Booking.com, sued by over 10,000 hotels in Europe. The apple of discord: the clause “the best price”

The online platform Booking.com is facing a collective action from over 10,000 European hotels, which claim that the mega-site reservations have used its power to distort the market to their detriment for a period of 20 years, The Guardian said on Thursday.

The association of hotels, restaurants and cafes in Europe (Hottc), which represents the EU industry and has filed the action in court, has recently extended until August 29 the deadline for hotel owners to join the process, due to high demand.

The process, which is expected to be one of the largest in the European hotel sector, is also supported by 30 national hotel associations, including the UK.

“Over 10,000 hotels have already joined the Pan-European initiative to request compensation for the financial losses caused by Booking.com of illegal clauses on the parity of” best price “,” said Hottc, in a statement.

The association argues that the commitment to the “best price” on booking.com has been obtained from hotels under a huge pressure not to offer rooms at lower prices on other platforms, including on their own websites.

The hotel industry claims that the platform based in the Netherlands has used the respective clauses and to prevent customers from doing what it calls “free reservations”, that is, the use of its services to find a hotel, and then make a direct reservation to the location management, bypassing Booking.com.

“The records [pentru acțiunea în justiție] It continues to grow constantly, and the answer so far demonstrates the strong desire for the hospitality industry to oppose the unfair practices on the digital market, ”said Hott.

The dispute, which, according to experts, will be a difficult fight, requires damages for the period 2004-2024, when booking.com eliminated the clause on the best price to comply with the EU law on digital markets.

Hotrec said that the collective action in the court, which will be tried in Amsterdam, follows a decision of the European Court of Justice (CEJ) of 2024, “which found that the parity clauses of Booking.com violate the EU legislation on competition.”

“European hoteliers have been suffering from unfair conditions and excessive costs for a long time. Now it is time to unite and ask for damages,” said President Hottc, Alexandros Vassilikos, denouncing “abusive practices on the digital market” in Europe.

How to defend the platform

Booking.com has qualified the statements of Hottc and other hotel associations as “incorrect and misleading” in a statement sent to the British publication by e-mail, adding that he did not receive “an official notification of a collective action”.

The online platform said the CJUE's decision did not find that the clauses of the “best price” of Booking.com were anti -competitive, but “simply stated that such clauses fall into the scope of EU competition law and that their effects must be evaluated on a case -by -case basis”.

The company referred to a statement of SA regarding “his commitment to loyal competition”, in which he argued that “the parity clauses of the past have served to promote competitive prices, rather than restricting them”.

Also, the online platform cited a poll in which 74 % of the hoteliers said that booking.com made their business more profitable, many of them reporting higher employment rates and lower customer attraction costs. However, other representatives of the sector criticized the company's practices, considering them unfair.

“As he earned the market control, Booking was able to increase his commissions and exert much greater pressure on the (profit) margins,” said Véronique Siegel, president of the hotel division of the French Association of Umih, for the Public France Inter.

“For a room for which the client pays 100 euros (87 pounds), if the Booking commission is subtracted, the hotelor receives in the best case 75 euros, with which he has to pay his employees and invest,” said Siegel.

“The winner takes everything”

Despite friction, Booking.com inevitably seems for many hotels, offering online coverage and difficult to reach for smaller and independent units.

A study by Hottc and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Western Switzerland found that Booking Holding, the parent company, controlled 71% of the European market in 2024, compared with 68.4% in 2019.

The corporation is evaluated at $ 170 billion (127 billion pounds), three times more than Volkswagen.

Rupeprecht Podszun, director of the Institute for Competition Law at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, said that booking.com is a classic example of how a digital platform can conquer a whole sector, creating a “winner.

He stated that the action in court will probably be long and will raise the thorny issue of how the damages can be quantified.

“The judges will have to rule, and then the case will go through all the remedies – everything with huge costs and all the tricks available in the law,” he told the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.

“The case represents a revolt of hotels, which say,” You can't do what you want with us “, added Ru RuPrecht Podszun.