Hotel in southern Germany booted from Booking.com after telling Israeli man who tried to book a room that Jews are not welcome.
By World Israel News Staff
A hotel in southern Germany was removed from Booking.com after Israeli travelers trying to reserve a room received a message saying Jews were not allowed at the property, according to Israeli diplomats stationed in Germany.
The message, sent in English through the booking platform, said: “Sorry, there are no Jews allowed in our hotel.”
The incident involved Hotel Zum Hirschen in Lam, a town in Bavaria near the Czech border. The family hotel advertises itself as a wellness and leisure property in the Bavarian Forest, with about 40 rooms and facilities for families, groups and travelers with dogs.
The Israeli guests filed a complaint with Booking.com and contacted Israel’s consulate general in Munich. Booking.com later removed the hotel from its platform, making it unavailable for reservations through the site.
Israel’s consul general in Munich, Talya Lador, condemned the message in a German-language post on X.
“Are we back in the 1930s?” she wrote, sharing a screenshot of the reply. “A hotel answered an Israeli as follows: ‘Sorry, there are no Jews allowed in our hotel.’ I am glad that Booking.com banned this hotel from its website.”
Ynet reported that the Israeli consulate contacted the relevant authorities and examined the case.
According to the report, the hotel initially denied sending the message, but later acknowledged that one of its employees had done so.
The case was referred to the commissioner for combating antisemitism at Bavaria’s Justice Ministry to review whether legal action is warranted.
German news agency dpa reported that the hotel has since apologized in writing to the guest and offered the guest and family a free weeklong stay.
The hotel said it had been dealing with fake bookings and phishing attempts through a major booking platform and had wrongly assumed the Israeli request was fraudulent.
“It was definitely wrong of us to respond in this way in the chat,” the hotel wrote in an email cited by dpa.
The hotel said the comment was not directed at Jews, but came “out of anger over the numerous fake bookings.” It added that the reply was “nevertheless unacceptable and must not happen in a professional business.”
Junior manager Andreas Vogl told dpa, “That is not our worldview at all.”
He said the hotel had received threats and death threats since the incident and that its removal from the booking platform was a major problem for the business.
The episode comes as Germany continues to confront elevated levels of antisemitism following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the war in Gaza.
RIAS, Germany’s antisemitism monitoring network, reported 8,627 antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2024, nearly double the previous year’s total. In Berlin, RIAS documented 2,197 antisemitic incidents in 2025, a decline from the previous year but still more than double the level recorded before October 7.
It was not immediately clear whether German authorities would open formal proceedings against the hotel or any employee involved in sending the message.
