The UK’s Office of Fair Trading is reported to be investigating allegations that hotel chains are colluding with booking websites to keep room rates artificially high.
The allegation is that Booking.com, the Dutch-based subsidiary of the US giant Priceline.com, is involved in a type of price fixing known as “resale price maintenanceâ€, which, in this case, involves hotels agreeing not to sell their rooms at a lower price than that advertised on the Booking.com website.
Travellers end up paying inflated rooms rates as competition dries up.
The claims have been made by rival booking site, Skoosh.com.
Skoosh boss Dorian Harris told the UK Sunday Times, “Earlier this year we started getting calls from angry hoteliers insisting that we were selling their rooms too cheaply.
“They told me Booking.com had been on to them threatening all sorts of nonsense if they didn’t either remove their hotels from Skoosh or force Skoosh to raise its prices.â€
