Booking.com

2024: Change of CEO in the Russian division

On March 15, 2024, Букинг.ком Rusia, the Russian structure of the Internet booking service for Booking.com hotels, appointed a new general director. Anna Filatova took over this position, replacing Yulia Lupanova. Read more here.

2022

How hackers hack hotels into Booking.com and demand money from customers

On December 1, 2023, Panda Security, a company specializing in information security solutions, announced a new cybercriminal scheme, the victims of which are users of the Internet hotel booking system Booking.com. Attackers steal personal data, and then convince customers to make fictitious payments.

Panda Security emphasizes that the IT services of the platform itself have not Booking.com been hacked. Instead, attackers exploit flaws in the security systems of partner hotels. At the initial stage of the attack, scammers call the reception of the selected hotel and impersonate a recent guest who forgot a valuable thing when leaving. Then the criminals send an email with a link to a file stored in the Google cloud: this document allegedly contains an image of a lost item, but in fact, instead of a photo, it contains the malicious code Vidar Infostealer. The malware automatically steals login information on the Booking.com from the hotel system and transfers it to scammers.

A scheme is disclosed, the victims of which are users of the Internet hotel booking system Booking.com

Next, cybercriminals enter the Booking.com service using stolen credentials and turn to the platform's customers with a request to pay fictitious bills. At the same time, users are redirected to fake websites, which leads to theft of funds. In some cases, attackers contact their victims by phone or through instant messengers, convincing them to provide bank card information.

Panda Security experts note that in many cases the attack is effective, since customers do not realize that they are being deceived: messages come on behalf of real hotels whose services are available through the booking service. Booking.com login credentials have already been found on sale on some darknet forums.^[1]

Booking.com paid 1.3 billion rubles a fine for imposing unfavorable conditions on Russian hotels

On April 8, 2022, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) announced that it had received Booking.com funds from the company, which were paid as a fine for abuse of a dominant position in the information aggregator services market. The money went to the budget of the Russian Federation.

According to the press service of the FAS, the department found that the Booking.com imposed unfavorable terms of contracts on Russian hotels and hotels, according to which they were obliged to provide it and comply with the parity of prices, availability of rooms and conditions in all sales channels and distribution of their services. Such channels are understood as meta-search engines, travel agencies, other information aggregators, as well as the sites of the hotels themselves and other accommodation facilities.

Booking.com paid 1.3 billion rubles a fine for imposing unfavorable conditions on Russian hotels

Hoteliers claimed that the service imposed unfavorable terms of contracts on Russian hotels and hotels, prohibiting them from selling rooms at a cost lower than the aggregator published on the website. According to them, this led to an overestimation of the commission for hotels and an increase in the cost of services for end consumers, since it includes a fee that the hotel is obliged to pay to the aggregator.

The Booking.com service, whose share in the Russian market by the beginning of 2022 exceeded 80%, stated the opposite: allegedly this practice is necessary so that hotels cannot indicate inflated prices on the platform, motivating tourists to book rooms directly.

As a result, the FAS recognized the company as violating antimonopoly legislation (paragraph 3 of part 1 of article 10 of the Law on Protection of Competition) and imposed a fine of 1.3 billion rubles on the company. The Moscow Arbitration Court upheld the FAS ruling on an administrative offense against the company.^[2]

Work stoppage in Russia against the background of a special operation of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine

On March 4, 2022, against the background of Russia's special operation in Ukraine, Booking disconnected from facilities in Russia. By this time, the company controlled about 40% of the booking market in the Russian Federation.

Termination of 2,700 support staff

In February 2022, the head of Booking fired almost all full-time support staff with one video message. This is about 2700 people, they were offered to switch to outsiders.

The agreement will affect 12 of the 14 customer service departments in Europe, Asia Pacific and the Americas.

Number of layoffs at tech companies in 2022

2021

Tightening politics in Crimea

In January 2022, Booking introduced new restrictions in Crimea. One of them is that you can book a room for only one adult tourist in accordance with the requirements of business trips.

