, with hundreds of cases, it seemed to me, obviously [they had] just come from the airport.
"They said they'd booked my house with Booking.com. I said, 'No you haven't, because it's not on Booking.com'. I've never let this house. She looked aghast and I said, 'You'll just have to go back to them. I'm sorry, there's some misunderstanding'."
Gillian said just a few hours after the first people turned up, multiple others knocked on her door claiming to have booked the property through Booking.com - an online travel agency where anyone can list a property or home.
She continued: "They came from all over the world: Australians who'd just arrived, there were some people from Saudi Arabia, some people from the north of England, and I just couldn't believe it."
Between July 4 and July 29 around 100 people turned up at her home having booked it through the website she said.
She found her address listed on the site but the pictures used were of an entirely different property, one in Chelsea.
On July 5, she reported the scam to the travel website and the listing was removed six days later but tourists continued to show up at her door.
"It was obviously a scam, and someone had used my address. I felt so sorry for those tourists knocking on my door - all I could do was send them away," Gillian said.
A Booking.com spokesperson said: "We take safety and security very seriously, and every week, we facilitate millions of stays with the vast majority taking place with absolutely no problems. Scams are unfortunately a battle many industries are facing against unscrupulous fraudsters looking to take advantage and it is something we are tackling head on.
“We have a number of robust security measures in place, but in the very rare instance there may be an issue with a specific property we always investigate immediately."
