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When Erika Mann booked a hotel for the 2026 Formula One Grand Prix in Montreal, she played it safe.
Her relatives were flying in from the Netherlands to watch the races with her, and Mann, who lives in Oakville, Ont., wanted to make sure their accommodations were locked in.
On May 25, she booked a four-room unit on Booking.com at Montreal's Holland Hotel, steps from the heart of race-weekend action. Price tag: $4,300. "I was super excited and yeah, jumped right on it," Mann told Go Public.
But weeks after her reservation was confirmed, her excitement ended. Mann says both the hotel and Booking.com told her the price was a mistake — and if she still wanted the unit for May 22-24, 2026 she'd need to cough up four times the amount — more than $17,000.
"That was just so outstandingly outrageous that I almost couldn't believe it," she told Go Public.
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Digital rights expert David Fewer says shocks like this are becoming more common as online travel sites and hotels rely on automated booking and pricing systems.
He says Booking.com's policies allow confirmed reservations to be cancelled if the company decides the original rate was an error, leaving consumers exposed — especially when prices surge during big events, a practice known as event pricing.
"She'd done the research, she'd found the deal … and she'd booked it and thought she was done, and she was not," said Fewer, who directs the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) at the University of Ottawa.
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