Booking.com cornered by lawsuits

14-08-25

Since its founding in 1996, Booking.com has grown from a modest Dutch startup into a global powerhouse in accommodation bookings, dominating the digital sector. However, this dominance now brings serious accusations: the company faces multiple legal actions centered on alleged abusive practices, deceptive pricing, and fabricated scarcity tactics.

In Europe, more than 10,000 hotels have joined forces in a class action lawsuit organized by the Stichting Hotel Claims Alliance, backed by HOTREC and more than 25 national associations, to seek damages for the use, between 2004 and 2024, of parity clauses that prevented them from offering lower prices on their own websites or through other channels. These clauses, declared illegal following a 2024 ruling by the Court of Justice of the EU and the implementation of the Digital Markets Act, restricted hotels’ ability to compete on price and promote their direct channels.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, the Consumers’ Association (Consumentenbond) and the Consumer Competition Claims Foundation (CCC) have launched a collective action against Booking.com over allegedly unfair tactics used since 2013. According to the lawsuit, the platform employed false discounts, incomplete pricing, and misleading messages such as “only one room left” to pressure users into booking urgently. More than 130,000 consumers registered in less than a week to join the case, which seeks compensation amounting to hundreds of millions of euros.

The scope of accusations against Booking.com is not limited to Europe. In Spain, the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) has already fined the platform €413.2 million for abusing its dominant position, prohibiting hotels from offering lower rates on their own channels, and applying unilateral discounts without consent. On a more global scale, there are lawsuits in the United States over deceptive practices, investigations in Germany into abusive clauses, and complaints over alleged profits from accommodations in settlements deemed illegal.

In response to these accusations, Booking.com has firmly defended itself, claiming that its clauses were intended to promote fairer competition and that its pricing policy has always been transparent. The company also points out that the European Court of Justice ruling did not declare such clauses anti-competitive in general, but rather determined that they must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Nonetheless, legal pressure has not eased, and hotels continue to register claims, with the deadline extended to August 29 in the affected sectors.

This wave of litigation poses a crossroads for the industry: on one hand, it could usher in a new era in which accommodations regain control over their pricing policies and foster more direct bookings; on the other, Booking.com remains an essential channel, with a reach that is hard to match. Studies suggest it controls more than 70% of the European online booking market.

The magnitude of these lawsuits could force Booking.com to pay multimillion-euro compensations, face regulatory fines, or, in the worst-case scenario, suffer damage to its reputation as a reliable intermediary. For the hotel sector, it represents an opportunity to rethink its reliance on large platforms and reclaim strategic control over their clientele and profit margins.

This conflict draws a dividing line in the digital era of tourism: a contest between the power of tech giants and the defense of the rights of those who create the real value, from hotels to travelers.

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