How do I get through the phone menu to a real live person?
GetHuman researchers routinely call this Booking.com phone number to document the phone system.
Here is our latest tip for weaving through the phone menu to get to a real person the fastest:Enter your confirmation number, or hold for an agent
Here is how our research team describes the way the Booking.com phone system greets you: Must provide your confirmation and booking number. Please enter your booking number.
Below are some clips we've found from Booking.com's phone menus and tips that help give an idea of what you will encounter when you call. We've highlighted why they are important as well:
They may ask you to enter information with the dial pad
"Thank you for calling Booking dot com.
Your call may be recorded for training purposes.
We can only assist callers.
Who provide their confirmation number and PIN number. You will find your confirmation number and PIN number at the top of your confirmation email.
If you don't have either, you can go to booking dot com slash help where you can sign in or create an account.
In order to use our customer service help center. There, you can message us your customer service inquiry, contact your accommodation provider, and make changes to any of your upcoming bookings.
We appreciate your patience.
Please enter your booking number."
Excerpt from a call with Booking.com
Friday, April 12, 2024 1:05 AM
What are the hours and when should I call?
Booking.com operates the call center for this 888-850-3958 phone number 24 hours, 7 days.The short answer is that you should call on a Tuesday.This observation and the following section are based on analysis of a sample set of 9,747 calls made in the last 90 days using our free, web-based phone (see above).
An important note: busy times vs hold times vs best time to call
When we refer to busy or less busy times, we are talking about the volume of calls. The busiest times are when the most people are calling this Booking.com phone number (least busy times have fewer people calling). This high call volume does not necessarily mean that you will have a long hold time when you call. Companies like Booking.com staff their call centers differently based on the time of day and day of the week, so you may experience a shorter wait on hold at the busiest of times. When we refer to the best time to call, we are referring to the optimal combination of lower call volume and shorter wait times.
The least busy time to call
The least busy day to call Booking.com is Sunday.The most busy day to call is Thursday, which averages 45% more phone calls by comparison.Again, this is based on a sample of 9,747 calls made with our AI-powered, web-based phone in the last 90 days.
Sun
Quietest
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Busiest
Fri
Sat
The shortest wait on hold
We measured the shortest hold times to be on Tuesday.The longest wait in the queue on average occurs on Sunday, which is 294% longer than the minimum.As you can see, there is more fluctuation in hold time over the course of the week than there is in call volume.
Sun
Longest
Mon
Tue
Shortest
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
The best time to call
In summation, the best day to call Booking.com is Tuesday.It isn't the least busy day, but the fact that hold times are shortest combined with it being on the busy side tells us that Booking.com staffs up on Tuesday to handle the higher call volume, and that makes it the best time to call.
Why call this Booking.com number?
Below is a sample of recent calls to Booking.com, and their purpose. Are any of these similar to the reason you are trying to call?
Room change request: "Is it possible to change my room from a garden view to an Eiffel Tower view?"
- From a call lasting 8m 5s , Apr 9, 2024 12:01 PM
Payment query: "Can you please charge my card for the booking that appears unpaid?"
- From a call lasting 8m 48s , Apr 9, 2024 9:43 AM
Assistance with booking modification: "My problem is that I booked this accommodation in Italy and I saw that I had free cancellation, but my flights have been changed, so I either want to transfer my booking to similar dates in July or cancel it for a refund."
- From a call lasting 13m 26s , Apr 8, 2024 10:58 PM
Technical difficulties: "Can you hear me, sir? Hello?"
- From a call lasting 8m 53s , Apr 8, 2024 8:25 PM
Question about reservation: "I have a question about my reservation."
- From a call lasting 5m 56s , Apr 6, 2024 10:06 AM
Refund request for mistaken booking: "I booked a room for ladies by mistake, they rejected me, I cancelled, now want a refund as promised."
- From a call lasting 17m 26s , Apr 4, 2024 11:56 AM
Refund not received: "I canceled my reservation and haven't received my refund after contacting them multiple times."
- From a call lasting 26m 16s , Apr 4, 2024 8:06 AM
Discrepancy in booking charge: "I was charged almost a hundred dollars more than the total Booking.com stated for my reservation."
