Belgian hotels join forces to attack Booking: "For our sector, this is the trial of the century".

Already ordered to pay 200 million euros, the accommodation booking platform could lose even more as a result of this legal action.

Hotel organizations and Belgian consumer associations are demanding repayment of part of the commissions paid to Booking, with which they had a contract between 2004 and 2024. At issue: the parity clauses imposed, prohibiting hotels from offering lower prices or better conditions on other sites or on their own site.

Ludo Geurden, former president of Horeca Limburg and Horeca Vlaanderen and now a director at Hotrec, tells our Het Belang van Limburg colleagues: "If I offered a room at 100 euros on my website and 105 on Booking, they would call me: either you put 100 with us too, or you go up to 105. They were intractable.

Last year, the European Court of Justice ruled that these clauses were contrary to European competition law, although in Belgium they had already been banned. Hotrec, a European organization bringing together hotel federations from 25 countries, has been preparing a collective action against Booking for two and a half years.

"The case will be brought before the Amsterdam court at the beginning of July," says Ludo Geurden. Belgian hoteliers can still join the proceedings free of charge until July 31. A fund is covering the legal costs, and will then earn a commission on the sums recovered. "The damage is estimated at at least 30% of the commissions paid over twenty years, plus interest. This is enormous. This will be the lawsuit of the century for the hotel industry. In Spain, Booking has already been sentenced to 200 million euros. Here, it will be even bigger," says Geurden.

He explains that the commission charged varies between 12 and 25%. "On average it's 15%, but it goes up in big cities or during conventions. It's very expensive. A hotelier in Arlon stopped using Booking, but after six months he came back. The platform is too dominant.

Jessy Brepoels, General Manager of the five-star hotel La Butte aux Bois in Lanaken, confirms: "We've always tried to strike a balance between visibility on Booking and direct relations with our customers. For years, we had to offer our lowest rates exclusively via Booking, which limited our freedom. But it's almost impossible to do without them, given their reach." La Butte aux Bois has not yet joined the class-action suit, but it's likely to come. Its hotel pays 12% commission. "We could pay more to be more visible on the platform, but I don't want to. We prefer to invest in quality and the team."

On the consumer side, associations in the Netherlands are also preparing action against Booking. Their registration site even crashed under the flood. In Belgium, Test-Achats is also receiving complaints. "For the moment, no legal action has been taken, but nothing is ruled out", says spokeswoman Laura Clays. She points out that in Belgium, unlike in the Netherlands, class action lawsuits cannot be financed by a third party who then reimburses itself, which complicates the process. Booking.com, for its part, defends itself. The company claims that it acts transparently and denies having any influence on hotel price rises, claiming that it offers a service that increases the visibility and clientele of its establishments. But for Geurden, this domination remains overwhelming. "Booking brings us customers but locks us in. If we run a promotion on our site, we have to run it on theirs too."

For him, as for other hoteliers, this class action is an opportunity to recover part of the sums paid over twenty years, and to re-establish a balance in the face of Booking's power. This trial will be, in his words, "the biggest ever seen in the European hotel industry".