Helen Coffey, Independent, June 25, 2019

A Miami condo host has been removed from the Booking.com platform after allegations were made on social media that she called a black guest “n*****” in a flurry of racist messages.

The texts, shared on Twitter, show a woman who identifies herself as “Julia” questioning the guest’s credit card validity, before calling her a “f***ing n*****” and asking if she is a prostitute.

Separate emails seem to show the same woman sending the guest a picture of a monkey with the caption: “You wanna banana Africa”.

Comparing pictures shared in the thread and corresponding online profiles, the messages appear to have been sent by Giulia – an individual host who rents out condos at Ocean Five Condo Hotel, but operates completely separately from the hotel – to a woman named only as Monifah in the screenshots shared on social media.

The host starts by saying that there seems to be something wrong with the woman’s credit card, before quickly becoming more aggressive.

“Are you there or are you acting like you are ignoring me,” reads the next message, followed by: “You acting with lies gives a very very bad picture for all of the black people please try to act like a lady and be a very good representation of black people and not a lying untrustable [sic] person giving bad name to black people.”

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Giulia said she started receiving threatening messages from Monifah before retaliating.

“I did respond to her, ‘You stupid Monkey’ because enough was enough, however where I come from in Italy the word monkey is used to describe rude behaviour.”

Booking.com confirmed to The Independent that it had taken the condo off its website while investigations were underway.

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Airbnb also confirmed it had removed the condo from its listings, replying to the original thread on Twitter: {snip}

Expedia appears to still be advertising the condo.

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