European Commission lists Booking.com as digital 'gatekeeper'
The European Commission on Monday announced it has decided to list travel website Booking.com as a "gatekeeper" under the European Union's digital competition law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
The decision means Amsterdam-based Booking will have six months to adopt various pro-competition practices required by the DMA, such as allowing other companies to access data generated by the platform.
A gatekeeper under the DMA is a company that holds a powerful, entrenched position in the EU's digital economy, acting as an intermediary between many users and businesses.
Gatekeepers that fail to comply with their obligations under the DMA can face fines as high as 10% of their global annual revenue. Repeat offenders may be fined up to 20%.
Booking is the seventh company to be designated a gatekeeper under the DMA. The other six were designated in September last year: Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, TikTok-owner ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft.
In addition to adding Booking to this list, the commission said it is also opening an investigation into whether or not X should be considered a gatekeeper.
According to the commission's press release, X has argued that "despite meeting the thresholds, X does not qualify as a[n] important gateway between businesses and consumers." The investigation will take five months, the commission said.
However, the commission has decided not to assign gatekeeper status to X's advertising service, X Ads, because "although X Ads meets the quantitative designation thresholds under the DMA, this core platform service does not qualify as an important gateway."
