The dynamics of online hotel prices and the EU Booking.com case

Andrea Mantovani, Claudio Piga and Carlo Reggiani

No 17-04, Working Papers from NET Institute

Abstract: This paper analyses the dynamics of hotel prices listed on Booking.com in the period 2014-16. This period is characterised by the most important antitrust decisions regarding the use of price parity clauses by online travel agencies (OTAs) in the EU. First, we document the dynamics of hotel prices on Booking.com in tourism regions of three EU member states: France, Italy, and Spain. The evidence suggests that prices decreased in 2015, the year in which the major antitrust decisions took place, whereas they bounced back in 2016. Second, we provide both a comprehensive explanation of the previous evidence and a rationalisation based on a theoretical model of the OTA sector. Overall, our overarching analysis of the price dynamics on Booking.com allows to explain both the impact of removing price parities and the possible response of the OTAs.

Keywords: Price parity clauses; hotel booking; online travel agencies; Booking.com (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D40 L42 L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-eur and nep-tur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.netinst.org/Mantovani_17-04.pdf (application/pdf)
no

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:net:wpaper:1704

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from NET Institute
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nicholas Economides ().