A Right Most Hotels Are Not Using

Under the EU Digital Markets Act, Booking.com dropped its rate parity clauses in December 2024. Hotels in the EU gained the legal right to sell their rooms cheaper on their own website than on the platform.

That change is now well over eighteen months old, and industry commentary keeps landing on the same observation: most hotels are not using it. Either they do not know it applies to them, or they are worried about how the platform will respond in its rankings.

Both reasons are understandable. Neither is a pricing strategy. If the single most cited reason travellers give for booking through an OTA is that they expect a better price there, then a rule change that lets you invert that expectation is the most valuable commercial lever handed to hotels in a decade.

What Changed and What Did Not

Rate parity is the contractual requirement that your public rates elsewhere are no lower than the rates you give the platform. Wide parity applied to all other channels. Narrow parity applied specifically to your own direct channels, which is the version that quietly capped direct booking strategy for years.

What you can now do

You can publish a lower public rate on your own website than the rate on the platform, for the same room, same dates and same conditions. You are no longer contractually blocked from making direct the cheapest way to book.

What has not changed

Your contract still governs everything else: inventory and availability commitments, cancellation terms, payment models and any preferred programme you have opted into. Platform ranking remains the platform's own commercial decision. And the rule set is European, so a property outside the EU, or a group operating across several regions, needs to check its own contracts market by market rather than assume.

This is a commercial decision, not a legal one to take from an article. Read your current agreement, or have your commercial contact confirm the clauses in writing before you reprice.

Why Hoteliers Hesitate

The honest concern is retaliation through the algorithm. If you undercut the platform publicly, does your listing quietly slide down the results?

Two things are worth holding in mind. Ranking systems weigh conversion, content quality, review scores, availability and competitiveness, so a hotel that keeps inventory open and converts well is not an easy candidate to bury. And the entire point of a direct rate advantage is to reduce your dependence on that ranking in the first place. A property whose margin is hostage to its position on one platform has a strategic problem that parity was masking rather than solving.

The measured approach is to test rather than announce. Move a defined portion of your calendar, watch your own numbers for four to six weeks, and let the result decide the policy.

Four Ways to Use the Headroom

Publishing a lower public rate is only one option, and often not the first one to reach for.

• A visible direct rate advantage of a few per cent on selected dates, clearly stated on your own site, aimed at the guest who is price checking you in another tab.
• A member or signed in rate that requires an email address to unlock. You keep the public price intact, you gain consented first party data, and the discount buys a relationship rather than a single booking.
• Value instead of price, where the direct rate matches but the direct booking includes something the platform cannot sell: room upgrade subject to availability, later check out, parking, breakfast, a food and beverage credit.
• Low season only, using the headroom where you need demand rather than in the weeks that sell themselves. This is the least disruptive way to start.

Whichever route you choose, the advantage has to be obvious before the guest leaves your site. A benefit that appears only at the final step of checkout arrives after the decision was made.

The Advantage Only Pays If Your Own Channel Converts

Here is the trap. A better direct price sends more traffic into your booking flow, which means every point of friction in that flow now costs you more than it did before. A slow engine, a confusing rate display or a mobile checkout that takes too many steps will hand back the entire gain you just created.

That is the mechanical half of the job, and it is what the Bookassist Booking Platform is built for: a direct booking path that converts at a rate high enough to make your price advantage actually reach the confirmation screen.

It is also worth checking the reverse leak first. As we set out in the summer rate trap, plenty of hotels are still being undercut on their own rates without realising it, which is the same problem running in the opposite direction.

Start With Where You Stand Today

Before you change a single rate, find out how your direct channel currently compares and where it leaks. Run the free Direct Booking Health Score audit. It takes minutes and it tells you whether your website, rates and booking path are ready to convert the advantage that European law has already handed you.

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