On 31 March 2020, the Competition Commission ("Commission") published proposed commitments relating to three online travel agents (“OTAs”), namely Booking.com, Expedia.com and Trip.com in relation to certain terms of the OTAs' agreements with Hong Kong accommodation providers. The relevant legal entities of the OTAs providing the proposed commitments are together referred to as the "Parties".
The Commission has conducted an investigation under section 39 of the Competition Ordinance (Cap. 619) (“Ordinance”) in relation to suspected anti-competitive conduct by OTAs relating to certain terms in their agreements with Hong Kong accommodation providers.
In response to the investigation, each of the Parties have offered commitments under section 60 of the Ordinance whereby they will not enforce or enter into agreements with accommodation providers that contain wide price parity, wide conditions parity and/or room availability parity terms.
In accordance with the procedure set out in section 2, Schedule 2 of the Ordinance, the Commission invites interested parties to submit representations in writing on the proposed commitments.
In addition to the proposed commitments, the Commission has published an FAQs document to provide further information on the relevant provisions mentioned above, the commitments given by the Parties and the consultation.
The documents published are:
For FAQs, click here. For a copy of the press release, click here.
Further details on how to submit a representation to the Commission are outlined in the above Notice issued under section 2, Schedule 2 of the Ordinance of the proposed commitments.
The period for accepting representations on the proposed commitments from online travel agents in Case EC/02NJ is now closed.
To view the representations received to date, please click here.
To view the Notice of Acceptance and the final commitments given by the OTAs, please click here.