EU says hotels can set cheaper prices away from Booking.com

A hotel in the European Economic Area can now offer a better price on its own website without that external price being used to determine eligibility for one Booking.com promotion, according to a European Commission factsheet published September 28. The change is a specific step in a longer argument over whether a dominant booking platform can pressure accommodation providers to keep their prices aligned.

The rule behind the change

The EU's Digital Markets Act bans so-called parity requirements for designated gatekeepers. Such requirements can stop a hotel from offering more attractive terms outside a platform, including on its direct booking channel. The Commission says Booking.com removed contractual parity requirements from its European terms in July 2024. Its latest factsheet describes additional changes following regulatory dialogue.

One remaining issue involved Booking Sponsored Benefit, a programme in which the platform lowers the customer-facing price and pays the difference while the hotel receives the rate it set, subject to its normal commission. The Commission says Booking.com no longer examines prices outside the platform when deciding whether a property might qualify for this benefit. This is a change to eligibility signals, not a ban on every kind of platform discount.

More information for hotels

The factsheet also describes clearer explanations of partner programmes and ranking, more granular data on the promotion's effect, and removal of labels that had marked outside prices as competitive or non-competitive. External price scans displayed in the platform's partner interface are now described as informational, according to the Commission. It says those outside prices are not used for default ranking or for eligibility in the programmes it names.

These are the Commission's account of Booking.com's compliance steps. They do not establish that all hotels will immediately lower their direct prices, that consumers will pay less on average, or that every dispute about platform power is resolved. Hotels still make their own commercial decisions, and some may value a platform's traffic more than a direct-booking discount.

What to watch

The practical test is whether accommodation providers feel able to set different prices and whether customers can find those options. The immediate news is narrower: the regulator says a specific external-price signal has been removed from a specific promotion's eligibility rule, alongside more transparent partner information across the EEA.