Austria's hotels have taken Booking.com to Brussels. Four of their five complaints are in the contract you signed.
Austria's hotel association asked the European Commission to find Booking.com in breach of the Digital Markets Act over five practices, from uncapped payment fees to suspension without warning, and four of them are written into the platform's standard terms.
by Markus Busch
Driving the news. The Austrian Hotel Association, the ÖHV, filed a complaint against Booking.com with the European Commission on September 23. It wants a formal finding that Booking.com breaks the Digital Markets Act, and binding changes to its terms.
The Commission named Booking.com a gatekeeper under the DMA on May 13, 2024. That status obliges it to offer hotels fair, transparent and non-discriminatory conditions. When one company controls three of every four platform bookings, the ÖHV's secretary general Markus Gratzer said in German, its terms "aren't a negotiation anymore, they're a dictate."
Booking.com says it complies with the DMA.
What's in the complaint. Five points, each drawn from clauses ÖHV members had flagged.
Price cuts without asking. Booking.com's terms let it lower your room price at its own cost, without telling you or asking first.
Rank for commission. The terms acknowledge that the commission you pay can influence your ranking, and Booking.com sells programs where hotels pay more for better placement. The ÖHV adds that since July 2026 the Genius discount is shown to all travelers, so a hotel outside Genius looks more expensive by default.
Payment fees with no ceiling. Booking.com can pass its payment processing costs on to the hotel in full, with no cap, no breakdown and no right to check them.
Cancellations and discounts over your head. This is the one point about practice, not wording. The terms say the hotel must agree. ÖHV members report bookings canceled and discounts granted without anyone asking.
Suspension without warning. The terms list 17 grounds for blocking a hotel immediately, with no warning first. One is conduct that doesn't fit the company's "global business model." There's no step where the hotel gets to respond.
The numbers behind it. The complaint leans on HOTREC's European Hotel Distribution Study 2026, run by Professor Roland Schegg at HES-SO Valais-Wallis with 2,713 hotels in 28 countries reporting on 2025.
In Austria, 73.9% of all platform bookings go to Booking Holdings. Across Europe it's 68.8%. Booking.com bookings were canceled 19.0% of the time, against 9.1% for bookings made on the hotel's own website. Booking.com Payments is used by 65% of Europe's hotels. And 51% say platforms undercut their price, up from 43% in 2023. Of the hotels that were undercut, 80% say they never agreed to it.
The catch. A complaint is a request, not a ruling. The Commission doesn't have to open proceedings, and DMA cases take time.
The reading of Booking.com's terms is the ÖHV's, not a regulator's. The study figures are what hotels reported about themselves. And the Genius change is the association's description. We couldn't confirm it in Booking.com's own partner documents.
What it means for hotels. Whatever Brussels decides, the complaint works as a checklist for your own account, today.
Look in the extranet for discounts on your rates that you didn't set. Check which visibility programs you're in and what each one adds to your commission. Find the payment fee lines on your last Booking.com invoice and see whether you can tell what each one covers. Put your Booking.com cancellation rate next to your direct one. Then read the suspension clause in the terms you accepted, and count the grounds.
Read also: The law that just fined Google has been running on Booking.com since December 2024.
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