XEE welcomes the European Commission’s decision to designate Booking as an “access gatekeeper platform” under the Digital Marketplaces Act (DMA), thus obliging it to comply with all obligations and prohibitions arising from this designation within the next six months.
According to complaints from European hotels, the platform has taken advantage of its dominant position by developing unfair business practices and damaging behaviour with a huge negative impact on their operations. Typical cases include both the continued blocking of hotels from offering better rates in their own distribution channels than the platform and its refusal to share sufficient data with the hotels that partner with it.
Following this decision of the European Commission, the platform is now obliged to respond to all these issues with compliance solutions, taking into account the positions of all stakeholders.
Bringing this issue to the forefront has required a long-lasting effort by hotel industry representatives both at European level through HOTREC’s continuous interventions and at national level through initiatives of hotel representative bodies. It is recalled that in May 2022, HOTELEC filed a complaint about unfair practices of digital platforms, which abusively exploit their dominant position in the online booking market, with the Competition Commission.
Alexandros Vasilikos, President of XEE, made the following statement: “It is a historic decision that vindicates the hotel industry in Europe and changes the rules of the game that until now allowed – according to many complaints from our members – unfair and abusive practices against hotels on behalf of this platform. Hospitality has a lot to offer both in Greece and in Europe. But in order to be able to do so, healthy competition is a prerequisite. We are fully committed to this principle both as a hotelier and as HOTREC, so that every hotelier who invests and assumes all costs, is also the real owner of his product in terms of absolute transparency.”
