Amoma.com Troubles May Delight Hoteliers That Hate Its Rate Discounting
Skift Take
Hoteliers probably disliked Amoma.com more than any other online travel agency in the past few years. Amoma often undercut hoteliers on price. Now its reported troubles may have repercussions across the hotel and online travel industry for companies like Hotelbeds, Google, and Booking.com.
Online consumer review forums lit up Friday with complaints from many travelers that they had been stranded when hotels stopped honoring reservations booked via Amoma.com, an online agency.
Spanish news publication Preferente claimed Friday that Amoma had filed for bankruptcy. Amoma CEO Nicolas Arthur and his co-founder, chief technology officer, Yann Arthur, didn't respond to our text messages at the time of publication.
UPDATE: On Saturday, Amoma stopped taking bookings. It posted a message on its site blaming price-comparison sites for unfair business practices.
Virgil Ciebrant, a Dutch tourist visiting Paris, told us Friday that in April he had booked a stay at B&B Hotel at Disneyland Paris through Amoma. But when he showed up Friday the hotel said it would not honor the booking because Amoma hadn't been paying its bills, Ciebrant said.
Trustpilot, a site collecting consumer feedback, reported a flurry of messages from users this morning saying that hotels had denied their bookings because of payment problems. Amoma has been attempting to get TrustPilot to remove many of them for "inappropriate content."
"Everyone knew this was going to happen," Guilain Denisselle, editor of French trade publication T