In addition, the hotel booking service has closed the exchange of messages between partners and guests of hotels in Crimea in order to reduce the risk of vacation requests made during the booking of business trips. Previously, Russians who went on vacation to the Crimea could take advantage of a loophole in Booking by ticking the box "I travel for work" and booking accommodation.

Booking tightened policy in Crimea: One room for an adult and disconnecting communication with the hotel

According to the Minister of Resorts and Tourism of the Republic Vadim Volchenko, official appeals to the company did not give results.

We have prepared an official appeal to the Federal Antimonopoly Service regarding signs of unfair competition, because, in our opinion, they are clearly present here, "he explained.

Booking explained the tightening of the placement policy in Crimea by following the current trade sanctions imposed by the European Union and the Dutch government against the republic.

As a Dutch company offering its services from the Netherlands, Booking.com operates in accordance with these trade sanctions imposed by the EU and the Dutch government against Crimea, Booking said (quoted by RIA Novosti).

The press service added that in order to avoid any misunderstandings regarding Booking's position on doing business with accommodation facilities in Crimea, which is not prohibited, Booking has voluntarily adjusted the platform and the booking process to make sure that those who want to book an accommodation facility in Crimea can only do so provided that they are not traveling for the purpose of rest.^[3]

Booking allowed hotels in the Russian Federation not to coordinate prices with him on their websites

Booking allowed hotels in Russia not to coordinate prices with it on their websites. This became known on November 11, 2021 after the court of appeal rejected the complaint of the hotel booking service against the decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court made a few months earlier. It entered into legal force.

Thus, Booking was obliged to remove the condition on price parity from contracts with Russian hotels. Thus, hotels will be able to indicate prices on their websites lower than those offered by the service itself.

Booking will allow hotels not to agree prices with him on their websites

Being a company that complies with the law, we will work to end the practice of price parity in Russia, the company said.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) accused Booking of imposing price parity - conditions under which the cost of accommodation in a hotel on other resources cannot be lower than on the aggregator's website. The company was fined, she herself considers the decision of the FAS "unfair."

According to the results of the audit, the FAS concluded that the share of Booking Holdings B.V. registered in the Netherlands in the Russian market of aggregators of information about accommodation facilities was 84% in kind and 80% in cash at the end of 2018.

The regulator considered that Booking was abusing its dominant position by imposing a condition on hotels working with it to give the best prices, and demanded that the condition on price parity be excluded from contracts with hotels, but the service ignored the requirement. Alexey Matushkin, director of the Booking.com in Russia, spoke in an interview with RBC about why  the service considers such price parity to be fair. This practice, he said, was introduced by the hotels themselves: they wanted "prices everywhere to be the same," because they were afraid that online travel agencies would underestimate the cost of the room. The price, as Matushkin noted, should be obvious to guests: if the guest sees completely different prices on different sites, "this is at best alarming and puzzling, at worst it causes him distrust and refusal to book this particular hotel."^[4] 

Fine in Russia for 1.3 billion rubles

In 2021, the FAS Russia fined Booking 1.3 billion rubles for "abuse of dominant position" in the Russian market. This is approximately 11.5% of the turnover of the booking service in Russia.

A fine of 475 thousand euros for leakage of these hotel employees

In early April 2021, a major hotel booking site, Booking.com, was fined €475,000 for failing to report a serious data breach within the time limit set by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The Booking.com site suffered from hacking back in 2018. Telephone scammers received data from 40 employees of various hotels in the UAE. After learning the login credentials of the Booking.com, the hackers gained access to the personal data of more than 4,100 customers who booked a room at UAE hotels through the site. Credit card details of 283 customers were also disclosed and a security code (CVV) was compromised in 97 cases.

