The Competitions and Markets authority in Spain, the CNMC, has fined Booking.com 413,240,000 euro for abusing its dominant position and violating articles 2 of Law 15/2007, of July 3, on the Defence of Competition (LDC) and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).
The company has committed two abuses of its dominant position since at least January 1, 2019 until today by imposing various unfair commercial conditions on hotels located in Spain that use its booking intermediation services and restricting competition from other online travel agencies that offer the same services.
It acts as an online travel agency. Through its website, it acts as an intermediary between hotels, which offer their rooms, and customers, who search for a hotel, compare prices and make their reservations.
It charges a commission to the hotel calculated on the amount of reservations made through Booking.com and has a hotel inventory, which is provided directly by the hotels under General Terms and Conditions that hotels must sign with Booking.com. Adherence to these is mandatory in order to appear on the Booking website and application. Other agencies, such as eDreams or Lastminute, have hotel inventories provided by other travel agencies or, in the case of Logitravel, by wholesale suppliers.
Booking.com’s share in Spain has fluctuated between 70 and 90% during the period investigated.
In 2021, the Spanish Association of Hotel Managers and the Madrid Hotel Business Association reported the company for abusing its dominant position. In October 2022, the CNMC initiated a sanctioning procedure, the investigation of which confirms that Booking.com committed the anti-competitive practices.
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