European Platform Observatory clearly identifies how OTAs exercise their market dominance

The EU Observatory on the Online Platform Economy supports the Commission in policy-making by monitoring and analysing the online platform economy.

Earlier in 2021, the observatory issued several publications of interest. HOTREC notably welcomes the conclusions of the Analytical paper: “Multi-homing: obstacles, opportunities, facilitating factors”. It extensively covers how and why, despite the fact that hotels can ‘multi-home’ on several OTA platforms, the benefits of such multihoming are limited for hotels, exposing the many ways in which OTAs exert their market power over hoteliers, including imposing price parity clauses and only sharing limited data with hotels about guests. It also highlights that from a hotelier’s perspective, Booking.com – which accounted for 67.7% of the OTAs market in Europe in 2019 – still feels as an unavoidable business partner and behaves like an actor with significant market power.

The Observatory also published a report Monitoring of the implementation of the Platform to Business Regulation and an Analytical paper on the “Structure of the online platform economy post COVID-19 outbreak”.  The second paper direct shows that direct contact with hotels to potentially ask questions in the context of the pandemic and preference for domestic travel were key factors supporting a relatively higher proportion of direct bookings than usual.

Calendar

Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
Sun
M
T
W
T
F
S
S
27
28
3
4
5
6
7
8
11
12
13
15
16
17
18
19
21
22
24
25
26
27
28
29
31
1
2
Meeting DG HOME + DG GROW: Ukrainian refugees
01/03/2023    
14:00 - 15:00
On 1 March 2023, HOTREC held a meeting with DG Home and DG GROW on the Ukrainian refugees topic.  Participants to the meeting European Commission [...]
Pact for Skills - coordination meeting
02/03/2023    
15:00 - 16:30
Main outcome of the meeting available
09 Mar
09/03/2023    
10:00 - 12:00
Presentation and draft minutes are now available.
European Platform Undeclared Work - Ukraine refugees sub-group
09/03/2023    
10:00
Participants:  Participants of ELA (European Labour Authority), labour inspectors from Member States, European Federation of Employers; HOTREC (Marta Machado) Agenda Subgroup on displaced persons and [...]
10 Mar
10/03/2023    
11:00 - 12:00
ExCom Video Conference Link ExCom draft agenda - 10 March 2023 Draft Minutes of ExCom meeting of 25 January 2023 Antitrust Statement HOTREC Statutes HOTRE [...]
14 Mar
14/03/2023    
10:00 - 12:00
We are delighted to invite you to the Social Affairs Working Group meeting, taking place on 14 March 2023, online. Please register by using this [...]
Sectoral Social Dialogue meeting
20/03/2023    
10:00 - 13:00
We are delighted to invite you to the next Sectoral Social Dialogue (SSD) meeting, which will be hybrid, taking place on 20 March 2023 (from [...]
23 Mar
23/03/2023    
10:00 - 12:00
SAVE THE DATE: 23 March Exact timing and agenda TBC
Online Series: 90 Minutes to Close The Loop
30/03/2023    
14:00 - 15:30
Online Series: 90 Minutes to Close The Loop Episode 9 – broadcast live on the 30th of March 2023 at 14:00 to 15:30 Roadmap for [...]
Events on 01/03/2023
Events on 02/03/2023
Events on 10/03/2023
Events on 14/03/2023
14 Mar
Events on 20/03/2023
Events on 30/03/2023