The Italian Competition Authority announced this Friday the initiation of an investigation against the Booking platform to determine an alleged abuse of a dominant position in the market for online intermediation and reservation services for hotel facilities. The antitrust body suspects that Booking would give hotels that are part of the Preferred Partner Program (and its Preferred Plus extension) advantages in terms of the visibility of their offer in search results, in exchange for higher commissions.
As well as “the commitment to offer competitive prices on Booking.com, that is, not higher than those applied by the facilities on their own website or on the platforms of other online travel agencies. The Italian organization has maintained that” After exhaustive and convenient monitoring, when it is verified that an establishment offers better prices on other online sites, it reserves the right to apply, without the consent of the establishment, a discount to align the Booking.com offer with the best available online. .
For this reason, they consider that “this strategy seems appropriate to hinder the development of effective competition in the market, at least at the national level, of online hotel reservation and intermediation services, to the detriment of other agencies.” Given the opening of the investigation, Booking confirms that it is “cooperating fully with the Financial Guard and the Competition Guarantee Authority” and that this Thursday some searches will take place in the offices in Italy.
