A woman has had hundreds of holidaymakers knocking on her door saying they have booked to stay in her home. The woman says people travelled from as far as Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and Los Angeles thinking they had booked to stay in her house.
But they had all been scammed, she told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme, adding: "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 says a few hours after the first people turned up at her home, multiple other people knocked on her door saying they'd booked the property through Booking.com - where anyone can list a home or property, reports MyLondon.
She added: "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."
Gillian says that between July 4 and July 29, around 100 people turned up at her home after seeming to have booked the property through the website. She found her address listed on Booking.com, but the pictures used were of an entirely different home, one in Chelsea.
She reported it to the travel website on July 5 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 said 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."
