Content actions

Content verification and enforcement

Booking.com aims to reflect the most up-to-date reviews from our travelers. That’s why we have a fast turnaround on our content moderation.

The process of checking submitted reviews is:

The first round of checks is performed by our machine learning algorithms – these could be accommodation reviews and photos shared by guests, replies written by partners, or other types of content. From the moment we receive a piece of content, it only takes the algorithm seconds to approve it. That’s why the large majority of content is approved by our algorithms, then published on Booking.com.

Content that wasn’t approved by the algorithms is routed to our team of moderators – when our algorithms identify potentially guideline-violating content, they send it to our moderators for further review. We aim to review content within five business days and decide within that time frame if it’s suitable to be published on Booking.com.

After a review was published, it can still be removed at a later date – this can happen because machine learning algorithms are performing ongoing checks everyday.

Once approved, content is accessible via our platform and our apps. If our moderators deem that content violates one of our policies (including our content standards and guidelines), it won’t be published. Once a piece of content is removed, the decision can be appealed, or a new version of the content can be submitted to us.

Enforcement procedures

We take violations of our Terms and Conditions (including our values and content standards and guidelines) seriously, and we’ll act to protect against misuse of the service. When certain egregious content is uploaded (i.e. CSAM or terrorism-related content), this may lead to immediate and permanent suspension of your account after a single violation without warning. See our content guidelines to learn more about CSAM and terrorism-related content that may result in permanent suspension from our platform. You can appeal that decision, and we’ll review that appeal in light of the seriousness of the violation.

Enforcement procedures for abusive flaggers

We also don’t tolerate abusive reporting through our reporting and appeal processes.
This includes (but isn't limited to) multiple reports or appeals about the same topic and irrelevant or unfounded requests not related to content on our platform.
Reporting content or listings you think might be illegal, disagree with, or that seem inappropriate doesn’t guarantee the removal of the content.

We assess each report on a case-by-case basis and take appropriate action when it violates our Terms and Conditions (including our values and content standards and guidelines).
We reserve the right to take action against spammers and abusive flaggers, including disabling access to reporting and/or appeals processes or refusing to action abusive reports and/or appeals for a period of 90 days.