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Comment by berbec | Hacker News Reader

This is some new definition of the word "need" that I am unaware of. Methinks a liquidity problem is the true culprit.

Unless they've been doing shit like paying for promotion discounts in a "snowball" pyramid scheme - which I don't believe - they should not have a liquidity problem, quite the contrary, as people pay weeks to months in advance.

The interesting thing is... what's with the hosts who get into financial difficulties after 10 days of delayed payments. I get it that three years of a pandemic, the consequences of the Ruzzian war, and inflation have been a drain on everyone's reserves - but not even ten days of runway? Holy shit.

It's not 10 days; it's (up to) almost a month:

> payments for guests checking out from June 28 would be delayed and all paid out in one go on July 24.

That said, it sounds like payments are normally delayed by 10 days from checkout.

Of course, apparently some payments "could be delayed until August", so all I can say with authority is that this is a mess.

Okay now that is an entirely different amount of mess (and completely unacceptable), still troubling to see businesses having such a low amount of runway. I mean, anything could drive them into disaster at that point, even an unrelated natural disaster cutting off the roads to the village or whatever.

Came across this thread as I am owed well over 60 bed nights by BdotC. Say what you like about lack of runway, bear in mind that I bore all the costs for this accommodation upfront, some of it since May. Everything. If I had let those rooms out on another platform I would have been paid on check-in.

Why are they robbing the little guys, what is going on with their cash flow? A switchover can happen overnight, with the right planning, there should be no need to delay payments by 3 months!

While I lack direct first-person experience, I've heard some pretty harrowing tales about the state of booking.com's backend over the years from multiple independent sources, which makes me think that "technical reasons" is at least plausible.

Also, from a quick search, Booking seems to be doing fine financially.

100% has to be a liquidity issue. I am guessing that they invest the funds in trust in overnight markets and someone has had too many losses.

They are sponsoring FIFA women's football world cup 2023. Definitely, not bankruptcy or liquidity issue.

That would be quite the story, as I have the impression that Booking is absurdly profitable.

That's what they said about Van Moof, and plenty of other companies that ultimately went bankrupt.

They had a pretty bad loss two quarters ago:

"Net income was $266 million, compared with a net loss of $700 million in the prior-year quarter"

https://s201.q4cdn.com/865305287/files/doc_financials/2023/q...

payments to hosts over IT techni...

Please visit this group in FB which was created to register all the concerns from hosts and guests from all over the world. We can collectively work together to fix this situation. https://m.facebook.com/groups/1316864141779135/

Hahah, I wish. Booking stock is at an all-time-high at the moment, and we could have made very good money if they indeed had a liquidity problem.

Poor tech + poor timing. Take off the tinfoil hats.

To be fair, payment in is probably handled completely differently through a payment service provider as card payment, where as payment out probably is bank transfers, which I would imagine is not as easy.

Seems more or at least equally realistic that someone screwed up and now Booking.com won't admit that they are scrambling to fix something on the backend.

Scrambling implies something quick. This has been going on for too long to use that term.

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck

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