HOTREC has reviewed the additional measures Booking.com announced after its regulatory dialogue with the European Commission on the Digital Markets Act. The European hospitality association says the matter stays open. HOTREC published its statement on Monday, 28 September 2026, the same day the Commission set out the measures in a factsheet.
The headline change is this. Booking.com will stop treating prices offered outside its own platform as a factor when it decides whether a property is potentially eligible for Booking Sponsored Benefit. The Commission says the change covers every property in the European Economic Area.
Booking.com drops off-platform prices from BSB eligibility
BSB works when Booking.com lowers the price a customer sees and pays the difference itself. The hotel still receives the full amount for the rate it set, and its agreed commission stays the same. Booking.com had weighed prices found on other sales channels when judging BSB eligibility. HOTREC singled that change out first in its statement. Before September, external prices were already kept out of Booking.com default ranking and out of the eligibility check for its visibility programmes, the Preferred, Preferred Plus and Genius schemes in the EEA. BSB was the remaining place where they counted.
The other moves the Commission recorded
The Commission itemised what else changed. Accommodation providers now receive more BSB performance data, including reservation-level detail on how BSB affects bookings. Booking.com expanded its explanations of the Genius, Preferred and Preferred Plus programmes, covering their eligibility criteria, the role and working of the performance score, how providers are benchmarked geographically, and when participation in a programme may be suspended.
The Commission also recorded that external price scans shown on the Booking.com Extranet are for information only. The labels that once sat alongside those external prices, “competitive” and “non-competitive”, have been removed from the Extranet, to avoid the impression that Booking.com expects providers to align prices across sales channels.
One more item is still coming. Booking.com will update its General Delivery Terms, in particular Annex 4 on Ranking, later this year.
HOTREC wants time before it judges
HOTREC took note of the measures and asked for room to test them. The sector, it said, “will now need time to examine their implementation in practice and assess their impact on hotels and other accommodation businesses across Europe”. HOTREC said it will keep looking at whether accommodation providers can effectively exercise their freedom to set their own pricing and distribution strategies across different sales channels.
The association said it will monitor developments, gather feedback from the European hospitality sector and engage with the European Commission as the practical implications become clearer. It also said a constructive dialogue between the Commission, the designated gatekeepers and affected business users remains important.
The regulatory sequence behind the changes
The obligations rest on Article 5(3) of the Digital Markets Act. Under it, Booking.com cannot prevent accommodation providers from offering different prices, availability, inventory or commercial conditions on other channels, including their own websites, without facing measures that restrict that freedom.
The Commission designated Booking Holdings as a gatekeeper for its online intermediation service Booking.com, and Booking.com has had to comply with the relevant DMA obligations since 14 November 2024. Booking.com removed contractual parity requirements from its EEA General Delivery Terms in July 2024, and at the same point dropped parity as an eligibility criterion from Genius, Preferred and Preferred Plus in the EEA. The September 2026 measures follow a further regulatory dialogue and feedback from the travel sector.
Scale, and what comes next
HOTREC set the changes against its own distribution data. Its European Hotel Distribution Study 2026, published 15 September 2026 and built on information from 2,713 hotels, found that 85.4% of OTA bookings in Europe go through Booking Holdings and Expedia Group, with Booking Holdings alone accounting for 68.8%. HOTREC used the study to call for effective enforcement of the DMA.
The Commission described the changes as voluntary and as made in cooperation with national competition authorities through the European Competition Network. It named the Greek, Italian and Spanish authorities as having investigated or still investigating Booking.com practices. The Commission said the voluntary changes are without prejudice to those proceedings. The public version of Booking.com's latest compliance report sits on the Commission DMA webpage.