EU Court Upholds Block on Booking's €1.6B Etraveli Deal

Booking Holdings has lost its appeal against the European Commission's decision to block its €1.6 billion purchase of flight retailer Etraveli Group, closing off the company's most direct route into air distribution and leaving its "connected trip" ambitions without the flights piece it wanted to buy.

The EU's General Court ruled on September 9 that the Commission was right to bar the deal. The court agreed with the Commission's finding that the acquisition would have strengthened Booking's already dominant position in hotel distribution "by increasing barriers to entry and expansion."

The sequence runs back nearly five years. Booking announced the Etraveli acquisition in late 2021. A year later the Commission opened a formal investigation, then barred the deal three years ago. Booking appealed.

The court rejected Booking's central argument, that regulators had departed from "settled law and precedent". It found the Commission may account for "new forms of competition concerns, such as those which may arise in digital markets", and that it had not misinterpreted its own merger guidelines. On the substance, the court agreed the deal would have significantly impeded competition.

Booking is not conceding. "We disagree with the outcome and remain firmly of the view that the commission's assessment was wrong, both on the facts and on the law," the company said in a statement. "We are reviewing the judgment and a possible appeal to the European Court of Justice."

What this means for accommodation partners

The direct read is about flights, but the reasoning matters more to hoteliers than the subject matter suggests. The Commission's theory of harm was that a strong flight funnel would pull more customers into Booking's hotel business, and that this would make it harder for rivals to reach scale in accommodation. The General Court has now endorsed that logic. That gives European regulators a tested precedent for treating Booking's hotel position as the thing being protected, in cases that are nominally about something else.

It also lands on top of Booking's designation as a digital gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act. CEO Glenn Fogel has argued repeatedly in recent years that the European regulatory environment risks stifling innovation and investment, citing both the gatekeeper designation and the blocked Etraveli deal. Two rulings in the same direction make that argument harder to win in Brussels.

For operators, the practical consequence is that Booking's path to a multi-product trip now has to be built or partnered rather than bought, at least in Europe. Deals that would concentrate more of the traveller journey inside one platform face a regulator with a fresh court endorsement, and the accommodation side of the business is what that scrutiny is ultimately aimed at.

A further appeal to the European Court of Justice would add years to a case already five years old. Booking has said only that it is reviewing the option.