This Monday, the European Commission banned the purchase of the flight booking platform eTraveli by the accommodation website Booking, the eleventh acquisition deal vetoed by Brussels, because it would strengthen the dominant position in this market and affect competition in the community.
In a statement, the community council said it has banned the operation under the EU merger regulation, arguing that “the acquisition would have enabled Booking to maintain its dominant position in the online travel agency market for hotel reservations in the European Economic Area to reinforce”.
Brussels emphasizes that “today’s decision follows an in-depth investigation by the Commission into the operation, which allegedly merged Booking and eTraveli, two of the main suppliers” of the online travel agency market, in the areas of accommodation booking and flights respectively .
Furthermore, this North American booking platform company “has not proposed sufficient corrective actions to address these concerns,” he adds.
Headquartered in the United States, the company owns, in addition to Booking.com (reservation platform), the Rentalcars, Priceline and Agoda brands, as well as car rental and flight entities through its Kayak business (including the Kayak, Momondo, Cheapflights, HotelsCombined, etc. Others).
Acting primarily as an intermediary between customers and private accommodation and hotels, Booking currently has a market share of over 60% of the online travel agency market in the European Economic Area, following growth in recent years.
The Swedish eTraveli, in turn, is active in the same market through its brands Gotogate, My Trip, Seat24 and SuperSaver, mainly focused on flight bookings.
“The Commission considered that the operation would have strengthened Booking’s dominant position in the organized hotel travel agency market, leading to higher costs for hotels and possibly also for consumers,” the agency said.
One of the ‘solutions’ proposed by Booking was ‘showing a selection screen to flight customers on the flight check-out page, the page shown to travelers after they purchase their airline tickets’.
However, according to the Community Board, the remedies proposed by Booking did not adequately address the Commission’s concerns regarding competition, leading to the conclusion that competition would be maintained on a sustainable basis.
The operation was notified to the Commission on 10 October 2022 and an in-depth investigation was opened in November that year.
Over the past decade, the Commission has approved almost 3,500 mergers between companies operating in the EU.
Today’s ban is the eleventh merger that the Commission has blocked in this period.
Source: DN
