One Blackpool hotel group told me in 12 months they paid £800k in commissions to Booking.com

The concern and calls for change have come after an independent Spanish regulator responsible for enforcing competition laws, the Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC), fined Booking.com 413.24 million euros for allegedly abusing its "dominant position over the last five years”.

The Spanish regulator, similar to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, outlined two main abuses: "imposing various unfair commercial conditions on hotels located in Spain that use its booking intermediation services and restricting competition from other online travel agencies that offer the same services."

This ruling has encouraged B&B and hotel owners to lift the lid on their own concerns about Booking.com practices and their impact on Blackpool's hotels and B&Bs.

Ian White, Director of hoteliers group Stay Blackpool, said: "Rate parity rules in Booking.com conditions make it so that a property has to list its rooms at the same rates whether it's on Booking.com or on its own website - regardeless of commission rates.

“The hotels are under a contract not to undercut the price against the Booking.com listing.

“However, Booking.com will often use part of a commission for what they would get paid; if a room was a hundred pounds, typically they get 15% so they could knock ten pounds off the price that they are offering so it looks like Booking.com is giving the best deal all the time.

“This means the bookings that could have gone to the hotel directly are going through Booking.com, the hotel gets the total amount minus the commission they have to pay - which is obviously less than they want to charge.

"One hotel group told me that during the last year, it could have been last year or the year before, they had paid £800,000 in commissions to Booking.com."

Another issue Mr White described was "brandjacking" by Booking.com. He described the practice of Booking.com buying the top Google listing in the venue's name and use it to compete against the hotel or B&B. This means that customers will find the Booking.com website first when searching for the hotel. Mr White said the impact of this is that customers will think that the Booking.com site is the hotel's official website.

Most of these issues were reported to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation 2017 though, hoteliers feel only a few were really addressed.

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Some topics addressed in the investigation included the reduced Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) statements, which would say things such as 25 rooms sold in the past hour or so and the last room available. To get customers to buy rooms more quickly because they think no rooms will be left soon.

THe CMA ruled hotel and B&B reviews are also easier to sort for customers. The lowest review score customers can give used to be 2.5 and was reduced to 1. Comments at the top of a search page more clearly state that the order in which properties appear on a search page can be affected by commission rates paid by the property.  

Mr White said he didn’t think that the 2017 CMA investigation went far enough to address the issues with online booking sites such as Booking.com.

Mr White, on behalf of Stay Blackpool, is now calling for further action to be taken against Booking.com to address brandjacking and rate parity agreements.

He said: “The biggest change we feel needs addressing is the need for a general "License to Trade" so that every booker of any holiday accommodation can have the confidence that the place they are booking is legal safe and clean. I believe this a national requirement and needs to be compulsory to pull up standards across the industry.

“As for the most important thing that can be done by Booking.com is to show reviews in newest first order so that bookers are not making there booking choices based on information that is potentially old and very different from the way a property is operating at the current time.” A spokesman for Booking.com said they offer a good, free advertising platform for hoteliers and B&B owners and their goal is to empower small businesses.

He said: "We always want to collaborate with all of our partners, and that includes B&B owners in Blackpool. Our goal is to empower them to grow their business via Booking.com.

“For properties who choose to advertise on our platform for absolutely no cost, Booking.com translates their content into 45 languages worldwide, invests millions in advertising on the property's behalf across multiple digital and traditional advertising channels, handles the property's customer service needs across 45 languages, and drives the technology to make properties bookable via mobile, among other services. If, and only if, Booking manages to secure a reservation for one of our partners, we charge a small fee for our services, which is around 15%.

“Of course accommodation owners are free to advertise their property in any way they choose, but many opt to do so on Booking.com because we drive business to their properties and we are highly cost effective vs other traditional advertising channels.

“In terms of the rates advertised, as part of our partnership, we ask accommodations to offer competitive prices on our platform. In particular, we ask that they offer prices no worse than what they offer on their own website. Otherwise, there would be a strong incentive to free-ride, which means accommodations reap the benefits of our technology, translation and marketing investments without ever paying for these services.”