Hurb's unpaid hotels stranded travellers as the platform filed a consumer-agency plan

In May 2023, Brazilian travel platform Hurb — an app for hotel reservations, guesthouses and flights — presented a restructuring plan to Senacon, the national consumer secretariat, to deal with travel packages it had sold but not fulfilled. The company had promised the plan at a meeting with the agency on 12 May, alongside a commitment to answer every complaint on the consumer.gov.br site.

The company was in an image crisis over reports it had stopped paying hotels and pousadas, which cancelled reservations and affected thousands of people; consumer groups with thousands of participants formed on social media as buyers tried to recover money or confirm bookings. Hurb claimed more than 87% of customer questions had been resolved and that every complaint on Reclame Aqui had been answered.

The crisis had already claimed its leadership: then-CEO João Ricardo Mendes resigned the month before after threatening and insulting customers online — telling one client whose flights were never issued, 'Tá arriscado alguém bater na merda da sua casa'. In his resignation letter he admitted mistakes and tried to separate his conduct from the company's image. New CEO Otávio Brissan pledged that customers who bought packages 'will travel'.

The platform collected travellers' money up front while failing to pay the hotels and guesthouses that had to deliver the stays.

Its chief executive personally abused stranded customers online, turning a service failure into a leadership scandal.

Remediation only took structured shape after the consumer agency opened an administrative case and demanded a plan.

The company leaned on response-rate statistics — complaints answered, questions resolved — while the underlying obligation, fulfilled bookings, remained unmet.

Marketplaces live on supplier trust: holding travellers' money while hotels go unpaid converts a liquidity gap into a full reputation collapse.

Hurb said its four-stage plan would categorise open cases, prioritise demands, resolve them and add transparency measures. Senacon acknowledged the company had answered its administrative process but would not say whether the responses were satisfactory.