Bundeskartellamt against price parity

Dears WuBookers,

I break the silence during these Holydays (happy new year to all of you!) to report an interesting news coming from Germany. And it is something very inspiring about the famous “price parity” requested daily by OTAs. Well, the Bundeskartellamt (Germany’s national competition regulator) has decided to stop HRS, well-known deutsch OTA, to apply the “best price” clause to its german affiliated hotels.

At a first view, this rule will take validity starting from the 1st of March 2014 when HRS will be forced to delete the clause.

These are the words of Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: Only at first view do most favoured customer clauses used by online booking portals seem to benefit consumers. Ultimately the clauses prevent the offer of lower hotel prices elsewhere. Most favoured customer clauses thus restrict competition between existing online portals. Moreover, they make the market entry of new platforms considerably more difficult because they prevent new platforms from offering hotel rooms at lower prices. For these reasons we have now also initiated proceedings against the online hotel portals Booking and Expedia because of similar clauses in their hotel contracts.

The rest of European Offices of Fair Trading are going towards the same directions and perhaps this link could be interesting for you to complete your idea: (here). An absorbing future coming closer..

The fount of this news is the same German Agency: direct link here.