Thousands of hotels in Europe to sue Booking.com over ‘abusive’ practices
Booking.com is facing a class-action lawsuit from more than 10,000 European hotels arguing that the accommodation mega-site used its muscle to distort the market to their detriment over a 20-year period.The Association of Hotels, Restaurants and Cafes in Europe (Hotrec), which represents the industry within the EU and is bringing the legal action, recently extended to 29 August a deadline for hotel owners to join the suit because of high demand.The lawsuit, expected to be one of the largest ever filed in the European hospitality sector, is also backed by 30 national hotel associations, including Britain’s.“Over 10,000 hotels have already joined the pan-European initiative to claim compensation for financial losses caused by Booking.
com’s use of illegal ‘best price’ (parity) clauses,” Hotrec said in a statement.It alleges that the “best price” pledge on Booking.com was extracted from hotels under huge pressure not to offer rooms at lower prices on other platforms, including their own websites.The hotel industry says that the Netherlands-based platform also used the clauses to prevent customers making what it called “free-rider” bookings, which it defined as using its services to find a hotel but then booking directly with the management, cutting out Booking.com.
“Registration [to the legal action] continues to grow steadily, and the response so far demonstrates the hospitality industry’s strong desire to stand up against unfair practices in the digital marketplace,” Hotrec said.The litigation, which experts say will be an uphill battle, seeks damages for the period from 2004 to 2024, when Booking.com did away with the best price clause to comply with the EU Digital Markets Act.Hotrec said the class action, to be heard in Amsterdam, follows a European court of justice (ECJ) ruling from 2024, “which found that Booking.com’s parity clauses violated EU competition law”.
“European hoteliers have long suffered from unfair conditions and excessive costs.Now is the time to stand together and demand redress,” said Hotrec’s president, Alexandros Vassilikos, calling out “abusive practices in the digital market” in Europe.Booking.com called Hotrec and other hotel associations’ statements “incorrect and misleading” in an emailed statement, adding that it had not received “formal notification of a class action”.It said that the ECJ ruling did not find that Booking.
com’s “best price” clauses were anti-competitive but “simply stated that such clauses fall within the scope of EU competition law and that their effects must be assessed on a case-by-case basis”,The company referred to a statement about its “commitment to fair competition”, in which it argued that “past parity clauses served to foster competitive pricing rather than restrict it”,It cited a poll in which 74% of hoteliers said Booking,com made their business more profitable, with many reporting higher occupancy rates and lower customer acquisition costs,However, other industry representatives criticised the company’s practices as extractive.
“As they gained control of the market, Booking was able to increase its commission rates and exert much greater pressure on hoteliers’ margins,” Véronique Siegel, president of the hotels division of French hospitality sector association Umih, told public broadcaster France Inter.“For a room that the customer pays €100 (£87) for, if you take away Booking’s commission, the hotelier receives €75 at best, with which they have to pay their employees and invest.”Despite the friction, Booking.com appears unavoidable for many hotels, offering an online reach and visibility hard to achieve for smaller, independent establishments.A study by Hotrec and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland found that Booking Holding, the website’s parent company, controlled 71% of the European market in 2024, compared with 68.
4% in 2019.The corporation is valued at $170bn (£127bn), three times that of Volkswagen.Rupprecht Podszun, director of the institute for competition law at Düsseldorf’s Heinrich Heine University, said Booking.com was a classic example of how a digital platform could conquer an entire sector, creating a “winner takes all” dynamic.He said the legal action would probably be protracted and turn on the thorny question of how damages could be measured.
“Judges will have to form an opinion and then it will go through all the appeals – everything at great expense and with all the tricks available under the law,” he told Germany’s daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.“The case is a revolt of the hotels, saying: ‘You can’t just do what you want with us.’”
