My Weird Mariupol Hotel Warning Email From Booking.com

Booking.com has just sent me a bizarre email warning about “suspicious emails or phone calls” to guests who have stayed at a Mariupol hotel in the past.

A trip to Mariupol

Long-time readers of my website will probably remember that a few weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, I took a work trip by train to Mariupol in the Donbas.

The trip itself was certainly an intriguing one, from the 5,200 kilometres (3,230 miles) I travelled through Romania, Hungary and Ukraine by train to reach the Donbas, to the visit to Mariupol itself, which turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant city.

Of course, given the vast destruction of Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities at the hands of the Russian invaders that followed shortly after, along with the ongoing human suffering in Ukraine as a result of Russian war crimes, my memories are deeply bittersweet.

With that in mind, I’ve just received a highly curious email from Booking.com regarding my visit to the city and the hotel I had booked for my stay.

Reikartz Hotel Mariupol

During my time in Mariupol, I stayed at the Reikartz, one of the best-reviewed business hotels in the city.

I had an enjoyable stay at the hotel and certainly wasn’t the only foreign visitor, as I saw a couple of TV crews and journalists from other Western countries during breakfast, which wasn’t exactly surprising given the increasing geopolitical tensions and the Russian military buildup along the border.

For those who have never heard of it, Reikartz is an international hotel chain founded by Belgian architect François Ryckaerts, who, along with some investors, opened the group’s first hotel in the Ukrainian Carpathians.

By 2020, Reikartz had become the largest hotel chain in Ukraine, operating more than 40 hotels across the country, with a Turkish-based Reikartz franchise later expanding to open hotels in Turkey, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Uzbekistan.

Email from Booking.com

Today, I received the following email from Booking.com regarding my hotel stay at the Reikartz Mariupol, which I will quote in full, with only my reservation number redacted:

Thank you for choosing Booking.com for your reservation at Reikartz Mariupol. We are always available to assist you in case you have a question or request.

Some customers have reported that they have received emails or phone calls that are suspicious and could be from criminals pretending to represent Booking.com or the property. With this email, we want to help you identify when you are being contacted by a criminals pretending to be Booking.com or the property.

How to identify whether you are being contacted by Booking.com or by a criminal:

• We will never ask you to share credit card details via email or on the phone.
• We will never ask you to make a bank transfer that is different from your reservation conditions.
• We will always email from an official booking.com email address (ending in @booking.com) and the email will not have link to a non-Booking.com or non-Villas.com website.

How to identify whether you are being contacted by Booking.com or by a criminal:

• We will never ask you to share credit card details via email or on the phone.
• We will never ask you to make a bank transfer that is different from your reservation conditions.
• We will always email from an official booking.com email address (ending in @booking.com) and the email will not have link to a non-Booking.com or non-Villas.com website.

For us to be able to support and protect you, please choose the option that applies to you:

• If you have not received a suspicious email or phone call, click here.
• If you have received a suspicious email or phone call, but did not respond to it, click here.
• If you think you may have received a suspicious email or phone call AND shared your credit card details or made a payment to them, click here.

Thank you again for choosing Booking.com. We are available 24 hours a day to assist you, and assure you once more that the security of your personal information is our utmost priority.

Security

The email was sent from an official Booking.com address, with links to valid Booking.com pages, so it doesn’t appear to be a phishing attempt.

In fact, the tips in the email are all quite useful, offering valid advice to keep in mind when making hotel bookings, as many people these days unfortunately fall victim to scams by criminals who have somehow gained access to private data or by fake property listings.

Normally, I would simply ignore such an email, as I haven’t received any other suspicious emails or phone calls, but given that this concerns a hotel in Mariupol of all places, there are so many questions running through my mind.

So many questions

First of all, how did these “suspicious persons” manage to obtain the data of Reikartz hotel stays?

Has Booking.com become a victim of a data leak, or has data been obtained from Reikartz’s own archives or other sources?

Then there are the questions of who might be behind this and what their intentions are.

If the aim is financial gain through access to people’s credit card details, that’s one thing.

On its own, this wouldn’t be particularly remarkable, as it’s unfortunately a fairly common issue.

It also seems highly unlikely, as in the case of a past reservation at a hotel in Mariupol, I can’t imagine anyone falling for a scam involving requests to share financial information.

Yet the wording of the Booking.com email warning about “suspicious” emails and phone calls doesn’t necessarily point to a financial scam, as it could just as well involve attempts to steal personal data or use phishing methods to install malware on someone’s device.

Given that many of those who stayed at the Reikartz Hotel in Mariupol before the invasion may have been journalists, diplomats, NGO workers or even military liaisons, they could well be considered high-value targets for Russian hackers.

The tragic fate of the Reikartz Hotel in Mariupol

This Booking.com email about the Reikartz Mariupol prompted me to look more closely into what actually became of the hotel during Russian occupation.

Needless to say, you can’t book a hotel stay through any Western-based website in Russian-occupied Ukraine due to sanctions, so the Reikartz no longer appears on Booking.com or similar platforms.

When I checked a couple of Russian websites, I discovered the tragic fate of the Reikartz Mariupol, as it appears the hotel was among the many buildings in the city that were completely destroyed during the siege.

Bizarrely, that hasn’t stopped leaving some users on popular Russian search engine Yandex for leaving 1-star reviews of this hotel.

User Valery Kovalevich wrote: “We were going to Crimea for the first time on an alternative route.

“We were tired from the road, started looking at hotels on the map where we could stay, and when we arrived everything became clear.

“Luckily, the locals suggested a recently opened hotel. In July 2023, they had just started restoring the building.”

Users Andrey and Albina simply both commented “ruin” along with their 1-star review.

Is it just me, or should that 1-star review be reserved not for the hotel, but for the person who actually destroyed it – Vladimir Putin?

Conclusion

I’ve received a strange email from Booking.com about a past hotel stay at the Reikartz in Mariupol, Ukraine, warning me that some customers have reported receiving suspicious emails or phone calls regarding the hotel.

Although phishing attempts and other scams are quite common with hotel bookings, this situation is particularly odd, given that it involves a hotel completely destroyed by the Russians after they invaded Mariupol, raising so many questions.

I would love to know what kind of suspicious activity past guests have encountered in emails or phone calls regarding their Mariupol hotel stay, as it could be a simple scam attempt, or something much more sinister involving the Russians.

For what it’s worth, I’ve contacted Booking.com to see if they’re willing to provide more insights into this.