Booking.com announced Tuesday its supports of recent decisions by the National Competition Authorities in France, Italy and Sweden to accept parity commitments at its countries hotels. Under the commitments, Booking.com will abandon its price, availability and booking conditions parity provisions with respect to other online travel agencies.
Also under the commitments, Booking.com is allowed to retain its “narrow MFNs (most favored nation)” for prices and booking conditions which will ensure hotels offer the same rates and booking conditions on Booking.com as they do through their own direct website. The commitments also allow Booking.com to require a minimum allocation, or some availability, from hotels.
“We welcome and encourage fair competition in the marketplace because competition drives innovation, efficiencies, and most importantly, greater value for consumers,” said Darren Huston, CEO of Booking.com. “We believe today’s decisions represent a continued, coordinated effort to promote competition in a way that supports innovation and encourages companies like ours to continue to invest in the capacity and technical solutions that ultimately result in more customers for our partners and more tourism across Europe and abroad.”