This page is a summary for hoteliers, not legal advice. Your contracts and your country's rules still apply. For a decision about your own contracts, ask a lawyer who practises competition law.
The short answer
Pricing lower on your own site is your call again, at least as far as Booking.com is concerned.
- Booking.com is a gatekeeper under the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA). Since 14 November 2024 it can't stop you offering different prices or conditions anywhere else, your own website included (European Commission (opens in a new tab)).
- It also can't get the same result another way, "such as increased commission rates or de-listing" (DMA, Recital 39 (opens in a new tab)).
- As of September 2026, the European Commission says your prices elsewhere count toward none of these in the EEA: Booking.com's default ranking, and eligibility for Genius, Preferred, Preferred Plus and Booking Sponsored Benefit. BSB was the last to change (European Commission, 28 September 2026 (opens in a new tab)).
- Other OTAs aren't gatekeepers. Whether they can hold you to parity depends on your contract and your country. Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland have laws against parity clauses with booking platforms; Germany's highest court has ruled against Booking.com's narrow clause. The sources are in the country table below.
- None of this makes your site cheaper. It only means you're allowed to make it cheaper.
Wide and narrow parity
A parity clause (also called a best-price clause) is a term in an OTA contract about the prices you charge elsewhere. There are two kinds, and the law treats them differently.
Wide parity: your price on the OTA must be no higher than anywhere else, other OTAs included. The EU's rules for distribution agreements don't exempt it (Regulation 2022/720, Article 5(1)(d) (opens in a new tab)).
Narrow parity: your price on the OTA must be no higher than on your own website. Other OTAs can be cheaper. This is the kind Booking.com used in Germany until February 2016 (Bundesgerichtshof, 18 May 2021 (opens in a new tab)).
The DMA and Booking.com
Who it covers
The European Commission designated Booking Holdings as a gatekeeper on 13 May 2024, for its online intermediation service Booking.com. The obligations have applied since 14 November 2024 (European Commission (opens in a new tab)).
The DMA is an EU regulation, so it applies directly in every member state, Greece included. It covers the designated service, Booking.com. It doesn't cover other OTAs: as of 29 September 2026, the Commission's list of gatekeepers names Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Booking, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft, and no other travel company (European Commission, gatekeepers (opens in a new tab)).
What Article 5(3) says
"The gatekeeper shall not prevent business users from offering the same products or services to end users through third-party online intermediation services or through their own direct online sales channel at prices or conditions that are different from those offered through the online intermediation services of the gatekeeper." (DMA, Article 5(3) (opens in a new tab))
In plain words: Booking.com can't stop you selling at a different price or on different terms on another OTA or on your own site. That covers both wide and narrow parity.
Recital 39 closes the obvious workaround. The ban applies to "any measure with equivalent effect, such as increased commission rates or de-listing of the offers of business users" (DMA, Recital 39 (opens in a new tab)).
Your guests, your offers: Article 5(4)
Article 5(4) matters as much to a hotel. Booking.com must let you, "free of charge, … communicate and promote offers, including under different conditions, to end users acquired via its core platform service or through other channels, and … conclude contracts with those end users" (DMA, Article 5(4) (opens in a new tab)).
Other laws still apply to how you contact a guest, data protection among them.
What Booking.com changed, and when
Parity was removed or waived in 2024, ahead of the DMA applying on 14 November 2024. The two main sources put it differently:
- The Commission: "Full removal of contractual parity requirements in July 2024 … Since then, its EEA-specific GDTs no longer contain any references to parity" (European Commission, 28 September 2026 (opens in a new tab)). GDTs are Booking.com's General Delivery Terms, the standard contract.
- Booking Holdings: "Ahead of the compliance deadline, parity obligations were removed, largely through waivers." It adds that "The waivers remain in force for existing contracts until the next available renegotiation point is reached" (Booking Holdings, 2025 DMA Compliance Report, pp. 2 and 7 (opens in a new tab)).
If you signed with Booking.com before 2024, your contract may still contain parity wording that a waiver switches off. Ask Booking.com for the waiver in writing.
What changed in September 2026
On 28 September 2026 the Commission published what Booking.com had changed (European Commission factsheet (opens in a new tab)):
- Booking Sponsored Benefit (BSB): "external price signals are no longer a factor for Booking.com's BSB eligibility. These changes apply to all properties in the EEA."
- Ranking and programmes: the Extranet now says that external price scans are "for information only", and that external prices are used neither for default ranking nor for eligibility for Booking.com's programmes.
- Labels: "The 'competitive' and 'non-competitive' labels have been removed from the Extranet, to avoid the perception that Booking.com expects price alignment across sales channels."
- More data for hotels on BSB, and clearer information on Genius, Preferred and Preferred Plus, including when participation may be suspended.
- An update to the GDTs, "in particular, Annex 4, 'Ranking'", is due "later this year".
