Booking.com says Europe's hotels don't depend on it

Booking.com's head of public affairs calls Europe's hotel distribution balanced, two weeks after an EU court upheld that Booking dominates online hotel sales

by Markus Busch

The claim. On September 22, Booking.com's global head of public affairs, Peter Lochbihler, published an article arguing that hotel distribution in Europe is balanced and competitive, and that "no one could convincingly argue that hotels depend on a single online platform." His evidence is the 2026 European Hotel Distribution Study from HOTREC, the European hotel association, and his key figure is that no single online travel agency takes more than 20% of all bookings.

The arithmetic. HOTREC's study puts online travel agencies at 29.9% of European hotel bookings in 2025. Booking.com alone takes 66.1% of those. Multiply the two and Booking.com comes to about 19.8% of all hotel bookings in Europe, one fifth of a point under the line.

Count the company instead of the brand and it crosses. Booking Holdings, which also owns Agoda and Priceline, takes 68.8% of European OTA bookings, about 20.6% of everything.

What the article leaves out. The study's headline puts direct bookings at 51.3%. The article's "over 56%" comes from a chart credited to Statista, not from the study's headline figure. And the article doesn't mention the study's finding on rates: 51% of hotels say OTAs sell their rooms below the price they set, and 80% of those never agreed to it.

Two weeks earlier. On September 9, the EU General Court dismissed Booking's challenge to the Commission's 2023 ban on its purchase of Etraveli, the flight seller. In doing so it upheld the Commission's finding that Booking holds a dominant position in Europe's market for selling hotel rooms online, with a share close to 70%. Booking said on the day of the ruling that it was considering a final appeal.

The court and the article describe the same market, thirteen days apart.

Why the 20% line isn't about your hotel. It is an average across every hotel in the study, chains included. At the chain hotels HOTREC counted, Expedia takes about a third of OTA bookings, which pulls Booking's European figure down. Across independent hotels, Booking Holdings takes 69.4% of OTA bookings.

So for an independent, the arithmetic changes. If 40% of your room nights come through OTAs and your split looks like the average independent's, Booking is about 28% of everything you sell. At 60%, it is past 40%.

Your own number. Add up the room nights on twelve months of Booking.com statements, and Agoda's if you sell there, then divide by your total room nights for the same period. That is your share. It is the figure that matters the next time a contract change, a rate parity question or a ranking drop lands on your desk, and no average in Brussels will tell you what it is.

Both sides want something. HOTREC published the study while asking the Commission to enforce the Digital Markets Act and to keep the rules that make platforms explain rankings and give notice before changing terms, which the Commission has proposed repealing. The individual-hotel figures are survey answers from 1,882 properties; the chain figures come from ten groups' own data. Each side is reading the same numbers for a purpose. The numbers themselves don't change with the reader.

Read also: The OTA grip on Europe's hotels didn't tighten. It shifted toward Expedia.

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