More than 10,000 European hotels signed onto a planned damages action against Booking.com over contractual terms that restricted participating properties from advertising lower room prices through other sales channels, including their own websites.
HOTREC, the Association of Hotels, Restaurants and Cafes in Europe, said the hotels would seek compensation for alleged losses incurred from 2004 through 2024. The development was reported on August 4, 2025, retained here as historical context.
The initiative was supported by 30 national hotel associations, including the German Hotel Association, known as IHA. The Hotel Claims Alliance planned to bring the case before a court in Amsterdam, with HOTREC and the participating industry associations backing the action.
Dispute centres on price clauses
The contested “best-price” terms prevented hotels from making rooms available more cheaply on competing platforms or through their own sites. Booking.com had used the restrictions to address what it called “free-rider” bookings: situations in which a prospective guest found a property through Booking.com but completed the reservation directly with the hotel instead.
The hotel groups based their legal position in part on a European Court of Justice decision issued on September 19, 2024. According to DW’s account, the court found the best-price clauses unlawful and determined that online platforms could operate without imposing those restrictions on participating hotels.
Booking.com removed the clause in 2024 following the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. The hotels’ planned claim nonetheless covered an earlier 20-year period during which the associations alleged that the pricing terms generated losses.
HOTREC President Alexandros Vassilikos said European hotel operators had experienced unfair conditions and excessive costs, describing the collective initiative as a rejection of abusive conduct in digital markets. His remarks represented the industry association’s position on the dispute.
HOTREC extended the deadline for hotels to join the action until August 29. IHA Managing Director Markus Luthe told Germany’s DPA news agency that the proposed class action was attracting strong support.
Booking.com disputed both the allegations and the hotel associations’ interpretation of the European court ruling. The company also said it had not received an official lawsuit, characterizing the matter at that stage as a HOTREC announcement rather than a filed class action.
In its response, Booking.com said accommodation partners could determine their own pricing and distribution approaches and could offer rooms through whichever channels they selected. That statement set out the platform’s position at the time of the report, while the hotel associations maintained that the historic clauses had constrained direct and third-party pricing.
The opposing accounts therefore concerned both procedure and substance. The hotel organizations described a coordinated compensation effort supported by thousands of properties and multiple national associations. Booking.com emphasized that no formal case had yet been served and rejected the legal basis asserted by the groups. the available reporting did not state the amount of damages being sought, provide individual hotel loss calculations or confirm that the proposed Amsterdam proceeding had been formally filed.
