Russia fines Dutch site Booking.com $17.5 million for ‘abusing’ its position as the country’s leading hotel reservation aggregator

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has fined popular travel website Booking.com 1.3 billion Rubles ($17.5 million) for abusing its dominant position in the country’s hotel market, the government body revealed on Thursday.

According to FAS, Booking.com forces contracts upon hotels that use its site, making it against the rules to price rooms lower on other services. Therefore, it always shows the lowest price on the entire internet. As it is by far the most popular service online for reserving hotel rooms, Booking.com has been deemed to have attempted to impose a monopoly on the industry.

“The agency found that Booking.com B.V. abused its dominant position in the Russian market,” the FAS press release says. “FAS Russia found that such actions restricted competition in the market and also resulted in infringement of the hotels’ interests.”

In response, Booking.com has announced that it plans to appeal against the ruling.

“We are disappointed with today’s decision of the Federal Antimonopoly Service,” the site’s press service told TASS news agency. “We have always contributed to the tourism industry and firmly believe that our price parity practices are fair and allow Booking.com to support the travel ecosystem as we have always done.”

Booking.com, based in the Netherlands, isn’t the only Western company to be targeted by FAS this year. In April, it fined Apple $12.2 million for abusing its position in the app market after being accused of giving preferential treatment to its own applications.

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