Hotels that also offer their rooms through Booking.com will be allowed to offer them elsewhere or on their own website for a lower price from 1 July. Under pressure from legislation from Brussels and a Spanish mega fine, Booking.com scrapped this controversial lowest price guarantee. The measure applies in the Netherlands and other EU countries, writes the FD. The fact that hotels can offer their rooms online via their own website or elsewhere at a lower price than on Booking.com can save consumers money. And greater competition is one of the goals of the new Brussels rules (DMA) that came into force earlier this year. This also includes Booking.com. Booking always argued that it bundled the hotels and properties, translated the information about the accommodations into multiple languages, and spent a lot of money on advertising and promotion to lure customers. According to Booking, the agreement was that in exchange for these efforts, it would receive an equal price from hotels. “Otherwise, people would find a hotel through us, but then click through to the hotel website and then we wouldn’t get paid for our services,” CEO Glenn Fogel told the newspaper. He trusts that hotels will continue to work with Booking.com and that customers will continue to use his platform, even though the price may be lower elsewhere. (Photo: Shutterstock).
