Booking.com faces a class action lawsuit by more than 10,000 European hoteliers who claim that Booking.com used its power to distort their market over a period of 20 years.
The Association of Hotels, Restaurants and Cafes in Europe, or Hotrec, represents the industry in Europe and has brought the legal action. extended to 29 August a deadline for hotel owners to join the suit High demand.
30 national hotel associations are also backing the lawsuit, which is expected be one of Europe’s largest-ever filed cases in the hospitality sector. This includes Britain’s.
“Over 10,000 hotels have already joined the pan-European initiative to claim compensation for financial losses caused by Booking.com’s use of illegal ‘best price’ (parity) clauses,” Hotrec said in a statement.
The claim is that hotels were under immense pressure to not offer lower rates on their own website or other platforms.
Hotel industry claims that Booking.com, based in the Netherlands, also uses these clauses to stop customers from making “free-rider bookings”, which are defined as using Booking.com to find hotels, but then booking directly through the hotel management.
“Registration [to the legal action] Hotrec stated that the industry has been responding positively to the growing number of complaints about unfair practices on the digital market.
Booking.com removed the “best price” clause in order to comply with the law. EU Digital Markets Act.
Hotrec stated that the class action will be heard in Amsterdam and is based on a ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) from 2024 “which found Booking.com’s parity provisions violated EU Competition Law”.
“European hotels have suffered unfair conditions for years. It is time to demand change, said Hotrec President Alexandros Vasilikos.
Booking.com referred to Hotrec, other hotel associations and their statements as “incorrect and false” in an email statement. It added that it hadn’t received “formal notice of a collective action”.
The ECJ said the “best price” provisions of Booking.com were not anti-competitive. Instead, it “simply stated such clauses fall under EU Competition Law and their effects must assessed on a per-case-basis”.
The company quoted a statement in which it stated that it was “committed to fair competition” and that previous parity clauses had “served as a catalyst for competitive pricing, rather than a barrier”.
It cited an opinion poll which 74% of hoteliers Booking.com has made many businesses more profitable. Many have reported higher occupancy rates and lower costs of customer acquisition. Other industry representatives have criticised Booking.com’s practices for being extractive.
“As they gained control of the market, Booking was able to increase its commission rates and exert much greater pressure on hoteliers’ margins,” Véronique Siegel, president of the hotels division of French hospitality sector association Umih, told public broadcaster France Inter.
“For a room that the customer pays €100 (£87) for, if you take away Booking’s commission, the hotelier receives €75 at best, with which they have to pay their employees and invest.”
Booking.com, despite the friction, is unavoidable by many hotels. They offer a level of online visibility and reach that independent, smaller establishments find difficult to match.
A study by Hotrec and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland Booking Holding’s parent company controls 71% of the European Market in 2024. This is up from 68.4% for 2019.
The company is valued at $170bn (£127bn), three times that of Volkswagen.
Rupprecht Podszun, director of the institute for competition law at Düsseldorf’s Heinrich Heine University, said Booking.com was a classic example of how a digital platform could conquer an entire sector, creating a “winner takes all” dynamic.
He said that a legal action against the company would likely be lengthy and hinge on how to measure damages.
“Judges will have to form an opinion and then it will go through all the appeals – everything at great expense and with all the tricks available under the law,” he told Germany’s daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.
“The case is a revolt of the hotels, saying: ‘You can’t just do what you want with us.'”