Booking.com fined 475 thousand for leaking these hotel employees

Customers could Booking.com be victims of serious robberies. Even if the criminals could not access the credit card data, they only had to find out the name, contact details and booking information at the hotel in order to carry out a phishing attack, "explained Monique Verdier, vice president of the Netherlands Data Protection Agency (AP).

Although Booking.com was apparently not to blame for the data breach, concealing such a cyber attack is considered a violation of the law. The company, which is headquartered in the Netherlands, received a notification of the incident on January 13, 2019, but did not tell the AP until February 7, which is only 22 days later. Under strict GDPR rules, companies must report a data breach within 72 hours.

Verdier argues that this is a serious data security breach. According to her, online firms are obliged not only to provide advanced control methods, cyber security but also to ensure a quick response in the event of their violations.

Unfortunately, a data breach can occur even if you have taken every precaution. But to protect your customers and prevent repeated attacks, you must report the violation on time, "Verdier explained.

The Booking.com will not contest the fine, AP reported.^[5]

2020

FAS will require Booking.com to exclude the clause on price parity from contracts with hotels

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) of the Russian Federation found the online booking service guilty of Booking.com in the framework of the case of imposing requirements on hotels to comply with price parity, the regulator's website said in a statement.

"The consideration of the case against Booking.com showed that Russian hotels depend on the company, and any of its actions can have a direct impact both on the commercial activities of hotels and on consumers of hotel services. In such a situation, it is important to suppress any anti-competitive practices of aggregators that close entire groups of consumers on their services and prevent them from receiving the necessary services from other market participants. The establishment of various parity on the part of Booking.com is a vivid example of such practices, "said FAS Deputy Head Alexei Dotsenko, quoted by the press service of the department.

The report notes that the FAS will seek from the company to exclude from the contractual documentation the requirement for parity in hotel prices.

"FAS Russia will issue a Booking.com order to terminate actions that violate antimonopoly laws. In it, the antimonopoly authority will require the company to exclude from contracts with hotels the conditions for wide and narrow parity both in relation to prices for hotel services and in relation to the conditions under which these services are provided, "explained Elena Zaeva, head of the FAS communications and information technology regulation department, whose words are quoted on the agency's website.

As specified in the press release, according to the results of the consideration of the antimonopoly case, the company was found to have violated paragraph 3 of part 1 of article 10 of the law on protection of competition.

"The company has abused its dominant position in the market for the provision of information aggregators services on hotels, hotels, hostels and other accommodation facilities. Booking.com imposed unfavorable contract conditions on Russian hotels and hotels, according to which they were obliged to provide companies and comply with the parity of prices, availability of rooms and conditions in all sales channels and distribution of their services. Such channels are understood as meta-search engines, travel agencies, other information aggregators, as well as the sites of the hotels themselves and other accommodation facilities, "the FAS website says.

Thus, according to the department, parity conditions can lead to the fact that hotels cannot set the price for their services in other sales channels lower than for Booking.com.

25% of employees laid off as tourism industry collapses

In early August 2020, the online home booking service Booking.com announced that it was cutting its workforce by about 25% due to the collapse of the tourism industry due to the pandemic. This was announced to employees during a videoconference by the general director of the company Glenn Fogel.

The company also clarified that it was still working to "clarify the timing, number of employees affected, financial implications and other aspects of the proposed settlements." Things will finally be clear by the end of 2020.

We worked hard to keep as many jobs as possible. But now we must restructure the entire organization as a whole in order to be able to recover in the future, "a Booking Holdings representative commented on the situation.

Booking.com cuts staff as tourism industry collapses

The cuts could affect an estimated 4,000 employees, according to CNN, but Booking.com does not provide specific details about the cuts or the amount it seeks to save. In total, the company employs about 17,500 people. Booking.com is not the only booking service that has taken such measures. Bloomberg claims that amid the pandemic, TripAdvisor has also cut some of its employees, and Airbnb has laid off 25% of the state, that is, 1,900 people.