Where the two accounts differ
Booking Holdings writes about conditions to participate on the platform; the Commission writes about programme eligibility. Read side by side, they give different pictures of the same period. We quote both and leave it there.
- Booking Holdings, November 2025: for EEA inventory, Booking.com "does not have and will not introduce any condition to participate on the platform that considers the terms on which that partner's offer is available off Booking.com" (2025 DMA Compliance Report, p. 7 (opens in a new tab)).
- European Commission, September 2026: Booking.com already did not use external prices for default ranking or for Preferred, Preferred Plus and Genius. "However, external prices were still taken into account for the Booking Sponsored Benefit (BSB) eligibility" (factsheet, 28 September 2026 (opens in a new tab)).
Competition law, beyond the DMA
The DMA binds only gatekeepers. For every other OTA, parity clauses fall under ordinary EU and national competition law.
The EU block exemption
Regulation 2022/720 exempts many distribution agreements from the EU's cartel ban, as long as each side's market share is 30% or less (Article 3). It doesn't exempt "any direct or indirect obligation causing a buyer of online intermediation services not to offer, sell or resell goods or services to end users under more favourable conditions via competing online intermediation services" (Regulation 2022/720, Article 5(1)(d) (opens in a new tab)).
That excludes wide parity. Narrow parity, which concerns only your own site, isn't in that exclusion, so below the 30% threshold it can still be covered. How that 30% is measured depends on how the market is defined, which the Court of Justice has said needs a concrete examination (below). Above the threshold, or where a national law applies, the answer is different.
The CJEU judgment of 19 September 2024 (C-264/23)
In Booking.com v 25hours Hotel Company Berlin, the EU Court of Justice held that "price parity clauses cannot, in principle, be classified as 'ancillary restraints'" (CJEU press release No 145/24 (opens in a new tab)).
What that means, and what it doesn't:
- Parity clauses, "both wide and narrow", don't escape the EU cartel ban just because they are attached to an OTA contract (operative part, point 1).
- For narrow clauses, the court said they have "prima facie, … a less restrictive effect on competition" but "do not appear to be objectively necessary to ensure the economic viability of the hotel reservation platform" (paragraph 63).
- Any efficiency argument for them belongs in the Article 101(3) TFEU assessment (paragraph 73).
- It didn't declare every narrow clause illegal. For the block exemption's market-share test, it said the relevant market has to be defined by a concrete examination of whether online platforms and other sales channels are substitutes (operative part, point 2). That point was made under Regulation 330/2010, the block exemption in force before Regulation 2022/720.
Source for the points above: the judgment, C-264/23 (opens in a new tab).
Country by country
National laws apply to every booking platform, not only to gatekeepers. This table covers the countries we checked. It isn't a full list of the EU.
| Country | The rule | Since | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | A platform's demand that a hotel not offer a lower price or better terms elsewhere, its own website included, is banned, and such agreements are void. Hotels set prices freely. | Published 30 November 2016; in force one month later, for existing contracts too | BGBl. I Nr. 99/2016 (opens in a new tab) |
| France | The hotelier keeps the freedom to grant the guest any discount or price advantage; any contrary clause is deemed unwritten. OTA contracts must be mandate contracts. | Loi n° 2015-990 of 6 August 2015 | Code du tourisme, Article L311-5-1 (opens in a new tab) |
| Germany | The Federal Court of Justice upheld the ban on Booking.com's narrow best-price clauses, used until February 2016. A court ruling, not a statute. | Ruling of 18 May 2021 (KVR 54/20) | Bundesgerichtshof (opens in a new tab) |
| Greece | We found no Greek statute on parity clauses. See below. | – | – |
| Italy | Any agreement binding a hotel not to offer end customers better prices or conditions than it offers through third parties is void, whatever law governs the contract. | Law 124 of 4 August 2017, article 1(166) | Gazzetta Ufficiale (opens in a new tab) |
| Switzerland (not EU) | A booking platform's general terms may not restrict, directly or indirectly, a hotel's prices and offers through parity clauses on price, availability or conditions. | 1 December 2022 (Article 8a UWG) | Fedlex (opens in a new tab) |
Greece
No statute
We found no Greek statute banning parity clauses. That's the result of a search, not proof that none exists. The DMA applies in Greece directly, so Article 5(3) covers Booking.com here as everywhere in the EU.
The Hellenic Competition Commission case
The Hellenic Competition Commission (HCC, Επιτροπή Ανταγωνισμού) is investigating Booking.com for a possible abuse of dominance. The case opened after a complaint (HCC, 8 July 2026 (opens in a new tab), in Greek). It is about ranking and visibility, not a parity clause:
- What it looks at: Booking.com's default ranking, its Preferred and Preferred Plus programmes, and Booking Sponsored Benefit.
