European hotels report more OTA undercutting; columnist says Booking.com now sets the price

Correction, 9 October 2026: An earlier version of this article presented an opinion column’s argument and estimates about Booking.com’s pricing as established fact, and wrongly said the change applied to hotels in the US and Canada, which no source supports. This version attributes the opinion to its author, reports the survey figures from HOTREC’s study directly, and adds Booking.com’s own description of how its funded discounts work. It was also dated September 30, 2026; the column was published on September 28, 2026.

HOTREC, the European hospitality association, published its European Hotel Distribution Study 2026 on 15 September. The study covers the reference year 2025 and draws on 1,882 individual hotel responses from 28 countries plus aggregated data from 831 hotel-chain properties. According to HOTREC, 51% of hotels report that OTAs undercut their direct prices frequently or occasionally, up from 43% in 2023, and among affected hotels answering the follow-up question, 80% say they had not agreed to the lower price. The study does not attribute the undercutting to a specific OTA. It reports that 65% of responding hotels use Booking.com Payments and that Booking.com accounts for 66.1% of the hotels’ OTA bookings.

In an opinion column on Hospitality Net on 28 September, Markus Busch, publisher of hospitality.today, argues that Booking.com’s payment service lets it set guest-facing prices below the rates hotels load. The column cites HOTREC’s survey alongside other sources; its interpretation is the author’s opinion.

Booking.com’s partner help page on Booking Sponsored Benefit says Booking.com covers a portion of the room cost to attract bookers, that "you still receive the full transaction value you set for the room", and that the standard commission applies to the room price originally set.