Booking.com eases parity controls in Europe
In an effort to please the European Commission, Booking.com proposed to stop parity requirements that forces hotels across Europe to offer it the same price as other OTAs. However, Booking.com will still prevent hotels from offering discounts or lower rates on their hotels’ own website – the biggest request by hotel marketers
.Online travel agent Booking.com has offered to scrap a practice which prevents hotels from giving discounts to its rivals, in a bid to end investigations by competition authorities in France, Sweden and Italy, the European Commission said on Monday 15 December.
Such so-called parity clauses in contracts between online booking sites and hotels are common in the industry and have led to complaints by competitors and scrutiny by regulators across Europe who are worried that they may dampen competition and hurt consumers.
“Booking.com has proposed to abandon the parity requirement in respect of prices which the hotel makes available to other online travel agents,” the commission said in a statement.
It said however that Booking.com could still have clauses in their agreements with hotels preventing them from offering discounts or lower rates on the hotels’ own websites.