- The HCC's preliminary concern: together, these may give hotels incentives to offer better prices and terms on Booking.com than on competing OTAs, and could exclude competing OTAs from entering or expanding in Greece.
- Booking.com offered commitments. The HCC put them to a market test on 8 July 2026, and extended the deadline for comments to 27 July 2026 (HCC, 20 July 2026 (opens in a new tab), in Greek).
- As of 28 September 2026, the HCC's plenary "will decide on Booking.com's proposal within the coming months" (HCC, 28 September 2026 (opens in a new tab), in Greek). The HCC says Booking.com's DMA measures don't prejudge its own case.
We'll update this page when the HCC decides.
Expedia and other OTAs
Expedia isn't on the Commission's list of DMA gatekeepers (European Commission, gatekeepers (opens in a new tab)), so Article 5(3) doesn't apply to it. Expedia's parity position depends on your contract and your country. The same goes for every other OTA and wholesaler.
Read what your contract says about prices elsewhere, then check it against the national rules above.
The collective damages claim
European hoteliers are suing Booking.com for damages over its past use of parity clauses.
- Who: the Stichting Hotel Claims Alliance, supported by HOTREC, the European hotel association (HOTREC, 28 May 2025 (opens in a new tab)).
- What: a share of the commissions hotels paid Booking.com between 2004 and 2024, plus interest (same source).
- Where: the Amsterdam District Court, where proceedings began on 30 January 2026. The deadline for hotels to register for the claim was 11 September 2026 (HOTREC, 30 July 2026 (opens in a new tab)).
- Booking.com's position: "we believe the claims about Booking.com's past use of parity clauses are incorrect and unjustified", and it "will therefore robustly defend and potentially appeal all legal proceedings claiming the opposite" (Booking.com (opens in a new tab)).
We take no view on the claim.
What this means for your hotel
- Find out which terms you're on. If your Booking.com contract predates 2024, ask for the parity waiver in writing.
- Read your other OTA and wholesale contracts for parity wording. The DMA doesn't reach them; national law might.
- Decide your direct price on its merits. In the EEA, Booking.com can't penalise you for pricing lower elsewhere, by commission, de-listing or, per the Commission, programme eligibility.
- If you think you're being penalised anyway, keep dated evidence (screenshots, extranet messages, ranking changes) and talk to a lawyer or your national competition authority.
- Then check that your site actually is cheaper.
The last step is the one most hotels skip. In HOTREC's European Hotel Distribution Study 2026, 51% of hotels report OTA rate undercutting, and HOTREC notes that some hotels "may simply lack the monitoring capabilities to identify such practices" (HOTREC, pp. 4 and 107 (opens in a new tab)).
When a channel is cheaper than you, the reason is usually one of eight things, from Genius to a leaked wholesale rate. Our guide Why is Booking.com cheaper than your website? walks through them.
What we watch
This page changes when one of these does:
- The HCC's decision on Booking.com's commitments.
- Booking Holdings' next DMA compliance report. The last was in November 2025.
- European Commission DMA news on Booking.com, including the GDT update to Annex 4.
- The Hotel Claims Alliance case in Amsterdam.
Changelog
- 29 September 2026: first published.
Sources
EU law and the Commission
- Regulation (EU) 2022/1925, the Digital Markets Act (opens in a new tab)
- European Commission, "Booking must now comply with the Digital Markets Act", 14 November 2024 (opens in a new tab)
- European Commission, DMA gatekeepers (opens in a new tab)
- European Commission, factsheet on Booking.com and price setting, 28 September 2026 (opens in a new tab)
- Regulation (EU) 2022/720, the Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (opens in a new tab)
- Court of Justice of the EU, C-264/23, judgment of 19 September 2024 (opens in a new tab), and its press release No 145/24 (opens in a new tab)
National
- Austria, BGBl. I Nr. 99/2016 (opens in a new tab)
- France, Code du tourisme, Article L311-5-1 (opens in a new tab)
- Germany, Bundesgerichtshof, KVR 54/20, 18 May 2021 (opens in a new tab)
- Italy, Legge 4 agosto 2017, n. 124 (opens in a new tab)
- Switzerland, UWG Article 8a (opens in a new tab)
- Greece, Hellenic Competition Commission: 8 July 2026 (opens in a new tab), 20 July 2026 (opens in a new tab) and 28 September 2026 (opens in a new tab)
Companies and associations
- Booking Holdings, 2025 DMA Compliance Report (opens in a new tab)
- Booking.com, on the parity claims (opens in a new tab)
- HOTREC, collective action announcement, 28 May 2025 (opens in a new tab)
- HOTREC, update on the collective action, 30 July 2026 (opens in a new tab)
- HOTREC, European Hotel Distribution Study 2026 (opens in a new tab)
This page is a summary, not legal advice. Your contracts and national rules still apply.