INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM, TRAVEL AND HOSPITALITY LAW market of online intermediation and booking services, in breach of Art. 102 TFEU26. The Booking group is a leader in intermediation and online booking services for accommodation facilities and through the website www.booking.com, available in more than 43 languages, through which you can access over 28 million structures worldwide. According to public sources, the Booking group, which is part of the Delaware-based Booking Holdings Inc., operates locally through companies that provide support and assistance to customers in each country; in Italy it operates through Booking.com (Italy) S.r.l. The investigation was started on the basis of some reports made by two associations of Italian hoteliers, AICA and Federalberghi, who complained about a complex Booking strategy, aimed at limiting the autonomy of accommodation facilities in determining the commercial conditions for the customer, through, among other things, the application of discounts - visible on the platform - unilaterally applied by Booking on the price of the room, and the request for increasingly higher commission to improve one's positioning in the search results on the platform. As part of the hearings with the main competing OTAs, Lastminute and Expedia/Hotel.com, held in December 2023, elements were acquired regarding the context in which competition between these operators develops: Lastminute has a strategic partnership in place for the sale of packages on Booking; Expedia has developed a different business model from Booking. Furthermore, it was underlined that the price to the final consumer represents the main variable on which competition between OTAs develops and, finally, that the consumer tends to resort directly to the portal of the large OTAs which, in addition to having a significantly broader inventory, propose loyalty systems that give the consumer the perception of incurring lower costs. The case concerns the market of online intermediation and booking services for overnight stays offered by OTAs to hotel and para-hotel accommodation facilities (so-called OTA hotels). OTA hotels represent an intermediation and booking channel of absolute importance, both Europe wide and in Italy. In fact, according to data provided by the Hotrec survey, over 68% of bookings made online in Europe (and 76% in Italy) took place via OTA, compared to 27% (23% in Italy) directly on the hotel website. Tourist service intermediation platforms constitute a typical example of a two-sided market, which connects two different groups of users (in this 26 ICA Decision, 24 march 2024, See Official Bulletin, n. 12/2024 (A558).
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