Booking is preparing to experience a future in Europe that is nothing like the past and present it has enjoyed until now. Travel agency on-line The most important company in the world has been forced to shed its skin due to pressure from Brussels and to terminate some of the main guidelines of its business plan, which had precisely led it to monopolize the distribution of the hotel room market, with a share of a third of the total in Europe and 71% among all digital agencies, according to the latest report from the European hotel lobby Hotrec.
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) promoted by Brussels has forced it to accept its status as gatekeeper (guardian) by meeting the three criteria established by the standard: having 45 million active users, having a market capitalization of 750,000 million euros and having met the two criteria for three years in a row. It launched that name, which it shares with Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon and ByteDance, on May 13 and only a month later it made public the biggest transformation: the elimination of price parity clauses in the contracts they sign in Europe with hotels, which prevented the latter from selling rooms below the Booking rate.
That means the end of one of the foundations on which your business has been built (pricing) and represents a victory for the lobby hotelier, who considered that the travel agency on-line It could not continue to do so with the high market share and dominant position it had achieved. “It is the first of a series of actions that will be forced by the DMA,” emphasizes Ramón Estalella, general secretary of the Spanish Confederation of Hotels and Tourist Accommodations (Cehat). In his opinion, there are three other aspects that Booking must change and that will serve to establish rules of the game equal to those that hotels comply with: “They must give us access to the reservation data of clients who enter through their platform, something that is not currently possible.” they do and that prevents us from carrying out commercial actions. They must also allow transactions outside their payment systems, which impose 1% to 3% commissions on hotels, and also end clauses that force us to reserve room availability for them.”
In any case, Estalella reaches out to Booking and highlights that it will continue to be a fundamental partner of hotels in the marketing of their beds, although with other rules. “Booking has done a lot of good for the hotel industry. It has successfully united supply and demand and has given visibility to millions of hotels 365 days a year, in all currencies, in all countries and in all languages. An unaffordable cost for many of them if they do it on their own.”
Ana Abade, head of Public Affairs for Booking in Spain and Portugal, is not able to anticipate whether the disappearance of price parity clauses will have an impact on the giant’s turnover. on-line in Europe. “We will continue to invest in technology, products and services that create value for our customers.” partners [mayoritariamente hoteles, pero también particulares y gestoras], helping them capitalize on our investments in marketing, technology and customer services in multiple languages and promoting their accommodations to customers around the world. We hope they continue to offer competitive prices through our platform. In other European markets where parity clauses did not exist, they are competitive and can drive incremental sales for their accommodations through Booking,” he emphasizes.
Abade prefers to abandon the language of confrontation with hotels and emphasizes that in the travel agency on-line They are very proud of the professional relationship with them. “Listening and connecting directly with them is essential to understanding how we can best support them. Our local team, made up of 150 professionals spread across 8 offices, is dedicated and available to work with each partner, answer any questions and help them achieve maximum visibility through our platform. “We continue to look for ways to connect to build together an increasingly resilient and successful sector.”
The Booking board rejects, however, that they are going to follow the same criterion in America or Asia with respect to the elimination of parity clauses. “We will not eliminate these requirements in other markets that are not within the reach of the DMA,” highlights Abade, in reference to the need to guarantee a competitive price in markets in which, unlike Europe, they have a very small market share. and at a disadvantage compared to other operators.
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