It's Summer…

And time for an update on the various antitrust investigations into price fixing in the hotel online booking sector.

In the UK, the antitrust investigation was sparked by complaints from at least one online agent (Skoosh.com). It complained that some hotel bookers and hotel groups were conspiring to raise prices to consumers and that they sought to enforce the conspiracy via hotel groups threatening not to sell their rooms via the Skoosh website.

Following a three year investigation, Booking.com, Expedia and Intercontinental were found by the UK authorities to have entered into unlawful agreements whereby the online agents would not offer discounts on sales of rooms supplied by Intercontinental. On 31 January this year, the UK authorities accepted commitments from the parties to terminate the agreements and to allow online agents to offer discounts.