Will UK anti-competition ruling change the hotel pricing game?
Skift Take
If the ruling is upheld, then parroted elsewhere, we could see some interesting competition. But that’s a big “if,” as it calls into question whether a seller has the right to establish pricing of its own products through various retail channels.
The UK’s Office of Fair Trading may be on the verge of changing the game in hotel chain-online travel agency dynamics.
Picking on the world’s largest hotel company, InterContinental Hotels, and the two largest OTA hotel resellers, Booking.com and Expedia, the OFT provisionally ruled that the trio “have infringed competition law in relation to the online supply of room only hotel accommodation by online travel agents.”
The OFT, which began its investigation in September 2010 and whose rulings cover the UK only, decided that Booking.com and Expedia entered into separate contracts
