Booking.com will tell Greek hotels how far below their rate it sells. On average.
The share of your bookings it discounted over the past 30 days, and the average cut below your rate. Greece's competition commission decides on December 28.
by Markus Busch
Driving the news. In a press release published October 29, the Hellenic Competition Commission said the official who led its investigation into Booking.com considers the company's proposed commitments enough to restore competition in Greek hotel booking. The full commission meets on December 28 to decide whether to accept them. The case goes back to a complaint the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels filed in May 2022, according to the Greek trade outlet Money & Tourism. It covers how Booking.com ranks hotels by default, its Preferred and Preferred Plus programs, and Booking Sponsored Benefit.
The discount you never set. Booking Sponsored Benefit is how Booking.com shows some guests a lower price than the one you loaded. Booking.com covers the difference and pays you your rate minus commission. Your payout doesn't change. The guest still sees your room cheaper on Booking.com than anywhere you sell it yourself, and Booking.com does not report to hotels how often that happens.
What Greek hotels would get. Two numbers, updated daily: the share of their bookings Booking.com discounted over the past 30 days, and the average cut below their rate. Each reservation would also carry a yes-or-no mark, without the price. The commitments run for ten years. Outside Greece, ask your account manager for the same two numbers.
Booking.com also drops the Performance Score as an entry condition for Preferred in Greece. Whatever replaces it may not use outside prices, availability elsewhere, or the number of bookings a hotel has had.
Europe already has part of this. Since September, across the European Economic Area, Booking.com no longer uses your outside prices to decide which rooms it discounts, which we covered. The two numbers are the new part.
The catch. The investigating official's view does not bind the commission, and nothing changes in a Greek extranet before December 28. The text quoted here is the version put to public consultation in July. The commitments cover Greek partners only, and the program itself stays. No single booking shows what the guest paid.
What it means for hotels. The case is about competition between booking sites. For the hotel, the cut doesn't stay on Booking.com.
A guest who finds your room cheaper there books there. To win her back, you match the cut on your own site. Booking.com paid for its discount out of its margin. You pay for yours out of the room rate.
The corporate traveler sits in front of the same price. Booking.com's rates feed the tools companies book through: Amadeus Cytric, SAP Concur, Navan. There they can appear next to the negotiated rate you loaded into the GDS, as we have reported. A Booking.com price below your rate is the cheaper line on that screen too.
Put the channels side by side and the rate you load stops being the price. It becomes the number Booking.com may sell under. Your website follows the cut. Your corporate rate has to sit below it to look like a deal. Every channel you run is measured against a price you didn't set, paid for with money that isn't yours. HOTREC's distribution study, published September 15, found that half of Europe's hotels say an OTA sells their rooms below their own rate.
The revenue manager still loads a rate every morning. Each discount Booking.com funds moves a little more of the hotel's pricing to Booking.com.
The case was about competition between booking sites. The fix tells the hotel how much it would have to cut to keep up.
Read also: Booking.com stopped watching your website in Europe. It still decides when to sell below your rate. · The corporate booking tool found your hotel. An AI decided which version to show.
Enjoying this analysis? Hospitality.today delivers daily insights on hotel distribution, AI trends, and travel commerce — straight to your inbox. Subscribe for free at Hospitality.today →