The tourism industry is working hard to make effective use of the federal aid package, but the executive vice president of the US Travel Association, Tori Emerson Barnes, came to disappointing conclusions and announced that the industry has already lost half of its jobs, and expects a loss of more than half a trillion dollars by the end of 2020. In a conversation with employees, the head of Booking Holding, Glenn Vogel, called the pandemic "the largest social and economic crisis of our time," which has hit the entire hotel and tourism industry.^[6]

2019

FAS obliged Booking.com to stop demanding guarantees of the best price from Russian hotels

On November 12, 2019, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) of the Russian Federation announced that the Booking.com company should stop demanding a guarantee of the best price from Russian hotels.

Signs of abuse of a dominant position were identified based on the results of consideration of the application of the All-Russian public organization of small and medium-sized enterprises "Support of Russia" and expressed themselves in imposing on accommodation means (hotels, hotels, hostels, etc.) unfavorable terms of the agreement on the need to oblige the provision and observance of parity of prices and rooms, as well as conditions for interaction with closed groups of users, - the regulator said in a statement.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) of the Russian Federation announced that the company should Booking.com stop demanding a guarantee of the best price from Russian hotels

At the beginning of 2019, the organization "Support of Russia" wrote a letter to the head of the FAS Igor Artemyev, in which she spoke about her concern due to the state of competition in the hotel reservation market. The report said that the share of Booking.com in the market reaches 70%, which gives the service the right to impose unfavorable partnership conditions, taking advantage of its dominant position.

According to Alexei Kozhevnikov, vice president of Opora Rossii, the Booking.com price parity policy has led to an overestimation of the commission for hoteliers and an increase in the cost of hotel services for end consumers.

The "Support of Russia" indicated that when forming the price for a room, the hotel is forced to take into account the service commission, which averages 20%. If a hotel violates the requirement of price parity, its rating decreases in the overall ranking Booking.com and, accordingly, the dynamics of bookings decreases.

The FAS issued a Booking.com warning, according to which the service must exclude the requirement for price parity from agreements within a month.

In addition, in 2015, the OnlineTur.ru travel agency complained about the condition of price parity, but then the Russian antimonopoly department did not reveal any violations.^[7]

748 million reservation houses and apartments - more than Airbnb

In April 2019, Booking.com revealed statistics showing the company's leadership in the market for services for booking accommodation.

From 2007 to April 2019, 748 million guests stayed in houses, apartments or unique objects, such as a yurt or igloo (hotels are not counted), using Booking.com. Airbnb has 500 million guests during this period, Fortune reports.

Booking.com specializes in hotel reservations, but the rental business is growing faster, said Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel. In 2018, this business brought Booking.com revenue in the amount of $2.8 billion, while the entire turnover of the service amounted to $14.5 billion. Data for previous years are not provided.

From 2007 to April 2019, 748 million guests stayed in houses, apartments or unique objects, such as a yurt or needle, using Booking.com

The growing income of Booking.com from rental housing is primarily due to high marketing costs, which reached $5 billion in 2018. Moreover, the company is not going to reduce these costs.

According to Vogel, Booking.com is growing rapidly in the American market after several years of focusing on Europe - the largest market for the company.

In total, from 2007 to April 2019, the Booking.com website was used more than 3 billion times for renting hotels, apartments, houses and other housing. The number of accommodation facilities placed on the platform reached 28 million, of which 5.7 million are apartments, private houses and unique private real estate. Airbnb has about 6 million accommodation options.

Global Growth Dynamics for Online Hotel and Travel Bookings, Statista Data

Airbnb does not disclose its marketing costs, but they are likely much less than a competitor. This conclusion can be made on the basis of a small relatively Booking.com revenue - $1 billion in the third quarter of 2018. By April 2019, Airbnb offers rental housing in 81 thousand cities in 191 countries.^[8]

Booking.com won the court against the US Patent Office

On February 18, 2019, it became known that the US Court of Appeals ruled on a lawsuit between the Booking.com hotel booking service and the United States National Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Since 2012, Booking.com has been trying to register its name as a trademark, but the USPTO opposes. The fact is that according to American laws, the description of the goods or services provided by common words cannot be used as a trademark or trademark. This, relatively speaking, means that you cannot register the word beer as a brand of beer, and shoes as a brand of shoes (while Shoes beer or Beer shoes have a right to exist).

