Due to its great market power, the booking platform Booking.com will have to adhere to stricter rules in the European Union in the future. With the European Commission’s decision on Monday, the company falls under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), with which Brussels wants to limit the market power of large digital companies. Booking should therefore create fairer conditions for hotel and holiday apartment providers.
Anyone who books an accommodation through Booking should have “more choice and freedom” in the future. The European Commission also announced that the platform must offer providers ‘fair access’ to their services. This probably means, among other things, more freedom of choice when it comes to booking and cancellation conditions.
“Important player” in tourism
The Amsterdam-based group is “an important player” in the European tourism industry, according to EU Commissioner for Digital Affairs Thierry Breton. Brussels will “ensure that the company fully complies with DMA obligations,” he stressed. Booking now has six months to do this; among other things, the company must submit a detailed report to the committee.
Brussels also says it is checking whether the online service X (formerly Twitter) is also covered by the law. The company of American billionaire Elon Musk had argued that the service did not exercise special market power despite the large number of users, because there were sufficient alternatives such as the Threads or Mastodon platforms.
EU against the “gatekeepers”
With the law for digital markets, the EU wants to limit the market power of so-called gatekeepers of the internet. The regulations have been in force since the beginning of March for Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Tiktok parent Bytedance, Meta and Microsoft. The law obliges the American technology giant Apple to allow alternatives to its App Store; Google is no longer allowed to give preference to its own services in the results of its search engine.
Procedures are already underway against Apple, Google and Meta for alleged violations of the new rules. If the allegations are confirmed, the companies could face fines of up to ten percent of their global annual turnover. As a final measure, the European Commission can also order the division of a company.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
