Excerpt from Bloomberg
Booking Holdings Inc., which operates the website Booking.com, was sued by Texas for allegedly engaging in deceptive trade practices in citing hotel room prices.
The state claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday that the big travel reservations company leaves mandatory fees out of the prices it advertises, presenting falsely lower rates to prospective guests. Booking Holdings runs five other consumer-facing brands, according to the suit: Priceline, Kayak, Agoda, Rentalcars and Opentable.
“For years, Booking has duped unsuspecting Texans who shop for room rates on its various websites by omitting mandatory fees from the advertised room rate,” Texas said in the lawsuit. That practice “thwarts comparison shopping and, consequently, allows Booking to lure unwitting consumers with artificially low room prices,” the state alleged.
The suit includes images of Booking.com as a user searches for a hotel room in San Antonio. It shows the rate listed on the website for a room at the JW Marriott Hill Country Resort & Spa is $409, but once the user clicks through to make a reservation, the rate jumps to just over $546. The increase is due to a mandatory $56 fee charged by the hotel, plus $81 in taxes, according to the complaint.
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