- From a call lasting 53m , Apr 3, 2024 9:19 PM
Booking payment issue: "You took my money for a booking that was not confirmed in your system."
- From a call lasting 11m 1s , Apr 2, 2024 5:52 PM
Confusion over booking details: "Why shall I receive this checking information and the quotes of the door through the Airbnb chat."
- From a call lasting 25m 45s , Apr 1, 2024 2:16 PM
Contacting this number for assistance is only possible if you are already a customer of Booking.com. This number is designed to be used by people who have already booked online, which the automated system explains when you dial. When you call this number, you're sent to an automated message that tells you they're getting higher call volumes than normal and urges you to either call back another time or ask for help online if your request is not urgent.
If you stay on the line, the message further explains that the call center can only help people who provide a booking number. If you don't have that information, it tells you where in your e-mail you can find it. If you don't have an e-mail from Booking.com, it says you can log into your account with Booking and find it that way. If that also doesn't work, you cannot use the phone system for assistance.
To ensure that nobody can use the system who is not already a customer, the system puts in a request for you to enter your confirmation number, and there's no way for you to get around it. The system will use the confirmation number to identify your reservation and will not let you proceed without a valid number. At this point, someone looking for information has no choice but to hang up and search for help online.
Overall, I thought it made sense that Booking.com didn't offer any assistance over the phone. Given that this is an online-based company meant to help people search for and find hotels, most people who would call for information probably wouldn't be using Booking.com anyway. The phone system tells you that you can still find help online if needed, allowing all customers to get at least some information out of calling.
I also thought it made sense that this number didn't want anyone wasting time over the phone when they couldn't get assistance that way. If calls are higher than normal, Booking.com should provide its customers with as minimal a wait as possible. Keeping calls limited only to people who genuinely need assistance and can't resolve their issues online makes for a better experience for everyone involved.
Overall, I would not recommend using this phone number to get help unless you've already booked a room through Booking.com. If you haven't already used the site for a reservation, there won't be anything you can do with this number.
Adam has been tirelessly trying to help customers find the best tips and tricks to get through phone trees and writing many guides for prickly customer service problems. He's been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Inside Edition and Bloomberg.
More Ways to Contact Booking.com Customer Service
There are of course other ways to contact Booking.com customer service besides the phone. Below we list the best ones, by medium.
Corresponding with a customer service department by email may not be your first choice, especially if your issue is urgent or time-sensitive. But email is a nearly ubiquitous form of communication, and Booking.com will reply our your email.
Booking.com, like many companies, provides customer service on the X platform (formerly Twitter). While it rarely entails live dialogue with a customer service rep, this channel can yield rapid response times and can be a useful option if you have an X/Twitter account.
As a last, sometimes only, resort- Booking.com customer service can be accessed through their website. This can entail digging through help articles before finding a form and "being allowed" to submit a problem to their team, and rarely leads to a real-time conversation, which is why GetHuman does not recommend this unless it's the only way.
Conclusion and closing notes
This is Booking.com's best phone number, the real-time current wait on hold and tools for skipping right through those phone lines to get right to a Booking.com agent. This phone number is Booking.com's best phone number because 174,768 customers like you used this contact information over the last 18 months and gave us feedback. Common problems addressed by the customer care unit that answers calls to 888-850-3958 include Refund My Booking, Change My Booking, Question About A Booking, Overcharge on Account, Complaint About My Stay and other customer service issues. The Booking.com call center that you call into has employees from Toronto, Indonesia and is open 24 hours, 7 days according to customers. In total, Booking.com has 1 phone number. It's not always clear what is the best way to talk to Booking.com representatives, so we started compiling this information built from suggestions from the customer community. Please keep sharing your experiences so we can continue to improve this free resource.
GetHuman does not provide call center services or customer support operations for Booking.com. The two organizations are not related. GetHuman builds free tools and shares information to help customers of companies like Booking.com. For large companies that includes tools such as our GetHuman Phone, which allows you to call a company but skip the part where you wait on the line to get a live human rep. We continue to work on these tools to help customers like you (and ourselves!) navigate the messy phone menus, hold times, and confusion with customer service. As long as you keep sharing it with your friends and loved ones, we'll keep doing it.