USPTO representatives insist that the word booking itself is a common word meaning booking, therefore, the Booking.com trademark is not subject to registration. Over the past six-plus years, the litigation has passed several courts, and the Court of Appeal had to say the last word. The opinions of its judges were divided, but two of the three took sides Booking.com. The court verdict says that the case is a very rare case when adding the name of a common top-level domain to a dictionary word creates a unique term to be registered in USPTO. The main argument was the data of a sociological survey, which showed that three quarters of respondents clearly understand that Booking.com is a brand name, and not just a description of the booking service. The court also noted that the registration of the Booking.com trademark does not in any way prevent the registration of other domain names using the word booking: for example, carbooking.com or flightbooking.com.

At the same time, Judge James Wynn, who opposed such a decision, indicated in his dissenting opinion that registering Booking.com as a trademark creates a dangerous precedent and conditions for unfair competition, potentially allowing the service to prosecute other booking resources using the word booking^[9] in the name^[10].

2018

Among the largest IT companies in Europe

Data for 2018

Spending of $1 billion on advertising in the Google search engine

In November 2018, Booking.com spending on advertising in the Google search engine over the previous three months became known - more than $1 billion.

According to CNBC, citing Booking's financial report, in the third quarter of 2018, the company spent $1.3 billion on performance marketing, a way to build advertising channels in such a way that at each stage you can see and evaluate specific quantitative indicators obtained as a result and the costs spent on them. A year earlier, this cost item was measured at $1.2 billion.

Booking.com paid $1 billion to Google for advertising

Most of the performance marketing costs "are related to the use of online search engines (mainly Google)" and other Internet services. RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney estimates the share of advertising contracts with Google at 80% in the performance marketing budget. Thus, we are talking about an amount of $1 billion, which corresponds to 3.6% in Google advertising revenue for July-September 2018.

I'm sure they [Booking - note TAdviser] are among Google's top five direct customers globally, "said Mahaney, who set Booking's stock rating at" buy. "

CNBC calls Google an important item of Booking's advertising spending because many travelers are looking for options to travel with requests such as "flying to New York" or "a hotel in London." At the same time, Booking's search results have to compete with Google's own services, including aggregators Google Flights and Google Hotels.

In its financial report for the third quarter of 2018, Booking mentions Google 52 times and notes that the search engine accounts for "a significant part" of traffic and booking requests on the service. At the same time, the company understands the risks associated with excessive dependence on Google.^[11]

Booking.com hid ratings and reviews for hotels in Crimea

The online hotel booking service Booking.com in July 2018 hid the ratings of hotels in Crimea and the reviews of verified users, on the basis of which the final estimates are formed. The corresponding letter from the portal administration to the owners of accommodation facilities on the peninsula was at the disposal of RBC. The reason for this decision in the document is called EU sanctions against Russia.

"While business travellers can still book accommodation options in Crimea, any feedback they share can be misinterpreted by authorities as the company Booking.com offering travel services in the region. To avoid any misunderstandings regarding the kind of services that we offer to travelers in Crimea, unfortunately, we must deactivate guest reviews for all accommodation facilities in Crimea until further notice, "the letter says

The central office of Booking.com B.V., which owns the portal, is located in the capital. Holland Amsterdam Thus, the company can be punished for violating the "Crimean" restrictions for EU companies, which entered into force on December 20, 2014. They assume that any organization under jurisdiction European Union does not have the right to provide services directly related to tourism activities in the Republic of Crimea and. Sevastopol The restrictions were introduced in connection with the annexation of the peninsula to Russia in March 2014.

Main article: IT blockade of Crimea

Notes