EU General Court upholds prohibition of Booking.com/eTraveli merger
11 September 2026
The EU General Court has upheld the European Commission's prohibition of Booking.com's acquisition of eTraveli. It agreed that combining eTraveli's online travel agency (OTA) services for flight bookings with those of Booking.com for hotel bookings would have strengthened Booking.com's dominant position and impeded effective competition in the hotel OTA market. This was despite finding that the merger could increase Booking.com's market share by only a few tenths of a percent and that there was no evidence that the merger would cause Booking.com to increase its prices.
The judgment does not mean that dominant companies are precluded from engaging in M&A that marginally increases their market share. However, businesses with strong positions in markets that are characterised by network effects and "eco-systems" of complementary services should factor the ruling into their M&A strategies, particularly when considering targets that could represent an important growth channel for rivals.
