Accommodation wholesaler JacTravel has given a qualified welcome to commitments given by Booking.com in response to a probe by European Commission authorities into rate parity in the market for hotels.
Priceline-owned Booking.com has offered to drop best-price contract clauses with hotels to end French, Swedish and Italian antitrust probes, European Union regulators said.
Booking.com said it hoped the commitments would “pave the way for an industry-wide solution across Europe” and were a good outcome for accommodation providers and consumers.
The price clauses “may restrict competition between Booking.com and other online travel agents and hinder new booking platforms from entering the market,” the European Commission said.
“Booking.com has proposed to abandon the parity requirement in respect of prices which the hotel makes available to other online travel agents,” it added.
However, it said that Booking.com could still have clauses in its agreements with hotels preventing them from offering discounts or lower rates on the hotels’ own websites.
JacTravel head of contracting, Malcolm Lindop, said: “Whilst the Commission failed to compel Booking.com to remove all the objectionable clauses in its contracts with hotels, this is a small but important step in the right direction.
“We need a dynamic, competitive market in which hoteliers and distributors are properly free to negotiate whatever terms they wish between themselves and are not spooked by the spectre of large players exerting undue pressure.
“From experience, we know that when we are free to negotiate rates – most usually with independent hotels that are genuinely competitive in the open market – we can generate substantial bookings for our hotel partners. We now look forward to doing that rather more often.”