An apartment wrecked by guests who booked a property online has left the landlord furious and questioning online-booking responsibilities.

Andrea Vrazhalska told The Malta Independent that her apartment was booked by a group of four Mexican guests for two nights with booking.com in the last weekend of November. 

After the two-night stay, and following the guests’ departure from the apartment, Vrazhalska said that she walked in the “new” property only to find burnt utensils, black sheets, mattresses with cigarette burns and urine on the floor, amongst others.

“When we arrived at the flat, the guests collected their things and rushed out into the taxi, and we went into the flat and found a complete mess,” she said.

“Mattresses burnt with cigarette burns, burnt utensils, like pots and pans, rubbish thrown around everywhere, floors covered in rubbish, dirty sheets, urine on the floor, and things pushed around,” she continued, “it was terrible.”

She continued to explain that, upon viewing the damage, she called the guests and they said that they “forgot their passports at the apartment, so they said they would come back to pick up their passports and settle the issues.”

However, she believes that they were just buying time to prevent Vrazhalska from contacting the police. “They lied, they were already at the airport, they had left and they tricked me,” she stated.

On a post posted on social media, the frustrated landlord said that the website “claims no responsibility. The website claims they take no deposit.” Speaking to this newspaper, Vrazhalka said that her main concern is that of security when it comes to booking online.

“The main issues are this damage that I have to fix myself and a question of security,” she argued.

“Booking.com is taking a commission and it doesn’t provide protection” she said.  “Besides that, I have to fix this damage myself since it is not clear whether the website, which is such a big booking website, takes deposits or not.”