Expedia, Booking.com and others guilty of ‘fixing’ hotel prices
Some of the world’s biggest online travel firms and hotel chains have been caught engaging in the price fixing of hotel rooms following an investigation by the Telegraph.
Sites such as Booking.com and Expedia as well as chains such as Radisson, Thistle, Starwood and Intercontinental Hotels now face substantial fines from the Office of Fair Trading got involved.
The scandal saw some hotels effectively banned from selling rooms cheaply after the sites bandied together to threaten their removal if they did so – after illegally introducing a minimum pricing system.
Such ‘cartel conduct’ means those guilty can be fined up to 10% of annual global turnover.