Booking Becomes Gatekeeper, Falls Under DMA Rules

The European Commission designated Booking.com as the gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act. The company now must ensure that its online intermediation service complies with all relevant obligations of the DMA.

Concretely, this means hotels, car rental companies, and other providers of travel services that depend on Booking to reach their customers can begin to enjoy new opportunities. For instance, the DMA prohibits so-called ‘parity' clauses. Therefore, hotels, car rentals, and other service providers using Booking are now free to offer different prices and conditions on their own websites or other channels. Also, Booking must not introduce other measures with the same effect as ‘parity' clauses.

Another benefit for businesses is that hotels and other travel services will have real-time and continuous access to data that they and their customers generate through Booking, offering these businesses new insights. Business users can now transfer the data they generated on Booking to alternative platforms. This will allow hotels and other relevant travel service providers to develop more innovative deals and tailored offers, positioning them more competitively on the market.

After being designated as the gatekeeper, Booking is required to demonstrate its full and effective compliance with the DMA by outlining the measures undertaken in a compliance report. Additionally, Booking has submitted to the EC an independently audited description of techniques it uses for profiling consumers, along with a non-confidential version of the consumer profiling reports. Finally, the EC ordered Booking to keep any documents and information that might be relevant to assess and monitor the effective implementation of and compliance with the DMA.