Booking.com stopped watching your website in Europe. It still decides when to sell below your rate.
In Europe, a cheaper rate on your own website no longer gets your room discounted on Booking.com, and the "non-competitive" warning in your extranet is gone
by Markus Busch
The label is gone. Open the Booking.com extranet at a hotel in Madrid or Munich and the price scan is still there: what your room sells for on your own website and on other channels. The verdict next to it has disappeared. The "competitive" and "non-competitive" labels were removed, HOTREC reported on September 28, citing the European Commission. The Commission's reason: the labels made hotels feel they were expected to keep their prices aligned across channels.
The last place your outside prices counted. The Commission's factsheet, published the same day, sets out what changed. In the EEA, the EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, Booking.com already ignored prices on other channels for its default ranking and for deciding who qualifies for Genius, Preferred and Preferred Plus. One program still used them: Booking Sponsored Benefit, which lets Booking.com show some guests a lower price than the one you loaded and cover the difference itself. As of September 2026, Booking.com no longer looks at prices outside its own site to decide whether a property may be eligible. The price scans in the extranet are now for information only.
Booking.com made the changes voluntarily, after what the Commission calls a regulatory dialogue under the Digital Markets Act. The law has banned its parity clauses across the EEA since November 2024.
What we wrote yesterday. Yesterday's piece, the first in our series on hotels losing pricing control, described Booking Sponsored Benefit from Booking.com's own partner help page. That page lists a non-competitive price as one reason a property may qualify. For hotels in the EEA, that reason no longer counts. The rest of the piece stands.
What stays. The program itself. Booking.com can still sell your room below your rate and pay you your rate minus commission. A cheaper rate on your own website no longer puts your room on that list.
What does, the factsheet doesn't say. Booking.com's help page names two other conditions: the property uses Payments by Booking.com, and it may have opted in through the Opportunity Center. Beyond that, the choice is Booking.com's, and it hasn't published what the choice now rests on.
So in the EEA, your prices elsewhere no longer count against you. Booking.com still picks the rooms it sells below your rate.
The limits. The factsheet covers the EEA only. Switzerland, the UK and the US sit outside it, and nothing in the Commission's text changes how Booking.com treats prices there. The Commission also says the changes don't affect cases that national competition authorities are still pursuing against Booking.com.
The Monday check. Open your extranet and find the price scan. In the EEA, the label should be gone. If it's still there, take a screenshot and send it to your national hotel association. If your hotel is in Zurich or London, look at the scan anyway and see whether the label still sits next to your rate. Then ask your Booking.com account manager one question: what makes my hotel eligible for Booking Sponsored Benefit now?
Read also: Hotels losing pricing control: You set the rate. Booking.com sets the price.
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