"Our agreement is fair"

Paris/Munich. AccorHotels' decision to allow independent hotels on to its booking platform and to offer this at lower rates set the industry alight last week. hospitalityInside.com asked HRS, Booking.com as well as hoteliers from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Italy for their response. We also asked Accor further detailed questions and got the first answers. A snapshot from seven countries shows how the decision has mixed up the discussion on distribution within the hotel industry.

Paris/Bremen. From the outside, it looks like France holds a grudge against giant OTA Booking.com. At first, hoteliers' unions together filed a complaint against Booking in July 2013 and then the Minister of Economy claimed contracts between the OTA and hoteliers were anti-competitive. Now it's Accor's turn to take legal action against its current "partner" for unfair competition. Peter Verhoeven switched from Accor to Booking only nine months ago. The mood on the market is turning against Booking.com. The German HRS online reservation portal headquartered in Cologne refrains from legally attacking the most recent court decision on maintaining rate parity. Consequently, the German antitrust agency finally had enough leeway to discipline Booking.com – being HRS's competitor – in the same way as it did with HRS. Moreover, last week, German hotelier Marco Nussbaum, CEO and founder of the prizeotel budget design group accused Peter Verhoeven, Booking's head of EMEA, of "guest theft" in an open letter.