[carlosjobim]

Number 1: Booking.com has never prevented hotels from providing booking through other sites.

Number 2: Booking.com has always demanded that any room sold by them cannot be cheaper anywhere else. Every third party seller demands this. Hint: You don't have to sell all of your rooms through booking.

This rule could destroy booking.com depending on how it is enforced, since hotels could then just use them as a free advertising platform.

Number 3: Seems fair.

Number 4: They've always done this.

Number 5: They don't own any hotels AFAIK

Number 6: What do they mean?

All in all, it seems the regulators do not understand at all what they are regulating. After decades of online reservations being the norm, hotels should only blame themselves if they've become dependent on third parties such as booking.

[dzhiurgis]

How would you regulate them if at all?

[carlosjobim]

The purpose of regulation should be to combat harmful business practices and not to try to destroy a company that grows too big for the tastes of EU politicians. Does Booking.com use their size to harm competitors in any harmful way? Not that I know. Do they abuse their customers or accommodation partners? Not that I know. Regulators should show some evidence before making hostile moves, it seems they are just acting on ideology and not in the interests of the customer. But EU rulers and their worshippers among the population do live in a kind of fantasy land of 300 page PDFs, while ignoring very tangible problems.

Booking.com should of course have to make good on any promises or deals they make with guests and with hotels, which they seem to do.

If there's one thing that regulators should take a look at, it is the practice of selling non-refundable hotel nights. Booking.com does it together with hotels who able such offers and the whole industry does it at a limited scale, and have always done it. But the way I see it, there is no reason that a hotel shouldn't be able to always refund any room if it is cancelled at least one month before the stay. You should always be able to find another occupant for the room within one month. The only reason hotels sell non-refundable rooms is with the hope of double dipping when somebody has mistakenly reserved it without paying notice that it was non-refundable. I can see no argument against mandating a one month free cancellation for all hotel bookings on land.

[sofixa]

> Does Booking.com use their size to harm competitors in any harmful way? Not that I know. Do they abuse their customers or accommodation partners? Not that I know. Regulators should show some evidence before making hostile moves, it seems they are just acting on ideology and not in the interests of the customer.

That's exactly where the designation as a "gatekeep" comes in. For it to happen there's an investigation by the commission, and there are static thresholds but also sense applied. Just because you don't know how booking.com have abused their position doesn't mean they haven't - as concrete examples, they've been caught applying dark patterns with lies (only X rooms remaining and Y people are looking at them!!!), and them precluding hotels from offering cheaper rates is also a problem for consumers.

[carlosjobim]

What are you talking about? Using sales tactics is not the same as abusing your market position or unfair competition. As for the "Only X rooms remaining", those numbers are not lies. I could easily confirm that by comparing with my backend system when working as a hotel manager. Just because you (or the EU) don't like those texts, doesn't mean they are lies. Some people might even find them useful.

> precluding hotels from offering cheaper rates is also a problem for consumers.

Then you don't understand the industry. It is impossible for booking or any third party sellers to exist if they can not offer the same rates to customers for the same rooms. People would just use booking.com to find availability and reviews, and then book with the hotel more cheaply. Then you have to ban all third party selling of hotels or actually anything at all. Hotels have always been free to not use booking.com and to not offer all rooms on booking.com

I find it very Soviet to state that a crime has been committed without mentioning what it is, and it's impressive that people here swallow it wholesale.

People use middle men such as booking for increased confidence in their travel reservations. Trust is something very important when dealing with distance sales, which is the entire travel industry. Consumers will not benefit by taking away those platforms.

[sofixa]

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49740143

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47141538

Enjoy. Booking have been caught lying to pressure consumers.

