Hotels withhold rooms from travelers who booked via Amoma.com

Forums were in an uproar with complaints from travelers about being stranded when hotels stopped honoring reservations booked through online booking agency, Amoma.com.

Spanish news publication Preferente claimed 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: Amoma has 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, explained that in April he had booked a stay at B&B Hotel at Disneyland Paris through Amoma. But when he showed up, 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 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 Tendance Hotellerie. “The question was not will it happen but when. You can find hundreds of bad comments from consumers in forums on TripAdvisor.”

Amoma stopped responding to comments on TripAdvisor last month.

“We immediately removed Amoma from TripAdvisor’s hotel listing offers as soon as we became aware of their financial trouble,” said a TripAdvisor spokesperson. “We sympathize with anyone affected by this and would advise any travelers with inquiries about existing Amoma bookings to get in touch with their customer support team as soon as possible. Prior this event, Amoma had been a long-standing partner of many online travel agencies, hotels and travel planning sites, including TripAdvisor.”

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