Last December, a full year before Taylor Swift's billion-dollar Eras Tour was due to come to Vancouver, fans were already being quoted wildly jacked-up prices for accommodations. Swifties attending the pop star's Toronto concerts at the Rogers Centre this November aren't faring well, either: one has come forward accusing travel website Booking.com of suddenly cancelling her rental property bookings and re-listing them for almost eight times what she had paid.
Since Swift is skipping Montreal on the tour due to tears in the roof of the Olympic Stadium, Sarah Fournier — alongside her brother and friends — started making plans to travel to Toronto to see one of the performances there, securing two rental property bookings last August to accommodate the four of them from November 21 to 24, before they had even secured Eras Tour tickets. Fournier told CBC that she paid around $1,100 and $1,500, respectively, for the rentals.
Months later, Booking.com emailed Fournier saying that her accommodations were cancelled. By this point, similar rental properties on the website were being listed for between $3,000 and $8,000 — nearly eight times higher than what Fournier originally paid.
When she contacted the website inquiring about why her bookings were cancelled, they said the reservations were terminated because the properties were "not operating" anymore. (A spokesperson later told CBC that they had removed both of the properties Fournier had booked from the website for failing to meet its terms and conditions, not specifying which weren't met.)
However, when Fournier called the properties directly, she got different answers. One of them, Downtown Suites, told her that her booking had been cancelled due to a "glitch" on behalf of the booking website. They offered to let Fournier rebook directly through them, but repeatedly asked for more money upfront than she had agreed to.
A representative for the other property, Guestic Front Street, admitted that the property she had reserved had been re-listed at a higher price. Guestic told Fournier she had been one of about 60 reservations that had been cancelled — and told CBC that Guestic is now operating under a different name, but wouldn't share what it is or through what websites they were listing rental properties.
After her bookings were cancelled, Fournier said she "had a bit of a breakdown" knowing she couldn't afford to pay these higher accommodation rates. Thankfully, a family friend offered to let her group stay at their place for the concerts. Some of them will have to sleep on the floor, but Fournier said she was grateful — and that she will never, ever, ever be using Booking.com again.
