Booking.com is being sued by over 10,000 European hotels in a class-action lawsuit. The hotels claim the travel platform used its market dominance to unfairly manipulate prices over two decades, harming their businesses.
The lawsuit, organized by the European hotel association Hotrec, has been so popular that the deadline for hotels to join was extended to August 29. Backed by 30 national hotel groups, including the UK’s, it could become one of the biggest legal cases in Europe’s hospitality industry.
Hotrec says Booking.com forced hotels into “best price” agreements, preventing them from offering lower rates elsewhere—even on their own websites. The hotels argue these clauses stifled competition and cost them money. They also accuse Booking.com of penalizing customers who used the platform to find hotels but then booked directly.
“Registration for the lawsuit keeps growing, showing how strongly the industry wants to fight unfair digital practices,” Hotrec said.
The case, to be heard in Amsterdam, follows a 2024 EU court ruling that Booking.com’s pricing policies broke competition laws. The lawsuit seeks compensation for losses between 2004 and 2024, when Booking.com dropped the “best price” rule to comply with new EU regulations.
“European hotels have suffered for too long from unfair terms and high costs. Now we’re standing together to demand justice,” said Hotrec’s president, Alexandros Vassilikos.
Booking.com denied the claims, calling them “incorrect and misleading.” It said the EU court didn’t rule the clauses anti-competitive but simply stated they needed case-by-case review. The company also pointed to a survey where 74% of hotels said Booking.com boosted their profits.
However, critics say Booking.com’s growing market power—controlling 71% of Europe’s online hotel bookings in 2024—has let it hike fees and squeeze hotel profits.
“For a €100 room, after Booking’s cut, the hotel might get just €75—barely enough to cover costs,” said Véronique Siegel of French hotel group Umih.
Despite complaints, many hotels still rely on Booking.com for its unmatched online reach, leaving them caught between high fees and lost bookings if they walk away.Booking.com had a 68.4% market share in 2019. The company is now worth $170 billion (£127 billion), three times Volkswagen’s valuation.
Rupprecht Podszun, director of the Institute for Competition Law at Düsseldorf’s Heinrich Heine University, said Booking.com exemplifies how digital platforms can dominate entire sectors, creating a “winner takes all” scenario. He predicted the legal case would likely be drawn-out, focusing on the difficult question of how to calculate damages.
“Judges will need to form an opinion, and then it will go through all the appeals—costing a fortune and using every legal tactic available,” he told Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung. “This case is the hotels’ rebellion, saying: ‘You can’t just treat us however you want.'”
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