The case, coordinated by industry group Hotrec and supported by 30 national hotel associations, is set to be heard in Amsterdam. Hotrec extended the sign-up deadline to August 29 after what it called “high demand” from hoteliers seeking redress for losses incurred between 2004 and 2024.
At the heart of the complaint are price-parity clauses that, according to Hotrec, required hotels to offer Booking.com the lowest publicly available rate and prevented them from selling cheaper rooms on their own sites or rival platforms.
Hoteliers say the practice inflated commissions and squeezed profits as Booking.com’s share of Europe’s online booking market grew to 71% last year.
Booking.com, owned by $170 billion parent Booking Holdings, scrapped the clauses in 2024 to comply with the EU Digital Markets Act. It called Hotrec’s allegations “incorrect and misleading,” insisting the European Court of Justice merely ruled that such clauses fall under competition rules and must be assessed case-by-case, not that they are inherently illegal.
The company says parity agreements once helped “foster competitive pricing,” citing an internal survey in which 74 % of participating hoteliers credited the platform with higher occupancy and lower customer-acquisition costs.
Critics counter that dominance allowed Booking.com to raise commissions, leaving operators with as little as €75 from a €100 room after fees, according to French hotel federation UMIH.
Legal scholars expect a prolonged battle, noting the challenge of quantifying damages across thousands of claimants.
“This is a revolt by hotels saying, ‘You can’t do what you want with us,’” said Rupprecht Podszun, director of the Institute for Competition Law at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf.
Despite mounting friction, many independents say the platform remains hard to bypass because of its unparalleled global reach, underscoring what Hotrec president Alexandros Vassilikos calls the need to curb “abusive practices in the digital market.”
(jh)
Source: Swissinfo, The Guardian, ERT