Hotels Still Weary of Booking.com Pricing Dominance
Skift Take
Booking.com might still be able to throw its commercial weight around with hotels despite these new agreements, depending on their fine print.
Competition authorities in France, Italy and Sweden have reached agreements with Booking.com to ensure that hoteliers in Europe can offer lower rates to online travel agencies than they do to the hotel-booking powerhouse but some hoteliers believe the commitments don't go far enough and there are plenty of questions still to be answered.
The agreements, in theory at least, restore competition among online travel agencies, which until now had rate parity and most-favored nation agreements with hotels guaranteeing that competitors and the hotels' own websites couldn't offer lower room pricing than available through hotels' contacts with Booking.com.
The agreements announced April 21 extract additional concessions from Booking.com as compared with proposed commitment that Booking.com revealed last December.
"The revised commitments will also allow an accommodation provider to, among other things, offer different terms and conditions (e.g., free WIFI) and availability to consumers that book with on-line travel companies that offer lower rates of commission or other benefits, offer lower rates to consumers that book through off-line channels and continue to discount through, among other things, accommodation loyalty programs, as long as those rates are not published or marketed online," Booking.com states.
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