Booking.com should of course have to make good on any promises or deals they make with guests and with hotels, which they seem to do.
If there's one thing that regulators should take a look at, it is the practice of selling non-refundable hotel nights. Booking.com does it together with hotels who able such offers and the whole industry does it at a limited scale, and have always done it. But the way I see it, there is no reason that a hotel shouldn't be able to always refund any room if it is cancelled at least one month before the stay. You should always be able to find another occupant for the room within one month. The only reason hotels sell non-refundable rooms is with the hope of double dipping when somebody has mistakenly reserved it without paying notice that it was non-refundable. I can see no argument against mandating a one month free cancellation for all hotel bookings on land.
That's exactly where the designation as a "gatekeep" comes in. For it to happen there's an investigation by the commission, and there are static thresholds but also sense applied. Just because you don't know how booking.com have abused their position doesn't mean they haven't - as concrete examples, they've been caught applying dark patterns with lies (only X rooms remaining and Y people are looking at them!!!), and them precluding hotels from offering cheaper rates is also a problem for consumers.
> precluding hotels from offering cheaper rates is also a problem for consumers.
Then you don't understand the industry. It is impossible for booking or any third party sellers to exist if they can not offer the same rates to customers for the same rooms. People would just use booking.com to find availability and reviews, and then book with the hotel more cheaply. Then you have to ban all third party selling of hotels or actually anything at all. Hotels have always been free to not use booking.com and to not offer all rooms on booking.com
I find it very Soviet to state that a crime has been committed without mentioning what it is, and it's impressive that people here swallow it wholesale.
People use middle men such as booking for increased confidence in their travel reservations. Trust is something very important when dealing with distance sales, which is the entire travel industry. Consumers will not benefit by taking away those platforms.
