PRESS: Booking.com stops price parity as antitrust requires

MOSCOW, Dec 15 (PRIME) -- Dutch company Booking.com has fulfilled the requirement of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service on the termination of price parity and now hotels can set lower prices of their services, daily Izvestiya reported on Wednesday citing the watchdog.

“The Dutch company informed the antimonopoly service of its fulfilment of the warning. Booking.com amended the general terms of provision of services and the privilege program and terminated the application of price and room parity to the Russian hotels,” the daily reported.

Under price parity, hotels and other places of residence are obliged to maintain in all channels of sale the same prices and information about rooms as they are provided to aggregator Booking.com.

The Moscow Arbitration Court sided with the antitrust watchdog in November in slapping a 1.3 billion ruble turnover-based fine on Booking.com for the abuse of dominance on the country’s market of hotel aggregators. The company’s complaint against the punishment was declined.

(73.4698 rubles – U.S. $1)

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