Thomasina Miers’ recipes for lamb koftas with buttery tomato sauce and cacik
Several years ago, I was stranded in Istanbul because of the Icelandic eruptions. I wandered through the ancient city and was astounded by the beauty of the place – and just as much by its food. I tasted grilled meats cooked over open fires on the streets, and had a kofta dish served with cacik, a classic cucumber and mint sauce, that was so intensely delicious that the moment has been distilled in my memory. Mince, with good provenance and the right amount of fat to carry flavour and lend moisture, is a kitchen hero. Here, it delivers an astoundingly good dinner inspired by that meal, and which shouldn’t break the bank
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A decade ago I put together a Running Away from Home Cookbook as a gentle nudge to one of my millennial chicks. Too gentle as it turned out – 10 years later I was the one who left home. After a lifetime of cooking for the multitudes, I have adapted to cooking for one. It’s been both a relief and a revelation.Single householders aged 65 and over are increasing as a proportion of the population
Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy recipe for baked feta tacos with pink onion and pineapple salsa | Quick and easy
I will never stop loving cheese and pineapple as a combination, and this version, with herby baked feta and spiced pineapple salsa, is the perfect update to the classic on a stick. Stuffed into warm tortillas with crunchy lettuce, this is a lovely summery dinner that comes together in minutes.The salsa is best made just before serving, so prep and chop everything and keep it separately in the fridge, if need be (though you could chop and mix the onion with the lime in advance).Prep 15 min Cook 25 min Serves 2200g block feta ½ tbsp olive oil 5-6 stalks oregano and/or thyme ½ tsp chipotle chilli flakes 4 small corn tortillas 1 romaine lettuce, finely slicedFor the salsa 1 fresh, ripe pineapple, peeled, cored and flesh cut into small chunks1 small red onion, peeled and very finely chopped1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped15g fresh mint, finely chopped1-2 limes, zest and juiceA pinch of sea salt flakesHeat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6. Put the feta on a lined baking tray, drizzle with the olive oil, then scatter over the oregano and/or thyme and chilli flakes, and bake for 25 minutes
How to make perfect fresh tomato pasta – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to make the perfect …
“How many versions of fresh tomato sauce can there be?” Catherine, the generous winner of a charity auction to help me with the research for this column, asks when I tell her what recipe we’ll be making. On the contrary, I tell her, I’ve had my work cut out to narrow the selection here down to a mere seven, not least because the simpler the dish, the more argument there is over how it should be prepared, especially in a place as passionate about its food as Italy.Happily, I’ll have a lot of assistance, because Catherine has raised yet more money for Hospitality Rides (a fundraising initiative for two very worthy industry charities, Only a Pavement Away and the Licensed Trade Charity), by selling tickets to get other people to do my job for me, effectively. In an attempt to sweeten the deal, I tell my assembled minions (all hospitality professionals, though none, sadly, Italian chefs) that, according to Emiko Davies, this raw sauce is “quite possibly the best way to enjoy really good, ripe summer tomatoes – as well as making the most of spending as little time in front of a hot stove as possible”. Then I make them chop an awful lot of tomatoes in the service of perfection
The Greyhound, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire: ‘An oligarch’s saloon bar teetering on the edge of chintz’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants
Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire is heroically lovely, but it does have about it a heavy whiff of the Hot Fuzz. It’s a market town with a nearby model village, while the “best things to do” section on TripAdvisor highlights the cemetery or a trip to the former residence of writer GK Chesterton. If all that fails to thrill, you could just go for lunch at the pub – although be aware that the Greyhound isn’t anything as simple as a plain old gastropub. Heck no, that would be something completely different: more shabbily chic, more carbohydrates on the menu, fewer staff calling you “Madam” while you’re en route to the loo and not even a hint of white peach granita on your burrata starter.The Guardian’s journalism is independent
What? They’re doing raves in the morning now? With coffee? At a cafe?
Daisy Dumas road tests a coffee rave in Sydney where there’s no alcohol and people dance all morning … soberGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailThe only ways I know to rave are festival-style or in the buzzed wee hours – the time between pubs shutting and trains starting. This means I’ve never walked into a cafe, fresh-faced and sober at 9am, with the intention of raving.But this is 2025, not the late 1990s, and people are possibly more questioning of the cost of partying on their bodies than they once were. So, coffee raves have become a thing.They’re all over the world and come in many shapes and sizes, tending towards the bijou
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