Finance
Italy regulator ends Booking.com probe as commitments ease competition concerns
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on December 19, 2024
1 min readLast updated: January 27, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on December 19, 2024
1 min readLast updated: January 27, 2026
Italy's AGCM ends its probe into Booking.com after the company addressed competition concerns with commitments to ensure fair hotel pricing.
MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's competition watchdog AGCM closed an investigation into Booking.com as it found commitments offered by the online travel platform sufficient to address the competition concerns it had raised, it said on Thursday.
AGCM opened in March a probe into Booking.com to establish whether the travel website was abusing its dominant market position with its hotel price policy.
The regulator said the way Booking.com's Preferred Partner Programme was handled "seemed likely to hinder effective competition in the market, at least nationwide, for online hotel brokerage and reservation services," resulting in higher prices and less choice for consumers.
Booking.com submitted a number of commitments to ensure that prices offered by hotels on other online channels would not be taken into account at any stage when managing and promoting those that are part of the programme.
(Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro, editing by Giulia Segreti)
The main topic is Italy's AGCM ending its investigation into Booking.com after the company addressed competition concerns.
Booking.com was investigated for potentially abusing its dominant market position with its hotel price policy.
Booking.com committed to ensuring that hotel prices on other online channels would not affect its Preferred Partner Programme.
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