Competition: Commission publishes call for tenders for a market study on the distribution of hotel accommodation

The European Commission has published an open call for tender for a market study on the distribution of hotel accommodation in the EU. The study will be conducted in 2021 and will focus on Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Poland, Spain and Sweden. These Member States have been chosen to provide a sample that is representative in terms of geographic location, population size, degree of concentration of the hotel sector, and antitrust or legislative interventions. The market study is intended to provide up-to-date information on how hotels market and sell their rooms, including: (i) whether distribution arrangements differ between Member States; (ii) whether there have been changes relative to the findings of a  monitoring exercise conducted by a group of EU competition authorities in 2016; and (iii) whether national laws banning booking platform parity clauses have led to changes in distribution arrangements. The study will cover the period from 2017 to early 2021 and the results will be published in early 2022. Today's call for tender follows the decision by the network of EU competition authorities (European Competition Network – ECN) in 2017 to keep the hotel booking sector under review and to re-assess the state of competition in due course. The Commission has consulted the national competition authorities on the plan for the study and they will have a further opportunity to provide input during the study.