The German cartel office has banned Booking.com’s ‘best price’ clause, which forces hoteliers in Germany to offer their lowest rate to the accommodation booking portal. The competition authority ruled that the clause limited competition and gave the company a deadline of end-January 2016 to change its contracts. A similar HRS clause was banned two years ago but Expedia is still allowed to operate with a ‘best price’ clause on the German market.
In response, Booking.com’s president Gillian Tans said the accommodation portal will appeal against the decision but the company will change its clauses for German hotels in line with the decision pending the appeal. “We believe this decision is flawed because it does not recognise the immense benefits that online travel brands like Booking.com bring to both consumers and accommodations,” she declared. “We do not only save consumers time and money, we serve as a highly cost-efficient marketing channel for most hotels that could not otherwise afford to market their brand to domestic and international consumers. Narrow parity was put in place to ensure that consumers don’t have to check hundreds of hotel websites in order to get the best price, allowing sites like Booking.com and others to achieve advertising efficiencies on behalf of hotels.”
Austria and Spain are the top foreign destinations for German holiday home bookings so far for 2016 ahead of Poland, Denmark and the Czech Republic, according to a study by portal Bestfewo.de based on two million room night bookings. Most bookings, however, are for properties in Germany, led by the Baltic Sea coast and Bavaria. Germans are spending more on holiday homes for 2016, the study found, with average spending up by €86 to €592 for an average stay of 7.6 nights.
Frankfurt Airport has achieved a new passenger record with 60 million passengers in a year for the first time. Airport operator Fraport expects passenger numbers to grow about 2-3% a year in the coming years, meaning that the 70 million figure could be reached in about seven years’ time.
Charter airline Germania will launch more flights from Münster/Osnabrück airport next May using an A319 stationed at the regional airport. Among the 19 weekly flights to 13 destinations are new services to Malaga, Ibiza and Varna.