> Then you don't understand the industry. It is impossible for booking or any third party sellers to exist if they can not offer the same rates to customers for the same rooms. People would just use booking.com to find availability and reviews, and then book with the hotel more cheaply

Some people might, and many already do (a lot of hotels work around it by offering discounts if you sign up on their website, which is effectively a discount for booking directly). But a big part of the allure of Booking and similar middlemen is the independent reviews, their guarantees, support, loyalty program and payment options. You even say it yourself , people use Booking because they trust them, so even if the price is a little higher people will still use them instead of booking with unknown hotels directly. Enforcing pricing is anti-competitive and anti-consumer. And the EU isn't trying to kill corporations, merely restrict their abuses and ensure a level playing field.

> find it very Soviet to state that a crime has been committed without mentioning what it is, and it's impressive that people here swallow it wholesale

I find it very American to not know what Soviet means or implies. For your information, regardless if you're American or not, in Soviet times, you'd get charged with an explicit crime. It'd just be a fake one with made up proof, but you know what's the supposed thing you did.

And Booking aren't charged with a crime. They're being designated as a gatekeeper, and will have extra responsibilities to ensure consumer protections. If they fail to comply, they'll be fined for explicit infractions.

It's also very American to try to preserve the rights of big corporations to fuck consumers. There are freedoms from and freedoms to. The latter need to be restricted on big corporations to prevent abuse, which would reinforce the former for regular people.

[carlosjobim]

Your articles names booking.com as one of several similar companies investigated and warned, but do not reveal which of those companies they were accusing of wrong doing:

"Not all of the six companies had fallen foul of all four of these bad practices, the CMA said."

But fair enough, those "X people are looking at this room" are not admirable and if regulators say they have to go that's fine. My experience from the back-end is that booking.com do not lie about how many rooms are left or how many people have recently booked.

Some companies (not people) work around their contract with booking, it is true. The question is why they demand to be on booking then? They didn't build the customer base, they didn't build the trust. They are free to sell on their own if they want, it is their job to be as little dependent on third parties as they can.

> But a big part of the allure of Booking and similar middlemen is the independent reviews, their guarantees, support, loyalty program and payment options.

Customers can read the independent reviews, check availability and price without making a purchase. So if booking.com is forced to let any hotel offer cheaper rates outside, then every hotel will do it. Those independent reviews will start getting stale and booking.com will be destroyed or reduced to irrelevance. I couldn't be happier if that happens, since they are my competitors, but it's not exactly unfair.

> Enforcing pricing is anti-competitive and anti-consumer.

You can not let third parties compete with yourself on your own platform, think about it. Should independent sellers be allowed to set up their stalls inside of a supermarket? Should I be allowed to set up a booth and sell drinks to people inside someone else's bar? You might as well say that it's anti-consumer to allow hotels to sell their rooms more expensive on third party platforms, because that's what it is.

> I find it very American to not know what Soviet means or implies.

Soviet in this sense is that you have somebody you need to get rid off or punish, so you invent a crime. Like you wrote, so I won't have to go into that more.

> It's also very American to try to preserve the rights of big corporations to fuck consumers.

These third parties do a lot to protect consumers. If the EU was doing the same thing that booking.com does, then I believe hackers would sing their praise high in the sky. Now that it is a company, they're the devil instead.

Those hotels that have made themselves dependent on booking.com were dependent on other dominating third parties in their region before that. And those guys were not nice to deal with at all. They would abuse accommodation providers in a way that would make the worst jerk working at booking.com management blush. For small hosts, booking.com was a relief from that. Before that, dominant third party sellers would demand room allocation and only pay for what they used. Think how utterly nuts that is.

I stand by my opinion that regulations should be the same for all actors and have the purpose of combatting abusive practices – no matter who is doing it. Not to designate a company to be the enemy of the state and start biting their heels. If the EU regulators wants something to busy themselves with, they can legislate mandatory free cancellation times. This would be a huge benefit to consumers and would not hurt honest industry actors.

Big companies are generally bastards, but in the case of booking.com, I think they are walking a reasonable line. Especially since there are so many other ways hotels can reach their customers. Such as with their own digital presence, through Google Maps, through AirBnB, through any of the other million third parties. It is very easy for customers to avoid booking.com if the like.