Booking.com has resorted to unfair practices that has netted the platform billions and billions of tainted dollars | Credit: Shutterstock
The Belgian Dutch Consumers’ Association and the Consumers’ Competition Claims Foundation (CCC) have initiated a legal proceeding against Booking.com, accusing it of inflating hotel prices for years through anti-competitive tactics that have illegally netted the online platform billions of dollars.
The two consumer rights groups argue that the hotel-booking platform owes consumers compensation because it allegedly prevented hotels from offering better prices or terms elsewhere since 2013, the Belga News Agency reported.
Bert Heikens, chair of the CCC, stated that several European regulators have already found Booking.com to be in breach of competition law, according to the news agency. Sandra Molenaar, director of the Dutch Consumers’ Association, stated that the platform routinely misleads users by offering fake discounts, providing incomplete pricing information, and creating the impression of artificial scarcity.
The ‘dark patterns’ Booking uses
According to Belga News Agency, these techniques are known as ‘dark patterns’ and are banned under EU and Dutch law. The consumer rights groups claim that Booking’s damages to users are estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of euros.
“Anyone who has booked a hotel room directly or indirectly via Booking.com since 2013 may be eligible to join the claim, including those who have booked through affiliated platforms such as Agoda, or even hotel websites affected by Booking’s pricing policies,” the news outlet said.
The CCC is responsible for the legal proceedings. The Consumers’ Association is responsible for registering consumers who wish to claim compensation. Participation in the claim is free, but the consumer group might charge a fee of up to 25 per cent upon a successful case outcome.
Under scrutiny for many years
Booking.com has been under scrutiny in Europe since at least February 2024, when Spanish regulators imposed a fine of $530 million on the hotel booking platform and app for violating the country’s fair competition law, according to Skift.
In May of last year, the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC), Al-Haq, SOMO and The Rights Forum filed a criminal complaint to the Dutch Public Prosecution Service to hold Booking.com to account for profiting from the commission of war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT)..
They argued that by profiting from serious violations of international humanitarian law, Booking.com is bringing proceeds of crime into the Dutch financial system, which means that the company is guilty of money laundering, the claimants assert, the PIPD revealed.
In July 2024, Spain’s antitrust watchdog fined the online reservation group Booking.com €413.2 million ($448 million) for abusing its dominant market position in the country over the past five years, but later suspended the fine, Euro Weekly News reported.
Booking has made billions
Reuters explained that to maintain its high market share, Booking.com offers benefits to hotels that generate more fees, thereby limiting the ability of alternative service providers to convince hotels to work with them. Other reports reveal that hotels have overpaid Booking.com billions of dollars in overpaid commissions.
Last month, hotel associations from over 25 European countries took a major legal step against the online travel platform, in what was shaping up to be one of the most comprehensive pan-European legal actions in the hospitality sector, Travel and Tour World revealed. The action targets long-standing pricing practices imposed by the platform that allegedly harmed competition and restricted hotel independence across the continent.
Several similar lawsuits have been filed against Booking.com, indicating that the company has been violating fair competition laws since at least 2002, thereby preventing consumers from obtaining better hotel prices and hindering hotels worldwide from offering more competitive deals to potential guests.
