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UK: Booking sites look to appease OFT over hotel discounts

By  |  August 9, 2013

The Office of Fair Trading announced the beginning of discussions with hotel conglomerate InterContinental Hotels Group as well as online booking sites Expedia and a unit of Priceline.com in part of efforts to quell competition concerns raised by the regulator last year. The OFT was reportedly probing whether InterContinental made anticompetitive agreements with the sites that barred the sites from selling discounted hotel rooms when sold separately from flights or car rentals. The companies are now joining the regulator in talks over the issue and, according to the OFT, the watchdog is currently weighing “whether these commitments offer an immediate an effective means” of boosting pricing competition in the market. Interested parties now have until September 13 to weigh-in on the proposed commitments, but the exact term of the offer were not reported.

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