All Talk, or Reclaiming Control? Europe’s Legal Battles Against Booking.com

Europe’s hoteliers are challenging Booking.com’s dominance through collective legal action and new regulations, aiming to reclaim control and reduce reliance on OTAs. Discover the potential shifts in power dynamics.

On May 28, hoteliers across Europe issued the latest challenge to Booking.com’s outsized influence in the European hospitality industry. Led by umbrella hotel association HOTREC, national hotel associations from more than 25 European countries have announced that they’ll be pursuing collective legal action against Booking.com to claw back unlawful commissions. 

Within the past year, the OTA giant has stood against the EU’s Digital Markets Act, Spain’s anti-trust watchdog, and most recently a Swiss ruling that they must reduce their commission rates by nearly 25%. With more and more regulatory bodies attempting to enact change, will Booking.com finally be forced to adjust? Or will it continue sidestepping reform?

What’s the EU collective lawsuit all about? 

This collective action by hoteliers is in response to the European Court of Justice’s ruling in September 2024, which reinforced prior pressure from the DMA that had caused Booking.com to remove EU parity clauses in July 2024. It found that Booking.com’s parity clauses had the potential to be anti-competitive, and that they weren’t necessary for the operation of the business.  While this ruling made it clear to the OTA that they would need to keep these types of clauses out of their European contracts moving forward, it didn’t address the historic impact that these types of clauses had on hotels and the commissions that they paid out to Booking.com during the long reign of parity clauses in Europe. 

HOTREC is hoping to change that. They’re calling out to European hoteliers who were affected by these clauses to register as claimants, which will hopefully result in them gaining back a significant amount of the commissions they paid to the OTA between 2004 and 2024. 

Unsurprisingly, Booking.com have already indicated that they’re not going to submit to this lawsuit without a fight. According to a Booking.com spokesperson:  

“The ECJ judgement did not conclude that Booking.com’s price parity clauses were anti-competitive or that they influenced competition (and this can be clearly seen in paragraph 92 of their ruling). So, this ruling does not open the door to damage claims, and we will continue to show that parity clauses do not have an anti-competitive effect in court if needed.” 

Booking.com will be fighting back–and we’re curious to see what the outcome will be.

The recent Swiss ruling: A simple directive? 

Switzerland’s most recent ruling against Booking.com is based on the conclusion that the fees it charges to hotels are “abusively high”. They’ve made this decision after “intensive negotiations” failed, and have given the OTA giant three months to comply with the ruling—which will be in effect for at least three years—by reducing their commission rate for Swiss hotels by nearly 25%. Booking.com have rejected this directive and plan to appeal the decision. Their biggest justification? That their service is “entirely optional”. 

Booking has released a statement on the ruling, saying:

“Our accommodation partners have a multitude of ways to market their properties to customers, so it’s a choice if they want to list on our platform or somewhere else. We do not agree with forcibly reducing the cost of a product that is entirely optional. We will appeal.”

This idea that Booking.com‘s offering is “optional” to hotels is debatable. With a market share approaching 70% in Europe, do independent hotels really have the freedom to opt out of working with the site? Some commentators suggest hotels have brought this upon themselves by neglecting to build an effective direct booking strategy as OTA influence grew. Regardless, Booking’s dominance is real: Hotrec’s Hotel Distribution Study 2024, which surveyed 3000 hotels across Europe, highlighted just how much those hotels – especially smaller, independent ones – rely on OTAs in practice.

The DMA: Real progress? Or just a surface change? 

The EU’s Digital Markets Act, fully in force as of 2024, was supposed to change the game for companies like Booking.com. The platform was designated a “gatekeeper,” putting it under strict obligations to prevent anti-competitive behavior—like favoring its own listings or enforcing indirect parity clauses that keep hotels from offering better deals elsewhere.

Yet many industry observers argue that Booking.com’s response to the DMA has been more cosmetic than structural. Key parity clauses may have been removed on paper, but pricing pressure remains, subtly reinforced by opaque ranking algorithms that penalize hotels not offering “competitive” rates. Booking.com’s initial DMA compliance report was light on concrete changes. 

So—will Booking.com actually change?

This is an important moment. With direct interventions coming from national regulators and pan-European legislation, Booking.com faces unprecedented scrutiny.

And for hoteliers? Perhaps it’s an opportunity. With the right conditions and continued regulatory pressure, the power dynamics between hotels and OTAs may be shifting at last. But we wouldn’t hold our breath. As Booking.com has shown with their DMA response, complying doesn’t necessarily mean adhering to the spirit of the regulation. Booking.com can choose to reduce commission rates, and they may be forced to pay back some commissions to hotels following HOTREC’s action in the wake of the ECJ ruling.  However, if this is the case, we can be sure they will be searching for ways to make up that cost somewhere else (for example, in charging more for ancillary services or for preferred partner programs).

Regardless of how Booking chooses to change – or is forced to –  there’s a clear directive for hotels: develop effective direct booking strategies that allow you to attract more guests without the need for intermediaries, so you can stop depending so much on the “optional” service of Booking.com and other OTAs. 

Genevieve Horchler is a product marketing manager at Triptease. Connect with Genevieve on LinkedIn.